Choosing who manages your company's telecom accounts
- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 3 minutes
- Topic
- Enterprise telecom management
Large companies run telecom accounts in one of three ways: with their own staff, with telecom expense management software their staff operate, or with an outside firm that does the work. The right choice depends on who has the hours and the billing knowledge, who deals with the carriers, and what the help is paid for.
In this article
What work does telecom account management involve?
Five kinds of work, whoever does them:
- Audits of each bill and of the whole account, against the agreement and each line's usage.
- Plan changes that keep each line on a plan that fits its use, along with suspending or cancelling idle lines.
- Carrier management: placing orders and changes, filing disputes and escalating when something stalls.
- Cost controls, such as usage alerts, spend reports by site and cost center, and approval rules for new lines and devices.
- Keeping current on carrier price changes, new plans and fees, and every renewal date.
On an account with thousands of lines, the audits and the carrier work repeat every billing cycle for every carrier, which is where the hours go.
How do in-house, software and outsourced models compare?
The main difference is who does the work. With an in-house team or with software, your staff read the bills and deal with the carriers. With an outside firm, the firm does both and your staff approve the changes.
| In-house team | Software run by your staff | Outside firm | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who reads the bills | Your staff | Your staff, using the software's reports and alerts | The firm's analysts |
| Who works with the carriers | Your staff | Your staff | The firm, with your written approval for each change |
| What your staff still do | All of it | Run the software and act on what it flags | Approve changes and answer questions |
| How it's paid | Salaries and staff time | A subscription, priced per line or device, per invoice, by spend band, as a share of spend or as a flat monthly fee | Depends on the firm: per line or device, a share of spend, a retainer, a share of the savings it secures, or commissions from the carriers it places you with |
| Fits best when | Your staff have carrier billing experience and the hours each cycle | You have staff to run it and want reporting across carriers | You want the work done and measured without adding headcount |
Which option fits a multi-site company?
If your team already has carrier billing experience and time each cycle, keeping the work in-house can hold up, and software adds reporting across carriers. If those hours aren't there, or the account spans many sites, carriers or countries, an outside firm takes the workload off your staff, and the question becomes how that firm is paid. Our article on carrier incentives and fee models covers how each fee model shapes what a firm works toward.
What should you ask an outside firm before you sign?
- How are you paid, and does your fee depend on lowering our bill?
- Do you take any payments from carriers or vendors?
- What baseline do you measure savings against, and for how long do you charge?
- Who approves changes on our accounts?
- What do we see, and where?
- Does ongoing management cost extra, and how is it priced?
Telpro Management's answers
| Question | Our answer |
|---|---|
| How are you paid? | Our fee is 30% of the savings we secure, for up to 24 months, with no per-line, per-device or per-user charges. If we find no savings, you owe nothing for the audit. |
| Payments from carriers or vendors? | None. Our clients pay us, and we take no payouts from carriers or vendors. |
| Baseline | The average of your last 3 to 6 statements for the services in scope, set before we change anything. |
| Who approves changes? | You do. Each change on your account needs your written approval first. |
| What you see in the client portal | Your findings and results, your line inventory, and your bills and reports. Every client gets the portal, with or without account management. |
| Ongoing management | Optional, and billed as a separate fee that's priced to your accounts and quoted after the review. |
The full terms are on how our fee works, the baseline is explained under what counts as savings, and the work itself is described under ongoing account management.
How this article was written
Written and published by Telpro Management. Carrier facts link to their source with the date we checked them. How we write and update our articles. If you find a mistake, email info@telpromanagement.com and we'll correct it and note the change.
