The process for auditing invoices by manually extracting data from the invoice and putting it into an Excel (or of you’re old enough to remember, Lotus) spreadsheet has been in use since the 80's. Many companies still utilize this process but as mentioned in the title, doing a manual telecom audit today is akin to selling lantern oil after the advent of the light bulb.
Why is the manual telecom audit dieing a slow death? The reason manual telecom audits are going away is because we can now automate the process of extracting the pertinent data points needed to audit a paper invoice using optical character recognition (OCR) at near 100% accuracy. Once the data is in digital form you can then use software to examine the invoice data, compare it against existing contracts and tariffs, and systematically identify errors.
Errors are then flagged allowing them to be accepted or rejected, and if rejected a billing dispute can be initiated and tracked directly from the software. As an added benefit it also inventories all of an enterprises telecom assets (lines, trunks, circuits, wireless devices, routers, laptops), ties them to site locations or employees, and then identifies usage patterns for internal cost allocation.
Since developing the V-Vision Telecom Expense Management Software we've now done away with spreadsheets. If you’re auditing invoices by manually extracting data and inputting it into spreadsheets maybe it’s time to evaluate TEM software to automate that task.
