As telecom becomes more complex, the opportunity to miss invoicing mistakes or costs associated with defunct landlines is expanding. Enterprises are increasingly turning to third-party telecom audits to ensure that billing is accurate and costs are under control. In short, these audits prevent telecom from becoming the enterprise money pit.
As enterprises make changes, both to their organizations and to the technology infrastructure that supports them, the risk for wasted resources increases. From forgotten, unused landlines to incorrect rates, the possibility for invoicing errors is immeasurable. While telecom companies do not purposely add mistakes to their billing, the complexity and depth of the services offered make it almost impossible to ensure accuracy.
When a company merges or acquires a new location, old charges, defunct lines, and other residual billing line items can sit untouched and undetected for years.
Carriers used to provide written, detailed invoicing to customers, detailing the line items for physical inventory and circuits, as well as utilization. As telecom has become increasingly complex, the documentation surrounding billing has been taken offline and customers often have difficulty accessing the details.
Likewise, telecom companies have experienced a high rate of turnover, so specialists able to decipher the specific charges that customers are receiving on invoices have become rare. The result has been a mentality of buyer beware when it comes to telecom billing.
In fact, carriers may even have contractual limitations in place, so that if a problem with billing is not detected within a certain window, the customer has no ability to document a discrepancy or receive credit for it. In some cases, the window for error detection is six to 12 months, while in others it may be only 30 days.
Enterprises are beginning to look for ways to gain control over telecom expenses through strategies called telecom expense management. These plans include third-party telecom audits to ensure that carrier invoices are validated before payment is made and the root of any discrepancy is identified and remedied.
Effective telecom audits also work to increase transparency between the contractual terms of the telecom services and the actual billing. A lack of communication and understanding between these two teams is often the root of unnecessary spending, and a third-party telecom audit helps ensure that the circuits the enterprise is paying to use are actually being used.
Telecom audits also offer expertise in analyzing telecom billing at a granular level, with special expertise for navigating the maze of telecom billing practices. Specialists have insight into where billing problems are most likely to originate and which questions to ask to identify overages.
Enterprises that engage in third-party telecom audits are often surprised that they are able to recoup unnecessary annual spending to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, in some cases. If you’re considering what a telecom audit might do for your enterprise, contact us at Diversified Technology Group. We can help you identify the telecom expense management tools that will help you identify waste and streamline your telecom costs.