On-Demand Webinar: Save Time and Money with Technology Expense Optimization

On-Demand Webinar Full Transcript

Hi. I’m Clari R-Garcia, Director of the Technology Optimization Group at BCM One, and I’m here to share how you can save time and money by optimizing your technology expenses.

Technology Expense Management vs. Technology Expense Optimization

Many teams struggle to manage their telecommunications invoices.  And this is understandable.  First, these invoices are not always detailed or clear.  Then, within an organization, there might be multiple billing addresses, multiple approvers, multiple accounts payable teams.  And as your technology requirements change, or your vendors and contracts change, the issues really can get multiplied.

In an effort to manage at least the financial aspect of these challenges, some companies will turn to Telecom Expense Management software, or TEM.  TEM tools can be very useful, but they focus on processing invoices, taking that accounts payable task, and automating that aspect of it.

Instead of TEM, we want you to think about Technology Expense Optimization, or TEO.  Like TEM, it automates the manual aspects of paying a bill.  But TEO goes further, finding opportunities for reducing services and costs, increasing bandwidth for similar cost, or altogether changing technologies.   It also focuses on permanently fixing billing errors, something that can take up a lot of time, time that IT teams just don’t have.

How TEO Works

How is this done? Where is this data coming from? The power of TEO is in the detail.  By first expanding the process and then breaking it out into individual components, what we get is really a clear and detailed view of how technology dollars are spent.  We do this by looking at:

Inventory

Inventory: detailing service locations, features of the services, and EACH charge or billing component.  Not as an aggregate for the account, but individual components.

Contracts

Same with contracts – linking and relating the contracts to existing services, validating that they are invoiced correctly.  And having an overall understanding of contractual obligations, how they might impact existing network deployments, or future network plans.

Expenses

It includes Expense management – again, that process of taking a manual bill review and payment process and automating it.  But with TEO, invoice review also includes validating every service on an invoice, like each IP connection.  This is done every single month.  Effectively, it is a monthly audit.

Optimization

Audit and Optimization – is the financial and operational payoff of TEO.  If you ever considered that you needed an audit, it is probably because you’ve seen examples of issues like billing errors or stranded assets.  Identifying and resolving these issues can clear a path that will allow you to enhance or upgrade your services.

Cloud

Cloud – as companies move into cloud solutions, some of the same issues and challenges that we see with wireline and wireless services, also impact cloud.

Business is Shifting

There is always continuing uncertainty in the business environment.  But really, it is more important than ever to have a clear grasp of services, a clear grasp of the contractual obligations, so we can see where there are savings opportunities.

Events outside of our control can impact every aspect of our lives and businesses.  For example, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic CIO magazine interviewed several IT professionals on how they plan to respond to demands in infrastructure and budgets.  Here you can read some of their feedback and how the plan to look at expense management as a solution.

Each vertical is seeing challenges that may be new, or may have been just under the surface before, and now they’re jumping to the forefront.

Retailers, for example, have had dramatic drops in sales and will look to changes in technology as one way to cut costs.

Healthcare is a different story.  These organizations, what they need to do is make changes to technology to keep up with the pace of an increase in patient demand.

And for financial services companies, an unpredictable economy is really changing the way technology must support how they do business.

We don’t yet know what the ‘New Normal’ will be. How can we plan for it?

Sophia – Our TEO Solution

BCM One’s approach is a partnership between our clients and our people, using Sophia, our proprietary software to deliver cost savings and optimization.

Sophia manages spend through monthly invoice audits, inventory management and contract monitoring.  We also work with your Suppliers to resolve billing disputes and negotiate contracts.

Consolidating invoices through BCM One Tier also translates to fewer suppliers to manage, fewer contracts, and the added benefit of a discount for Sophia services.  This is particularly helpful when SD-WAN is introduced into a company’s network environment as you may be dealing with different cable suppliers and contracts, and each supplier may be unable to consolidate invoicing, adding hundreds of invoice reviews and payments

By looking at similarities, trending similar clients that use the same or like suppliers, BCM One can benchmark a company’s cost for technology.  We will help you implement changes.

And we back up our ability to deliver with a market-leading pricing guarantee.

Saving Money with Technology Expense Optimization

What is the financial impact that you can expect?

Competitive pricing; Discounted or fully waived setup fees.  And we commit to finding more in savings than the cost of the tool.  If we do not find these savings, what we will do is refund you.

We can make this offer because we have been doing it repeatedly and successfully. Here’s some case studies where you can see some of the financial savings that we brought to our clients.

Through fixing contractual bill errors, duplicate errors, we are constantly working with our clients to help manage their contracts, make adjustments where needed or consolidate their suppliers and also helping through new technology deployments that can sometimes save money. And working really on complex supplier disputes. These are things that can be very time consuming but can ultimately save an organization a lot of money.

This particular case study illustrates an engagement where our client had a 2 million dollar shortfall for one supplier, the relationship between the client and the supplier was really unraveled and the attempts by the teams in-house to fix the problem have not been successful. What we at BCM One were able to do was by going through the data analyzing the underlying components we were really able to demonstrate to the supplier how the client may be able invoke a legal defense but also to that same supplier highlight the value that the client brought to them.

So we were able to re-negotiate the contract, migrate services over from other suppliers, and that net fall result was that the 2 million dollar shortfall was completely waived and we put both parties on a path to mend their relationship.

Learn More About TEO

If you’d like to learn more about how BCM One’s Sophia solution can help you optimize your technology, save time and save money, call us at 888-543-2000. Or you can also visit our website at bcmone.com.

Explore our TEO solutions today.