Total Telecom Cost Management (TTCM) is more than hiring auditors for billing error refunds.

To lower costs, you must attack them at their source, in a "proactive" fashion. "Reactive" after-the-fact solutions, such as audits, are far more costly and ultimately less rewarding from an ROI perspective. And we say that even though we perform audits for many of our clients!

AberdeenGroup and Gartner Dataquest, the leading analysts on telecommunications, both agree that telecom costs can, and must, be driven down. We agree with them, and that's why TelAssess works to reduce ALL of the unnecessary costs associated with telecom. Keep in mind that the majority of unnecessary costs will never be recovered. Once paid to the carriers, those dollars are gone forever.

Managing telecom networks for maximum performance and minimum expense are not independent activities. Unless the two objectives are pursued in tandem, pushing for results on one side can negatively impact the other. A unified "Total Telecom Cost Management" (TTCM) approach keeps both performance and cost in mind at all times.

Where you enter the circle depends on where you are coming from, and how far you travel around the circle depends on where you need to go. The framework for TTCM is simple:

Simple isn't it? Yet few companies can truly claim to be successfully performing these functions within an overall telecom management strategy. As one telecom expert states, "Every unnecessary payment going to the telcos is like making them a donation. And they aren't my favorite charity."

As with cars on the road, you can enter a traffic circle from any direction. We encourage you look at your needs, both immediate and long-term, for guidance on what cost management issues to tackle first. Here are some scenarios that might sound familiar:

• A data-heavy financial company needs a network analysis, but there isn't time to get it done before a contract for data services comes due. So, we attack the contract first, making it as flexible and supportive as possible of network changes that are likely to take place in the coming year. When the network is addressed at a later date, at least the customer won't be boxed into using a set of services it no longer wants or needs.



• A holding company is having problems managing the business end of its telecom services. Cost allocations, cost center approvals and AP/GL issues are driving them crazy. They need to get this automated first. They can deal with their networks and contracts later.



• A pharmaceutical company has concerns about the validity of their bills. They have contracts expiring in 6 months and are prepared to change vendors due to the problems. They need an audit to quickly find and quantify all errors under this vendor so they can be settled while they still have negotiating leverage.



• A large sales and marketing company has over 1,000 cell phones. It's a primary cost category for them in telecom and they have lost control. They need wireless management right now since their unnecessary costs can never be recovered by an audit.

TTCM defines best-in-class telemanagement. If your goal is leadership in this critical area (and we assume it is), keep in mind that it can't happen until you and your team take action. If you're ready, we'd like to learn about your needs, and whether we can help you in the same way we have helped other businesses.

Nobody likes a sales call, including us. We think that an enterprise telecom professional should be talking with a peer expert, not a salesperson. That's why we make our senior telecom professionals available for informational conferences with interested companies, rather than our sales team. Just to talk telecom, not to sell. We learn about you. You learn about us.

To arrange a conference, please contact Dennis Anderson, our VP of Business Development today. He will personally set up a meeting with one of our senior team members to discuss telecom management issues. Dennis can be reached at 800-657-1595 or by email.

To read more about Telecom Auditing services from TelAssess, click here.
To ask one of our experts a question (no cost, no commitment), click here.

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