Businesses continue to find themselves having to adapt to increased remote work capabilities with dispersed teams functioning and collaborating across locations and time zones.
Many of the added cloud-based software licenses that have been enabled to increase connectivity, particularly since the start of the pandemic, need to be properly inventoried for infrastructure and budgeting purposes. But organizations often lack the tools, and the time, to manage tech services and expenses at scale.
Accessing a proven Technology Expense Management (TEM) audit shows your business what’s happening under the hood and where you can gain efficiencies. But all TEM audits are not created equal.
We examine the differences between a TEM audit with and without proprietary data — and which is better for your business.
Tech’s Evolution = TEM’s Impact
The meaning of Technology Expense Management (TEM) has evolved in recent years with the changing landscape of responsibilities for IT departments. What previously was limited to telecom expenses has now expanded to include voice, data, internet, cloud services, and mobility.
Because of these changes, IT, procurement, and finance teams are in need of systems to help them manage service inventories and costs across departments. A TEM audit has become an increasingly important way to consolidate these efforts to keep up with the accelerated pace of change.
Enterprises are largely increasing their reliance on TEM services to get a better handle on their assets and services. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2025 organizations will enlist more help from external consultants for guidance as the gap widens between digital business ambitions and internal resources and capabilities.
A big-picture TEM audit can improve your visibility into tech inventories to create workflow efficiencies and reduce unnecessary costs. By understanding how mobile expenses, fixed telecom and cloud management expenses, and enterprise support are working in your infrastructure, you can focus on other areas of your business and have confidence in forecasting your future technology expenses.
The Power of Proprietary Data
A TEM audit by itself allows you to identify what’s working, and where you can improve your technology and communications services and expenses. But by partnering with a TEM audit provider that combines historical proprietary data with a team of experts, you’re able to gain far more insights for eliminating redundancies and improving savings.
Standout TEM solutions deliver results through sophisticated technologies paired with hands-on customer service. A TEM audit provider pairs proprietary technology spend analytics and sophisticated software with hands-on, human analysis to streamline their processes and makes more accurate and timely recommendations.
Collecting the data
Collecting and categorizing historical data across industries takes time and effort. But once processes are in place, TEM audit providers create a resource center of pricing, services, and vendors from real customers with the most up-to-date details
Proprietary data gives TEM audits an expense insight index backed by evidence. This prevents data from becoming stale and ensures the integrity of every audit. It also provides the power of analysis which differentiates a high-level audit from a deep dive.
Applying inventory insights for technology budget optimization
An effective TEM audit starts with understanding the organization’s industry being reviewed and creating a roadmap for filling in the gaps to create comprehensive solutions, tackling “low-hanging” tech savings fruit first, then tackle larger recommendations that the TEM expert efficiently resolves. But it doesn’t happen all at once.
Collecting proprietary data happens in four phases:
- Analyze the data of all historical invoices and contracts that have been processed and have TEM experts manually examine trends, savings, and abnormalities.
- Compare the findings across a historical database index that outlines services and providers with cost analysis.
- Develop savings solutions that eliminate unused services, the cost associated with those changes, and retroactive credit recoveries.
- Discover cost-reduction opportunities for lower price availabilities by comparing service pricing against historical information collected in the pricing index.
Accessing carrier billing details creates industry-leading telecom and technology service savings and recommendations. It also establishes clearly defined technology benchmarks and trends that can be used to identify savings opportunities.
With indexed data, you can rely on real experience and historical savings to pinpoint opportunities and take action faster, and with confidence. Applying analytics and monitoring trends increases the amount of learning — and savings — companies can get from TEM.
By leveraging a team of TEM experts who understand your industry and the associated technology costs, you can get a more granular look and can methodically apply the learnings with the biggest impact. Incorporating accurate data with human analysis creates more detailed auditing and more specific savings opportunities.
How proprietary data is a differentiator for TEM
While a TEM audit helps your team (and your business) identify areas of savings and process inefficiencies, combining an audit with proprietary data takes your analysis to a new level.
“We created our proprietary TEM software to collect data on basically every single (technology) service under the sun throughout the country,” explains SpyGlass Vice President of Business Analytics, Owen Hood. “We have real-world examples of what real customers are paying for and what a vendor might be offering at any given time.”
Outsourcing your TEM audit to a provider that has access to proprietary data lets you take control of your technology spending. They can uncover untapped cost savings, remove unauthorized users, avoid excessive fees, and negotiate on your behalf with the data to back it up. Proprietary-backed TEM audits also result in gains in productivity across departments by reducing demands on staff, letting them focus on functions that fuel your business.
Learn what technology savings can mean for your business. Download the white paper for industry insights and cost savings analysis from 13,000+ SpyGlass customers.