Global Telecom Expense Management – Keep it Simple Stupid!
Posted by Eric Schummer
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.
This is a blog, so I’ll do my best to get to the point (sorry I am Latin and it is not our forte). My experience is that the challenge is often times the client itself and the battles within their organizations. Also, the large TEM providers recognized the money in the Fortune Sector, and the software is mostly adapted to the huge US sizes, complexities and expectations. However, the world of such companies and many smaller companies is built on years of “geographical and class segregation” across entities and divisions to the point that they look like the European Community, supposedly united but with multiple countries each doing their thing, with their own budgets, mindsets, emergencies, issues, controls and priorities; which happen not to be those of the European Council.
So, uniting a global corporation under the umbrella of “global TEM” requires in my humble opinion a very unique process and methodology. I can speak to this because we have spent 3 years developing such methodology and have had the unique opportunity to reflect and practice much of what I predicate on:
- Global but fragmented – and rebellious
- Nice objective — but please politics and medals are first I decide, but you have to pay for it!
The next wave of global TEM is from Complexity to Simplicity: A large global firm recently made a choice to move from the “Cadillac” to the “Camry deluxe”. I call it the “Cadillac” ( no offense intended) because it has too many , generally useless, features and too many buttons for the poor folks that need to use them.
One of my beloved clients – Applica Consumer Products (owns Black and Decker and other brands) even has been migrated by us to the “Camry”. And is happy enough with the weekly report providing a dashboard of all activity, budget, processed stuff and status of things and don’t even play with the software. Why? Simple. They don’t have the time. Please Hide all the bells and whistles. They look fantastic on the webex tm until you have to fill all of them daily yourselves with largely useless information as far a savings , visibility and control is concerned. SIMPLE please!
Mobile versus fixed: On a global scale, save a few companies, the vast majority of companies have a good grasp on their fixed assets, and more and more mobile services account for a larger portion and represents a more complex management challenge for its inherent type of service. Random subscriptions, employee dynamic, user facing services, etc. So mobile is the priority for “application based services with BASIC fixed line management”
Global versus local: the key word here is shared services. The methodology we have thought out seeks to service at the same time Local, Regional and Global management simultaneously, and providing to each one or obtaining from each one what is required. If this is not accomplished like this, sponsorship and success to the adoption are a nightmare at best. A formula must be worked out so each country can do their thing and corporate/headquarter also benefits.
I worked as consultant to a Fortune 50 I won’t name for confidentiality reasons but mostly to save them the embarrassment. After countless meetings at corporate in USA and RFI and RFP and interviews with everyone, they take us to their Latin-American HQ. Surprise , surprise, the Latin-American HQ says: “Well, corporate needs this as they are complex and a mess, but we here know exactly where we stand. We would love to do the cell phones in the region but:
- we don’t have “one person”. In charge . Responsibility is spread across business units
- is corporate paying for this? I don’t have budget
- so on..
In summary, to succeed at a global implementation:
Keep it simple, with simple applications with global ability; Make sure you acquire or develop predefined methodologies for collecting initially and aggregating all data about infrastructure, processes , expenses, providers, and users within company so you can inventory your multiple processes and other factors affecting expectations; Methodology for inserting AND SHARING services within a CORPORATION; Plan for actionable data and being willing to act and assimilate the consequences of findings; Track, measure and report everything you find and fix from day ONE.
I completely agree, hence most of our service cost while providing cost allocation to our clients is driven by such complexity. We face not only disaggregated sources of information (ERP systems, Access or Excel files in different formats) and daily changing corporations.
This made us re-think completely our software, which is just a tool to be able to provide this service, six years ago and improve it considerably to be able to:
- Read directly from ERP dd.bb. so employees, cost center, projects dedications, category changes, are read directly from such centralized sources.
- Have enough experience doing the job in the shade; “Coordinating” our client’s different departments and responsible (Purchase managers, facility dept., CFO, internal auditing, etc.)
- Be able to adapt to multi-level and across organigrams, which allows for cost allocation on a daily basis.
- Develop ad-hoc reading tools for some clients with over 10.000 lines.
- Suggest the best-praxis when pre-designing how the TEM service could be best optimized; ie. what does our client needs to do before contracting us, if he wants to pay just for TEM or organization consultancy.
But the hard part is: making THEM understand that such internal problems, and not subcontracting this mess to an expert, is what is really making them loose or expend unnecessary cash and internal resources.
Regards
Jesus Ruiz Janeiro
CEO Telcomunity.com
“First of all,I am against outsourcing jobs to third world countries,and paying them slave labor.I have no problem,nor have I ever had any problems with immigrants doing whatever it takes for them to survive,and I would never blame them.It is the agricultural,and manufacturing corporations that hire these wonderful hard working people for slave wages that need to be punished for their illegal warehousing,and abuse.I believe that the government needs to punish these criminals to the fullest extent of the law.I also believe that the foreign trade is definitely immoral,and should be illegal.It is disgusting to me that these poor people are being blamed for taking an opportunity to live a better life.Great question,and I wish that there were people in our government that would bring this to public debate,and not just say"they work jobs regular americans don’t want"could you run for public office”
Completely agree, global TEM is a complex animal that many companies are not ready for. Mostly for the fact that you mentioned, they operate under their own supervision. I ran the Telecom for a large US corporation that had international entities, and there was no interest in a central global telecom department. Even knowing that such a integration would save thousands of dollars through leveraged purchasing and a integrated network. Global TEM will be a challenge, but I imagine it will catch on when the savings and controls are understood.
Brennon Cardone
President Tidal Telecom