I remember a few years ago, nearly every company exhibiting at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo was a VoIP provider, and everyone had the No. 1 solution available. This buzz has transitioned to telecom expense management. And similarly, a variety of companies — from software developers to auditing companies to bill payment companies — claim to be TEM providers and, of course, each claims its solution is the best.
As an agent, you are urged to offer a TEM solution as part of your business model. The question is, where to begin? Below is a checklist of considerations you can use when evaluating a TEM company with which to partner.
1. Is the TEM company or the agent handling the customer help desk?
It is very important to determine up front which company is handling help desk functions. If you have a customer with a BlackBerry e-mail issue, who is going to troubleshoot it? Who is going to handle the ESN swaps, ports, etc. Be aware, however, some TEM companies claim to offer help desk services, but only provide a help desk e-mail address for you to use.
2. Does the TEM company have an SaaS, BPO hosted solution or licensed service?
There is a distinct difference between the three methods — software as a service, hosted and licensed — for delivering TEM services. Each has its pros and cons. I would recommend you carefully research these different methods and decide what would be the optimal solution. For example, an SaaS typically has more robust capabilities, like allowing customers to upload their own invoices, audit their own bills, do specific expense allocations, etc. In contrast, a hosted solution doesn’t typically offer this functionality. A licensed solution may require an install at your customer's location. Who will be doing this — you, your customer, or the TEM company? What is the additional cost for the installation?
3. Can the TEM company work with invoices that aren't electronic?
Some TEM companies only focus on enterprise accounts and only work with electronic billing. What happens when a subsidiary of your enterprise account is on a separate billing platform and only receives a paper bill? Your customer isn't going to be happy only being able to process a portion of its invoices.
4. Does the TEM company "normalize" their data regardless of carrier?
Let me explain: Some TEM platforms don't have the ability to commonly handle multiple carrier invoices. Their TEM platforms were built specifically for one operator and typically don’t work with other operators that group items differently on their invoices. For example, AT&T Wireless puts its credits under the “Other Charges” section while Verizon Wireless puts them under the “Monthly Service Charge” area. The last thing you want when analyzing and trying to optimize a customer's telecom environment is to go through a series of reports trying to match apples to apples. A good TEM platform should produce "normalized" reports regardless of carrier.
5. Who is managing the wireline/wireless inventory updates — the agent, their customer or the TEM company?
When a mobile user relocates to a new location/department, or an MPLS circuit is cancelled, who will be handling these types of moves/adds/changes? Some TEM companies have feature-rich platforms to handle this, but others don’t even have an inventory management component in their solution. If this is important to your customer, be sure to understand how this will be handled.