You may think that hiring the service of an expert to do your telecom expense management and do your telecom audit is an extra cost for your company, but you may have to think again! Because failing to do your telecom audits or not being able to do it the right way may just cost you more.
Having the proper telecom expense management and doing a telecom inventory regularly can certainly be beneficial for a business as it can create a lot of savings for them. Auditing is important especially for a large company because through this, they will be able to learn about their expenses and review their inventory. By having this process, a business can get some data on where they can cut some costs and start having some savings.
What is a Telecom Expense Audit?
A telecom audit is the process of doing a review of all your cellular and also your telecom expenses, accounts, and services. This type of auditing is important because through this process, a company is able to identify the accuracy of the billing of their telecommunications providers.
Making telecom audits is a way to find out if your service providers are consistently adhering with the original contracts that you have set with them. It is also one method of verifying that your telecom bills are not overcharged. Auditing your telecom expense is also about checking if there are billing errors or some hidden costs from your service provider.
Doing a telecom audit ensures that you do not pay for bills for lines that are not actually being used anymore. In case you find some errors in billing and you have been overcharged, then you can have the chance to recover those funds again.
Why Do You Need to Have a Telecom Audit Expense Management?
It is said that telecom service providers do not have accurate and consistent systems for billing which is the reason for many billing errors. Out of 20%, around 12% have errors in the bill and 85% of those mistakes are due to the service provider’s fault.
Because of the need to audit the telecom expense of a business, telecom auditing services are usually hired to do a telecom inventory. Having this kind of service allows the company to lessen their costs and maximize their savings.
When you hire an expert to do your audits, the process starts with them meeting with you, their client. And you will need to provide them with your wireless phone invoice as well as an invoice both for long distance and local calls so they can make a review of all those invoices. With information from those, they can identify if there are some unauthorized bills and if there are, they can help you recover those funds.
Getting the help of an expert telecom professional to do your audit can provide you some cost savings because you will get an accurate data about the expenses of your business. And from this information, you get to find out where you can control your cost.
What Does a Telecom Expert Professional Do?
A telecom expert can help you do a comprehensive audit which would not really be feasible without the help of one as it is a very tedious process. This team of professionals will review all your phone and wireless bill records as well as the contracts, tariffs, and inventory by location. These experts can also help you file a claim if necessary and assist you with funds recovery.
They will also be the one responsible to document every single data so they can provide you with some information that can have opportunities for cost savings for your organization. The optimization of your telecom network can help decrease many unwanted expenses.
By having an expert do your telecom audit, you get to know the architecture of your telecom network. This way you will know where your assets come from and you get to have an idea what to work on to find new opportunities and add value.
When you have a detailed review of your services and assets coming from your telecom, you get to be in control of your own telecom inventory. This way you are able to find opportunities for cost- savings as well as take the best value in terms of rates.
As you try to work on creating more savings, you can try to reduce your expense by consolidating all your telecom services in one bill. When you are able to do this, you can confirm your rates against the contract that you have and you get a better chance to have an accurate telecom inventory. Along with these, you will be able to track errors and non compliance of a contract as well as recognize overcharges.
Some Challenges in Telecom Audits
Without a telecom expert to assist you with your audits, it will be a great challenge to recognize all your assets and would also be difficult to monitor all the wireless devices, fixed telecoms, and equipment personally owned by the staff, etc.
Doing the audits on your own also means taking a very long time to complete the auditing of your invoice vs your inventory. This also means then that you will not be able to recognize overcharges right away and you may just keep on paying for those mistakes in your bills.
When you do not have the right software or the proper training on auditing, a lot of mistakes can happen. These mistakes can be very costly. Some companies do their inventory manually and use Excel spreadsheets instead . The problem with this is that record keeping is divided among different departments so the data may not come out accurately. Also, when the employee is not well- trained, they can easily overwrite some very important information which can lead to more mistakes and inaccuracy. This can incur more expense.
This task can be so massive and daunting that making one person do it may seem impossible. To prevent having some inaccurate data and to make the process more quick, many organizations require a lot of their employees from various locations to do it. Though this can make work faster, it also leads to much mistakes and errors.
Once the audit is done, what do you do with the results? The task does not simply end there. The data still needs to be distributed to some specific departments such as forecasting, network organization, planning, procurement, budgeting, invoice auditing, and the like,
Why not simply get a software for the optimization of your telecom inventory and get quick and accurate results monthly?
