business operations. This makes effective telecom expense management (TEM) a key strategic priority. However, as the range of communication tools, services, and platforms continues to expand, managing these expenses has become increasingly complex. Manual processes are not only error-prone but also make optimisation challenging. In response to growing pressure to reduce costs, enhance efficiency, and maintain compliance, businesses are rapidly turning to TEM services.
This article explores key challenges in telecom expense management and strategies to overcome them.
Key challenges in telecom expense management
Managing telecom expenses comes with several challenges, from rising costs to increasing operational complexities. Below are the key obstacles companies face when dealing with telecom services and expenses:
Lack of visibility into telecom spending
Telecom expense transparency can be a significant challenge, with multiple carriers, varied plans, and usage scattered across departments and regions complicating the process. This complexity can lead to unaccounted-for expenses and billing errors.
Solution: Centralising telecom data through TEM software consolidates invoices, contracts, and usage into one platform, providing a clear expense overview. Regular audits identify errors, unused services, and overcharges, while partnering with TEM experts enhances cost analysis. Advanced analytics reveal spending patterns, enabling proactive cost control.
Implementing TEM solutions can lead to significant cost savings, with businesses reducing expenses by up to 30% by addressing billing errors and optimising expenses.
Managing multi-regional operations
For businesses operating across North America, Europe, and APAC, managing telecom expenses in multiple regions comes with added complexity. Variations in regulatory compliance, currency differences, and carrier service agreements can complicate the process.
Solution: Adopting a global TEM solution is key. The challenge can be overcome by choosing telecom expense management solutions that cater to global operations, supporting multi-currency billing, region-specific compliance, and cross-border analytics. Streamlining vendor relationships by negotiating consolidated contracts with telecom providers reduces administrative overhead and ensures better pricing for services across regions. Engaging local expertise by partnering with telecom expense management companies, with a deep understanding of regional markets, ensures compliance with local regulations and optimised expense strategies.
Depending on factors such as the size of their telecom estate and the comprehensiveness of services offered by their TEM provider, companies can expect to see significant savings on telecom expenditures.
Increasing complexity of telecom services
The telecom ecosystem now spans traditional voice services, mobile plans, data services, and unified communication platforms, making management increasingly complex.
Solution: Accurate inventory management is crucial. Telecom expense management software helps maintain a detailed inventory of all telecom assets and services, ensuring alignment with business needs. Automation reduces manual effort and errors by streamlining tasks, such as invoice processing, contract renewals, and usage monitoring. Regularly evaluating and upgrading telecom infrastructure for technologies, such as 5G and IoT, future-proofs operations. Additionally, partnering with TEM providers simplifies this transition.
A well-managed telecom inventory not only cuts costs but also improves operational efficiency and agility, enabling businesses to stay competitive in an evolving landscape.
Controlling costs and preventing overages
Uncontrolled telecom expenses, overages, and unapproved usage can quickly spiral into significant financial losses for businesses. These issues often arise due to ineffective policies and a lack of employee accountability.
Solution: Setting clear policies that define acceptable telecom practices for employees is vital. Communicating these policies clearly and enforcing them with appropriate monitoring tools ensures compliance.
Real-time monitoring through telecom expense management software provides instant alerts for overages and unusual usage patterns. Additionally, leveraging cost optimisation tools, included in many telecom expense management solutions, can recommend the best-fit plans based on historical usage data, further preventing unnecessary expenses. This proactive approach enables quick adjustments to service plans and the identification of underutilised services that can be eliminated, resulting in substantial cost savings.
Ensuring compliance and security
Businesses must adhere to a wide range of regulatory requirements, including data privacy laws, security protocols, and financial regulations. Failing to meet these standards can result in significant fines and reputational risks, making compliance and security a critical priority.
Solution: Telecom expense management companies provide visibility into assets and services, helping organisations eliminate redundancies and reduce expenses. Enhanced security measures, such as data encryption and access control, protect sensitive information from potential breaches, which can otherwise result in costly fines and legal liabilities associated with non-compliance. Telecom expense management software that aligns with GDPR and ISO 27001 standards ensures organisations build trust with stakeholders.
Overall, the integration of robust security and compliance protocols within TEM not only mitigates risks but also contributes to ongoing cost efficiency.
How Infosys BPM can help overcome TEM challenges
Managing telecom expenses effectively requires a holistic approach that combines cutting-edge technology, deep domain expertise, and proactive strategies. Infosys BPM Cloud and Telecom Expense Management Solution (CTEMS) can help you take control of your cloud and telecom expenses seamlessly. Our platform-agnostic solution provides clear, centralised visibility into your spending data, leveraging big data analytics for smarter decision-making. With Infosys BPM CTEMS, organisations can detect 100% of billing errors, eliminate vendor overcharging, and reduce late payment fees. Experience improved financial control, operational efficiency, and up to 30% in committed expense savings.
Frequently asked questions
Industry audits consistently find that 7% to 12% of enterprise telecom spend is billed incorrectly, through charges for disconnected services, rate discrepancies, duplicate charges and incorrect taxes or surcharges. A further 8% to 15% of mobile lines typically show zero usage. Enterprises that implement a managed TEM programme typically recover 3% to 8% of spend through invoice error recovery alone in year one, with combined first-year impact of 20% to 35%.
Telecom expense management covers voice, data, mobile and network carrier services, while technology expense management extends the same inventory, invoice and contract disciplines to cloud, SaaS and IoT subscriptions. Gartner's Market Guide for Telecom Expense Management Services now frames the market as telecom and cloud expense management, reflecting that cloud spend has overtaken carrier spend at many enterprises. Executives evaluating providers should confirm that the platform normalises invoices across carriers and cloud providers and ties each charge to a cost centre.
A TEM platform processes invoices, contracts and usage records that contain personal and financial data, so it should operate under ISO/IEC 27001 certification and a current SOC 2 Type II report, and support GDPR and CCPA obligations for employee data. For multinational estates, the provider should also demonstrate regional data residency options and segregation of duties in payment workflows. These controls are typically checked during vendor due diligence and reconfirmed annually.
TEM return is measured on four components: recovered billing errors, eliminated unused services, contract rate improvements and avoided late-payment penalties, net of programme fees. Industry benchmarks show first savings within 30 to 60 days of audit completion and full payback in 3 to 6 months for most organisations. Enterprises typically track savings against a validated spend baseline and require the provider to report realised, not identified, savings.
Multi-regional estates add currency conversion, country-specific taxes and surcharges, regulatory variations and carrier contracts with different billing formats, all of which defeat manual reconciliation. Effective global TEM requires multi-currency invoice normalisation, a single inventory of services mapped to legal entities, and regional contract benchmarking. Large enterprises typically spend USD 25 to USD 55 per user per month on telecom, so reconciliation errors across a 50,000-user estate are material. Enterprises typically consolidate to a small number of global carrier agreements with local addenda to reduce administrative burden and improve rate leverage.
