Telecom Expense Management (TEM) is a term used to define a business approach to managing telecommunication service expenses (Voice, Data, and Wireless) with software. The software leverages a telecom carrier's electronic invoice feeds to gain detailed information, to automate workflow, and provide greater reporting capabilities.

The scope of a typical TEM solution ranges from a company utilizing their own employees and hosting the TEM software to having others host the software, to having others host the software and perform a wide range of outsourced services. Outsourced services can include invoice processing and payment, invoice auditing for contract compliance, validation of an approved inventory, reconciliation of orders (Move, Adds, Changes and Disconnects - MACDs) to invoice charges, order provisioning and escalation, physical inventory validation, sourcing and negotiation of contracts against databases of industry best-in-class rates, help desk, and other services.

The industry can be categorized as emerging but has gained wide adoption in recent years. Gartner tracks over 100 TEM vendors and provides an annual TEM Marketscope which rates each vendor and their capabilities. Forrester, Aberdeen, and AOTMP also follow provide research and vendor reviews.

Telecom is typically a top three expense category and with the use of electronic billing like EDI and specialized tools a company can gain visibility, control, and savings that are not feasible in a paper-based manual environment. The ROI for solutions are typically reaching in the first year, many vendors provide guarantees and SLAs, and had dollar cost reductions conservatively range from 3%-15%.

--Joelemoss 14:00, 26 September 2007 (UTC)Joel E Moss