How to Cut Costs and Streamline Technology Expenses?

In today’s world, it is crucial to take note of the technology expenses that any organization is spending, as it directly impacts the top line and reduces company profits. For a technology shopaholic CTO, these expenses could make up almost 60%-70% of total expenses.

In this blog, we will discuss about Technology expense management and cover:

1. Introduction to Technology Expense Management

2. Common Technology Expenses for the Enterprises

3. Challenges of Managing Expenses

4. Best Practices for Technology Expense Management

5. The Benefits of Technology Expense Management

6. Vendors providing Technology Expense Management

7. Future of Technology Expense Management

We are very excited to talk about TEMS today and hope it brings value to you.

Note: Technology expense Management and TEMS will be interchangeably used in the article.

Background

Technology expense management is widely discussed these days in board meetings because, with a steep rise in inflation every year, leaders have likely seen impacts on organizations’ technology costs and services.

Today, industries are rapidly evolving and exploring various options to enhance their performance, while staying within their budget constraints. With the accelerated digital transformation, the efficiency of AI and automation has become paramount. To conduct business in today’s world, enterprises need tools and technologies such as telephones, smartphones, tablets, and laptops with cellular data plans, and the list of IT expenses goes on and on.

To fight these costs, it is imperative for leaders to stay on top of the enterprise’s spending and explore optimising costs while managing budgets through Technology Expense Management. However, let’s start by understanding what is Technology Expense Management.

Introduction to TEMS

In the past, TEM solely referred to Telecommunications Expense Management. When this was the case, a streamlined telecommunications solution was a primary technical concern for businesses. Now, businesses have expanded their scope due to the emergence of new technologies, and they must account for much more than just telecommunications when managing their tech-related expenses.

Now, businesses have expanded their scope due to the emergence of new technologies, and they must account for much more than just telecommunications when managing their tech-related expenses.

Aparna Nidhi

Common Technology Expenses

Today, TEMS services account for:

1. Mobile Device Management: This includes managing mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops used by employees for work.

2. Cloud Service Management: Many organizations use cloud-based services like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

3. Telecom Expense Management: This includes managing expenses related to voice, data, and internet services.

4. Software License Management: Many organizations use various software applications to run their business operations.

5. Hardware Asset Management: This includes managing assets like computers, printers, and servers used by employees for work.

6. Internet Expense Management: Internet expenses are a significant expense for many businesses.

7. Business Equipment Management: Business equipment such as printers, copiers, scanners, and multifunction printers (MFPs) are critical for business operations.

8. Merchant/Vendor Services: Merchant and vendor services are essential for businesses that accept payments from customers.

9. Energy Services: Energy costs are a significant expense for many businesses.

10. Cloud Services: Cloud-based services are becoming increasingly popular among businesses.

11. Human Resources and Business Services: Human resources and business services expenses can include expenses related to recruiting, training, and other employee-related costs.

After understanding these expenses, I assume they constitute at least 50% of any organization’s total revenue. WHICH IS HUGE.

Ronak Agarwal

Hence it is of paramount importance to optimize expenses. However, they are some challenges that needs to be addressed because of the complexities involved.

Challenges Involved

Over time, the list & amount of expenses not only gets longer as new technology hits the market, but the number of people within your organization who need the technology also goes up. All of that leads to complexity, and complexity leads to errors.

Even Market Research reports that 85% of invoices have mistakes and cost businesses upwards of 12-20% of over-spending every month.

Aparna Nidhi

For eg, achieving an edge in Unified communication expenses has become critical along with surging Cloud spend. All these have pushed enterprises to come up with solutions for the prevailing challenges.

There are several other challenges faced by organisations that has built the need for thinking around Technology Exepense Management, such as:

1. Diversified services

2. Management of increasing list of carriers/providers

3. Billing issues

4. Lack of Manforce

5. Contracts

6. Inventory

7. Vendor complexity, etc.

Even work from anywhere has created unique challenges with major compliance and security risks. Also, with each passing year, organisations face the challenge of staying up-to-date with technology all while balancing expenses, equipment needs, and maintaining their bottom line.

Also, today every type of product and service is being transformed by software – then supercharged by connections. As a result, businesses are moving away from buying assets and putting stock in a phenomena known as ‘everything-as-a-service’ or ‘XaaS’.

Businesses are moving away from buying assets and putting stock in a phenomena known as ‘everything-as-a-service’ or ‘XaaS’.

Ronak Agarwal

Yes, and with the ever changing future of technology, put simply, technology expense management solutions help businesses maintain an actionable picture of all of their technological assets and services. This includes everything an asset might require from its acquisition to its deployment, to maintenance throughout its life cycle, and finally to its retirement. This includes managing contracts with providers, servicing, monitoring usage, and bill payment. In short, TEM services allow an enterprise to work smarter by centralizing and simplifying complex tasks.

Technology Expense Management Solution

Through different ways, enterprises can easily manage technology expenses.

1. Telecom Expense Management for order analysis, usage analysis, and ongoing spend management for one’s global telecom network

2. Managed Mobility Services for managing full lifecycle of organisations’s mobile program from device procurement through retirement while optimising usage.

3. SaaS/UCaaS expense Management by enabling complete visibility of subscription spend, utilisation, analytics and management of enterprise applications.

Not only these, but Technology expense management can also help address inventory and contract management issues along with benchmarking and forecasting support. Other benefits of TEM include M&A integration, carrier performance management, service disruption prevention, benchmarking, RFx enablement, and quote-to-install cycle time reduction.

With all these advantages, organisations will never want to go back to using spreadsheets to manage costs again. All of the moving parts can be simplified and optimized by using a TEM provider who’s an expert in the field and knows how to cut costs and optimize technology expenses for the enterprise. We see many leader providers in this field namely Tangoe, Calero MDSL, Cimpl, IBM Emptoris, AOTMP with Tangoe leading the pack.

TEM Solution Advantages

1. Mobile Device Management: TEM solutions can help organizations manage mobile devices by automating tasks like device setup, updates, and security.

2. Cloud Service Management: TEM solutions can help organizations monitor their cloud usage and identify cost-saving opportunities.

3. Telecom Expense Management: TEM solutions can help organizations manage their telecom expenses by tracking usage, negotiating with vendors, and optimizing plans.

4. Software License Management: TEM solutions can help organizations manage software licenses by tracking usage, identifying unused licenses, and negotiating with vendors.

5. Hardware Asset Management: TEM solutions can help organizations manage hardware assets by tracking usage, identifying underutilized assets, and optimizing procurement processes.

6. Internet Expense Management: TEM solutions can help organizations manage these expenses by tracking usage, optimizing plans, negotiating with vendors, and identifying cost-saving opportunities.

7. Business Equipment Management: TEM services can help organizations manage their business equipment by tracking usage, identifying underutilized assets, optimizing procurement processes, and negotiating with vendors.

8. Merchant/Vendor Services: TEM services can help organizations manage these expenses by tracking transaction fees, optimizing payment processing, and negotiating with vendors.

9. Energy Services: TEM services can help organizations manage energy expenses by analyzing energy usage, identifying opportunities to reduce consumption, and negotiating with energy suppliers.

10. Cloud Services: TEM services can help organizations manage their cloud expenses by tracking usage, optimizing plans, and identifying cost-saving opportunities.

11. Human Resources and Business Services: TEM services can help organizations manage these expenses by tracking expenses, optimizing HR processes, and negotiating with vendors.

Overall, the solution benefits are:

1. Reducing overspending

2. Improving vendor management

3. Automating manual processes

4. Optimizing usage

5. Ensuring compliance

6. Leveraging data analytics

Yes, in short, we can confidently say that TEM can be used to

1. Build real-time IT inventory (software)

2. Gather bills and identifying overcharges (audit)

3. Search for contract violations (support)

4. Optimize telecom environment to save (support)

5. Negotiate with vendors to get a better deal (support)

To sum up, it is imperative for organisations to understand that adding new technology is vital to keeping a competitive advantage, but it can be tough to manage all of your subscriptions. Technology Expense Management would then help in optimising IT spends, simplifying IT and Finance processes and Operations while also taking care of security and compliance.

Well, it’s important to understand what OEM’s are doing and keeping oneself updated.

That’s it Folks! Let me know what you think about the blog. Please share and do comment your thoughts. I am always interested to know different perspectives and learn from you. Please post for any questions, comments. I can also be reached at LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook.