Is Your Telecom Technology Up to Date?

If you think you are overwhelmed by telephone bills and contracts as a consumer, how do you think Corporations keep track of their phone bills?  Is your telecom technology up to date? It’s certainly difficult to find telecom managers with time to review phone bill expenses.  So, if your business is like most Fortune 500 Companies, it may not have a dedicated telecom manager inhouse. During the past 27 years we’ve seen only a handful of corporations with an accurate telecom inventory.  Most companies have an old telecom inventory, with obsolete services, phones, and data lines. 

You may be skeptical about telecom auditing, so here are further details. Most companies have late fees, but having late fees might mean that an AP Department is extremely busy and can’t pay all the bills prior to the due date. The AP Department normally puts some bills aside for review, while others may be held to determine accuracy. An Accounts Payable employee may not have the knowledge to identify tariff billing errors (through no fault of their own).

Most large corporations have a telecom department with a Telecom Manager concentrating on keeping their services online. The Telecom Managers job is to maintain the system and keep the service working properly and up to date, based on current telecom technology. Most of these IT service technicians and AP Departments aren’t billing experts and most don’t understand telecom contracts and billing review. Moreover, business have few options available to determine if they are getting the accurate billing rates their company should be receiving. Without the Telecom Manager the telecom equipment failure and service outages would play havoc on the entire company. Auditel has found that many large corporations have a telecom service department, and AP Department, but very few have a telecom billing department.

Keeping Technology Costs Low

Having a complete telecom audit is like getting a car washed instead of having the car fully detailed. While the corner gas station can wash the outside of your car, to thoroughly clean it to for resale, you either need to do it yourself, or consult a car detail professional. The same is true of a telecom audit. While it may be more convenient to scan the top of the bills, the devil is in the details. We’ve found that many companies don’t take the extra time for a complete and total audit to eliminating all the telecom waste. It is time consuming to consolidate telecom bills and follow telecom disputes to completion. Moreover, an important part of keeping technology up to date is keeping accurate technology expense records.

In our experience, we’ve found very few firms with tariff trained auditors reviewing the telecom bills on a monthly basis. We recommend your company have a telecom bill audit to review their telecom services and ensure each vendors accuracy.

More on Technology and Telecom

Telecom bill audits can be based on specific services, like telephone bills, or they can include all the telecom billings. This can include MPLS, circuits, data, and wireless, etc. It’s a good idea not to forget the details found in your telecom contracts.  In fact, these telecom contracts should be reviewed each month along with billing. If you have never had a telecom audit performed, please re-consider.  

A telecom bill audit contains a tariff based analysis of all telecom bills, services, usages, and contracts. Every company can benefit from keeping their telecom technology up to date.  In summary, telecom technology is not just keeping telecom services updated. Telecom technology can be found within telecom contracts, telecom billing, and in various types of telecom usages.  All these components combined with process can keep telecom technology up to date.