Telecom Expense Management Featured Article

Devices such as cell phones, PDAs, calling cards and pagers are creating a complicated telecom expense management situation in most companies where there is waste due to a lack of visibility and control. However, there is significant potential for companies to save millions of dollars through a telecom expense management plan.

 

Examples of such waste and lack of control can be found in these all-too-common circumstances: some companies could be wasting $1 million per year on wireless devices that are being expensed at three times the corporate rate, or perhaps still be paying wireless expenses for hundreds of people that no longer work for the company, according to officials at Rivermine (News - Alert).

 

Gartner’s (News - Alert) Eric Goodness recently blogged: “Mobile device management, provided as a service, has incrediblepotential from a user and a vendor perspective. The most crystallized value statement I can provide for MDM services is that the services provide centralized application and hardware resource control.  The centralized control of mobile devices is affected by remote, or over-the-air, capabilities.”

 

In addressing wireless and wireline expenses, Mark Logan (News - Alert), president and CEO of Rivermine, told TMCnet that the Fairfax, Va.-based company’s “unified” approach produces a more streamlined telecom expense management process.

 

“Since many organizations want us to manage both their wireless and wireline expenses, we’ve gone beyond other TEM solutions and invested in a unified platform with a singular approach to reporting, inventory and workflow processes that ensures the most current information is always available in one system.”

Gaining visibility into and control over a company’s wireless spend also provides the ability to select the best corporate wireless rate plans.

 

And according to Goodness, for a company with 1,000 devices, they are likely paying $5 to $10 per device for their TEM services depending on service levels. “A full lifecycle mobile device management solution for that same company is likely to be priced at $10 to $20 per user,” he wrote.