Findings of a survey released by FCC indicate that 30 million Americans have experienced the shock of unexpected increases in their monthly phone bill. “Bill shock” is defined as an unexpected increase in a monthly bill not caused by a change in a service plan.
Shocking results!
Anyone old enough can remember the frustration, money and time lost, and eventual evolution of Enterprise Software implementations like SAP, Siebel, etc. Why did they fail? Software was not mature enough for one, but fundamentally companies trying to implement it mistakenly thought it was a software implementation managed by IT.
Operators have spend millions in promoting smartphones and services in the past years and customers have finally started to adopt smartphones in big numbers.
Fantastic news for operators?
Telecom costs continue to increase and the number of corporate mobile phones increased in 2008 by 13%. These are some of the findings from the Ezwim Telecom Monitor 2008 (Ezwim hyperlink), a statistical analysis among Ezwim’s Telecom Management user base that offers an accurate picture of how the corporate mobile is being used by employees.
Just before Christmas the news was released that Israeli TEM player MTS acquired the Telecom Expense Management Operations of US based AnchorPoint. This is yet another TEM acquisition/merger ……in 2008 Tangoe acquired Information Strategies Group (ISG) and HCL Technologies acquiring Control Point Solutions.
Market consolidation in the TEM space is taking place and will accelerate. Why? Here are some reasons:
Telecom Expense Management is becoming more and more important for Multi National Corporations (MNC) attempting to keep costs under control. A key trend is that companies take a global approach towards Telecom Management by centralizing telecom with the objective to reduce costs and streamline business processes.
Many TEM vendors have a national service and approach and must seek strategic partnerships (or build themselves) to be compliant to the enterprise trend moving away from national to global services. An example of this trend is the announcement of the global partnership between Ezwim and Movero Technology to deliver a joint lifecycle management service globally. The joint service is based on the full integration of the respective Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms.
The integrated offering will be available in Q1 2009. The benefit to enterprises: a total lifecycle management approach for policy development, procurement, administration of services and expense management across multiple carriers, allowing for more effective cost control, service and support.
Many organizations are in the midst of their annual budgeting and planning cycles for 2009, cost reduction programs have become the key priority in order the weather the current economic crisis. Telecom is a top 3 expense category with MNC’s spending 1.500 – 4.000 $ per employee per year.
To help enterprises survive the current economic meltdown. Gartner offers help by means of 25 tactical tips for the CIO to cut IT costs. In the cost category Networks & Telecom Gartner recommends Telecom Expense Management Services to cut costs by 10%-35%.
The recent economic downfall faced by enterprises around the world force companies to be more cost conscious. Telecom costs has traditionally been a top expense category and with enterprise telecom costs rising every year it is time to take control of what enterprises are paying for.
Aberdeen published an interesting report, based on 4,500 respondents, stating that a potential recession is a top business challenge for companies in 2008. This economic trend forces enterprises to re-examine their top expenses and identify overhead.
