Archive for the ‘Telecom Expense Management’ Category

More and more people have smartphones; some studies suggesting around 40% of the Dutch population (and for example 27% in the USA). These phones are often bought in combination with a 2 year subscription that includes a voice and sms text bundle and which subsidizes the price of the device itself. And for a nominal fee per month, the subscription includes unlimited, fast internet access. Some internet providers have a fair use clause in the contract which allows them to restrict someone’s access speed after they have been deemed to use more than their fair share of the total internet bandwidth.

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Ezwim recently implemented SAML based Federated SSO. Most people will hardly notice the short description of this implementation in our release document. The ones that read it will probably just frown and think it is not relevant to them. But it is a very exciting development for me. And I have gained a couple of extra gray hair in the process of implementing it!

Here is a little comparison between trust in the good ol’ days & the way trust works today, just so we have some real world concepts to hang our thoughts on:
When my grandparents still had a farm & grandpa went to the bank, the bank manager would know grandpa & therefore he was allowed to do business. Trust was based on well established knowledge.

Today, I carry an identity card with me in my wallet. When I go to the bank or hospital, they look at my ID card to determine who I am. They don’t trust me because of any knowledge about me; they trust the organization that issued me with the card.

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Canalysis reports an impressive growth of the worldwide smart phone market, the market grew an impressive 95% over the same quarter a year ago to 80.9 million shipped units. Although Nokia retains the leadership position with a 33% share of the market, Apple achieved a 17% share worldwide. According to Canalysis vendors will face rising price pressure in 2011 as the growth increasingly comes from the mid-range of the market.

While the smart phone market growth has so far mainly been driven by the high-end segment, the market is now reaching a tipping point where the mid-level makes up a growing proportion of that growth. Smart phones are becoming the standard!

In the past weeks two TEM acquisitions took place. Vodafone announced the acquisition of two telecom expense management companies: TnT Expense Management and Quickcomm. Later that week TMT Ventures announced the acquisition of Ezwim.  

The specifics of the Vodafone deal were not announced. Combined, Gartner estimates that the two acquired TEM companies generate under US$25M in revenue. Based on the estimated 2009 revenue of the acquired companies, their trended growth over the past 36 months as well as considering comparable TEM acquisitions; Gartner estimates that the two companies were likely acquired by Vodafone for less than US$40 million. TnT has appx 85, and Quickcomm 35 staff.

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Smartphones are very common in today’s enterprise; Strategy analytics claims that over 90% of organizations now have employees using smartphones within their organizations. Depending on the size of the organization, this can cover tens of thousands of individuals. Gartner even claims that by 2013 the mobile phone will overtake PCs as the most common web access device worldwide.

Increased productivity, improved efficiency and response times are some of the important benefits of wireless solutions. But to ensure cost control and security a formal mobility policy is crucial for any organization.

To ensure that policies will be effective, consider the following tips:

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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!

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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.

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Telecom Expense Management and Mobile Device Management: a powerful combination

There is a lot of talk about Mobile Device Management (MDM) and its big promise to enterprises of centrally distributing applications, data and configuration settings to mobile devices. MDM services have incredible potential and deliver great value to IT department as it provides centralized application and hardware resource control. The control is effected by remote or over-the-air capabilities. It helps IT departments to optimize functionality and security and minimize (support) cost and downtime.

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Automate Invoice Management to Generate Immediate Hard Dollar Saving

Recent research shows that two in three European companies have no clue what and how much corporate data is housed on employees’ mobile devices. Of those surveyed, two in three companies said they are not fully aware of exactly what sensitive data is stored on employees’ mobile devices and—perhaps more troubling—38 percent said they don’t even know what applications are being run by employees on their smartphones. Moreover, only 15 percent of respondents said that they are “completely confident” that they would be legally protected should an employee’s mobile device be lost or stolen and whatever data contained on the device fell in the wrong person’s or organization’s hands.

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Automate Invoice Management to Generate Immediate Hard Dollar Savings

Comprehensive telecom expense management (TEM) solutions have been shown to be highly effective in reducing telecom costs, generating strong ROI and paying for themselves in less than one year of operation. An automated invoice management system will generate hard dollar savings and productivity gains.

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