Filling the Holes In TEM

There is no arguing the value of a well thought out TEM deployment. The increased visibility and reporting alone make TEM a valuable business tool. To the company that is trying to lower their telecom spend and manage the overall financial impact of this top 5 operating expense, TEM is perfect. Sounds great right? Well here is the rub. Unfortunately there is a big hole in the traditional TEM concept. Sure the financial reports are great, the A/P posting adds huge value, and the inventory modules offer wonderful clarity. It sounds great, but what about your business? TEM is helping you manage your costs but what about running your business. What is the traditional TEM provider doing to bring you up to speed on new technology and competitive products? Do you have the proper bandwidth at all of your locations? Should you be using SIP trunking over your MPLS network? Is the current portfolio of carriers the best for your business? TEM can not help here.

The hole in TEM has created a new offering that not only offers all of the TEM cost management and visibility but it also brings a high level of consulting and product knowledge to the table. Total Telecom Management (sometimes called Telecom Management SaaS) is filling the TEM holes. A TMaaS deployment is the best of all worlds. I won't bore you with the TEM part of it; that is the obvious value. The hidden value is the ability to work with your TMaaS provider to bring "best of breed" products to the table for you to review. By the way, "best of breed" has different definitions to different companies. Some would say it is a Tier 1 carrier and some would say it's the lowest priced provider available. To each his own, right?

Let's look at an example. Let's assume that you have a TEM platform in place. You can see that the 10Mbps AT&T data connection you have in Baltimore is costing you $2,500.00 a month and the contract is up in 60 days. Good information to be sure. What it won't tell you is that there are 2 Tier 1 providers that can get you that same circuit for $1,600.00 a month or bump you to 20Mbps for the same price you are paying now because they have fiber into the building and AT&T does not. Your AT&T rep (not to pick on AT&T) is not going to share that information. They are going to renew you at $2,200.00 a month and you will see that in your TEM report for the next 3 years. Without a TMaaS deployment in place, the burden is on you to research the marketplace, meet with the carriers, determine your "best of breed", manage the deployment, and integrate the new carrier into your TEM platform. By the way, that is just one of your 78 sites across the country and the same is true with each site.