What are TEM Services?

The increasing costs of pretty much everything is impacting the bottom line of businesses as they try to stay competitive. Rising prices are the result of companies trying to cover their increased costs. They are not translating to increased profit. It is now more important than ever to understand your costs and look at opportunities to reduce them

One solution is to reduce your fixed costs through Telecom Expense Management (TEM) Services. A good implementation of TEM enables a company to have full insight into the costs behind the ordering, provisioning, support and management of their telecom services as well as ongoing inventory life cycle management. TEM should also include business intelligence (BI), reporting and analytics suitable for driving actions at a strategic and operational level.

TEM is not so much a thing as it is a multi-pronged approach to understanding and control your telecom costs. The first step in managing your expenses is to understand what you are paying for. This means performing a thorough inventory of hardware, software and services. Don’t forget to include how much time is spent keeping the services running. The important part of this inventory process is to build policies and procedures to keep it accurate going forward.

With an inventory in place, as well as procedures to keep it updated, the next step is to analyze the inventory for infrastructure and services that are not providing as much of a benefit as they are costing. For example, are you spending money to maintain hardware that provides a service that might be better spent as a cloud service? How much time is being spent validating and paying the bills for the services you are (or maybe not be) using?  There are consolidation services that can validate and simplify your telecom bills at a lower price than doing them in house.

Another part of a good TEM service is one that will assist in getting the best telecom services at the best possible price. Their experience with telecom service providers can provide you with an insider’s view of what is available for your situation as well as figure out the cheapest price available.

I hear from a lot of companies about the challenges around managing costs in the new world of remote work. Is it cheaper to allow their employees to use the own computers and devices with a monthly cost reimbursement? Or does the added data security of employer provided work specific devices a better idea?  If it’s the latter, a TEM consultant can assist in everything you need to buy, provision, manage and control your enterprise mobility policy.

TEM Services can be anything from occasional or one-off assistance requests, to targeted support for existing teams, to a fully-managed outsourced TEM and enterprise mobility management. It is worth investigating.

Teledata Select offers a whole range of services that will help you meet your business goals. Starting with a complimentary review of your current telecommunication bills to identify errors and find opportunities for savings, better service and more functionality. We also offer project management for new service implementation and infrastructure installs, including fiber and low voltage cabling. Call us at 404-257-1502 to discuss your current Telecom Service Solution and what you would like to get out of it. Or send us a note via This Link to start a no obligation discussion of your specific business technology needs.

John Hagan is President of TeleData Select, a Telecommunications Consultant located in Atlanta, Ga serving customers throughout the US and overseas. His company provides business solutions for voice, data, mobile and cloud solutions for both large and small businesses. Contact John or his team for a complimentary telecom audit to make sure you’re getting the best value for communication services. The savings you receive could offset the cost of purchasing a new Hosted or Premise based solution.