Aberdeen released a new research report on small and medium enterprise (SME) wireless spending called, SME's Love To Spend Money on Wireless Expenses. Most of their Telecom and Wireless Expense Management research has been on Fortune 1000 enterprises, but this report provides a look at wireless spending in small and medium enterprises. The report states 45% of US employment is by SME's, so it would stand to reason that a significant portion of overall wireless spend is by small and medium enterprises. The question is, are they managing that expense effectively, and if not, what can be done to lower the expense?
Here are some of the challenges SME's face according to the research:
- Lack of full time employees to manage all aspects of corporate wireless accounts and services
- More reluctant to adopt and manage pooled plans
- Lack ability (automation) to compare contracted rates to their invoices
They also addressed some of the policy issues such as:
- No standardized rules for wireless devices and plans
- Appropriate use policy not defined
I think we can all agree that managing wireless expenses is challenging. So what is a company to do? The paper makes a few recommendations:
- Use pooled plans supplemented with favorable contract terms
- Centralize and standardize service orders and usage policies
- Strategically outsource or obtain managed services of wireless services
And I might add that while carriers are helpful in providing rate plan optimization, and portals for ordering, they are not the best companies to manage your wireless services. In every case we have a new client that used the carriers to manage their accounts we find them overpaying. Also there are many TEM and wireless expense management companies, each serving different sized enterprises, many focus on enterprises with 1000 or more devices and others like Vocio focus on companies with 1000 devices or less.
Vocio offers a free trial of our wireless expense management software and services. If you're interested in the trial just send us three of your latest invoices via e-mail, upload them from your browser or we can supply you with our Fedex or UPS account number to ship them to us. We'll upload them and provide access to our software along with recommendations for lowering your costs.
