Telecom Expense Management (TEM) is a specialty financial discipline involving the application of systematic analysis to telecom service orders, inventory, bills regarding telecom services.

The practice of Telecom Expense Management (TEM) and Wireless Mobility Management (WMM) encompasses the business processes conducted by IT and finance departments to acquire, provision and support corporate communications services. Stated another way, TEM is either the build-out of self-service tools or the acquisition of third-party services to manage the supply chain for corporate communications.

TEM solutions include software suites (tools) and software as a service (SaaS) for self-management and the outsourcing of specific tasks to third-party service providers. Gartner defines TEM solutions in three categories:

• Licensed and hosted applications— The customer acquires applications to improve self-management (applications may be vendor-hosted).
• Managed application service — The customer is primarily self-managed; however, customers gain access to SaaS-based or hosted applications, and multimodal invoice data entry is managed by the vendor.
• BPO — This scenario is vendor-managed. The minimal service to be considered BPO includes vendor invoice management, inventory management and dispute management. For mobile environments, it includes ordering and provisioning, and it is generally the most-predominant outsourced function.

At the heart of any TEM solution is an automated software platform used by the business, or by an external service provider, that manages a company's telecom invoices and assets. This platform ties into relevant business applications and software (for example, ERP, CRM, supply chain management [SCM], HR and call accounting) to facilitate the management and payment of carrier invoices. Gartner has identified the component service disciplines of TEM as:

• Sourcing management, which enables buyers to negotiate prices, terms and conditions for strategic contracts for indirect materials (services), as well as for services through online requests for proposals, electronic sealed bids and reverse auctions.
• Ordering and provisioning management, which provides the business functions of commissioning and deploying network services and mobile assets, based on predefined rates and support for user profiles leveraging multiple portioned catalogs, structured workflows and authorizations. Process services in ordering and provisioning include help desk for order placement and logistics support related to deployment, replacement and break/fix depot repair.
• Inventory and asset management, which applies to the processes andservicesthat provide one or all the following for fixed-mobile services and mobile devices: asset discovery; asset management; an asset database/repository; asset portfolio management; and tracking of purchases, leases, contracts and disposal pertaining to telecom assets and expenses. Links to general ledger accounting systems modules, such as the capital asset ledger, are common. Integration with capacity products, user administration products, order entry and e-procurement is desirable; however, the practice is not mainstream today.
• Invoice management, which provides the accounts payable invoice-processing function. Target benefits of third-party invoice management are reduced costs per invoice, reduced processing time, elimination of errors and late payments (and related disconnections), and compliance with internal policy and procedure.
• Usage management, which assists the user in the identification of costs with cost objectives by using call accounting and invoice data to provide a comprehensive view of wireline and wireless telecom services and usage. Usage is tracked to allocate costs by individual, department, cost center or other user-defined spend categories across any number of corporate locations. Usage management also identifies theft and abuse of network resources.
• Dispute management, which ensures the recovery of credits and the management of short-pay and no-pay decisions. The dispute case is created directly in accounts receivable accounting and directed to a vendor dispute manager. Leveraging third parties for disputes can optimize expenditure, greatly reduce the cost of disputes and increase corporate liquidity.
• Reporting and business intelligence, which represents the outcomes of leveraging process outsourcing to a third party as data presentment regarding the company's telecommunications investments, as well as providing actionable advice through prescriptive alerting and business intelligence. This function provides the ability of departments, such as IT and finance, and of business units to generate data that can be acted on. This is achieved by maximizing the value of information from the supporting TEM service components, and drawing on complementary business applications (for example, ERP, HR and SCM).

1. Sourcing and Procurement
2. Invoice Processing
3. Auditing
4. Optimization
5. Service Ordering
6. Change Control
7. Contract Management
8. Asset Inventory Management
9. Service Inventory Management
10. Policy and Governance
11. Help Desk Management
12. Mobile Device Management
13. Mobile Application Management
14. Risk Management
15. Security
16. Reporting and Analysis

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Gartner believes there is strong value in users pursuing TEM solutions. However, Gartner has not changed its outlook on the TEM market in terms of an overall Promising rating. The market has not consolidated the number of vendors and Gartner believes the number of vendors offering TEM solutions will nearly double by 2013 from a global perspective.

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• What is TEM (Telecom Expense Management)
• TEMS Related Blog Entries from CEO Liquid Networx