As organizations push for tighter IT and financial control, they’re zeroing in on how telecom is ordered and managed – to the point that investment in telecom order management is expected to triple over the next decade.
Here’s what’s spurring this movement.
- Inventory accuracy: If you don’t accurately track orders in real-time, your inventory is skewed – and if your inventory is skewed, everything built on top of it is unreliable. You don’t know what services are being used or what you’re paying for until the bill shows up. Every decision made during that time – spending thresholds, budget adjustments, new connections – reflects an alternate version of reality.
- Manual inefficiencies: Traditional order management looks a lot like an email here, a carrier call there, and post-it notes buried in binders. Cracks form easily, and they’re hard to smooth over. If you have a high volume of orders, especially globally, the system breaks.
- Order fallout: It’s estimated that 10-20% of telecom orders get stuck due to issues or errors, and they cost in time and money. A request for a disconnect doesn’t go through, and now you’re stuck paying for another month. Your team is stuck on a treadmill of exception handling that takes them away from more strategic work. Delays in new connections push service out when needed, affecting productivity.
Another point worth mentioning is Plain Old Telephone Service, or POTS. Companies that waited on migration now need to work diligently to replace lines and can’t afford anything falling through the cracks.
Waving the SOS flag? Tangoe can help you gain visibility into your legacy POTS services.
Swap spreadsheets and sticky notes for something better: a lifecycle-driven approach to telecom fulfillment.
By this, we mean no longer treating fulfillment as a separate task but as part of a connected, end-to-end process that’s actively managed.
Here’s how to make that happen.
- Centralize how telecom is ordered
Create a single intake path for all telecom orders and make that the only way orders come through. Tangoe’s telecom expense management platform, Tangoe One Telecom, is designed specifically for this, making it easy to order what you need in one place with cost and compliance built in.
- Standardize and validate quotes and orders before they’re submitted
Use one platform to manage both vendor quotes and orders, creating a consistent workflow from request through fulfillment. By moving away from spreadsheets, sticky notes, and disconnected tracking, teams gain clearer visibility into what has been quoted, approved, ordered, and received. Placing orders through the same platform also captures inventory data from day one, helping keep records accurateand easier to maintain going forward. - Track every quote and order from request to completion
Submitting an order isn’t the finish line. Oh, how much simpler life would be if it were. From here, every order must be tracked with clear visibility into its status at every stage. The goal is to define clear status stages (requested, approved, in progress, completed) with assigned ownership. Someone needs to be responsible for each part of the process, and you need to know who’s accountable when issues occur. - Connect fulfillment directly to inventory
Every change – whether it’s a new service, an upgrade, or a disconnect – should be reflected in inventory as it happens. This is a huge challenge for most teams. The only way to solve this is to tie inventory updates directly to order completion. As they say: wash the spoon now and there won’t be anything in the sink. Don’t treat it as a separate task to “get to later.”
- Track and validate disconnects diligently
Every disconnect should be tracked through to completion, confirmed with the carrier, and removed from inventory. This is where money can easily slip through the cracks, so you need to make sure you have a specific “disconnect verification” step. Don’t close the request until you’ve received confirmation from the carrier and checked the next bill to ensure charges have stopped. Then, remove it from your inventory.
- Create a single system of record
It’s easy to pick a system and stick to it. The hard part is cleaning up your existing inventory, so you can establish an accurate baseline. This can sometimes require an in-depth audit, but you don’t have to do it alone. We show you step-by-step how to inventory your telecom assets, or you can reach out to our experts for help. - Build in accountability and auditability
If simple questions create a goose chase, you know there’s a problem. The goal should be to assign ownership at every step. Every order should have a requester, an approver, and someone responsible for execution. Every action should leave a record or notes of some sort. Manual, DIY approaches tend to unravel under the weight of such stringent record keeping whereas a centralized, automated system simplifies and improves it. - Continuously validate
Fulfillment is something that should be actively managed and monitored – it’s ongoing. You need to regularly check that inventory matches what’s deployed and that billing matches what’s active, so you can catch issues before they snowball. Ideally, this would be done weekly. Strive for at least a monthly cadence to compare active services to inventory and inventory versus billing.
Manage Service Fulfillment 5x Faster and with Greater Accuracy
Don’t have enough staff to optimize fulfillment? Tangoe can help. We’re able to do in minutes what customers normally do in hours by turning telecom fulfillment from a manual, fragmented process into an automated, trackable system that streamlines end-to-end.
- Everything happens in one platform, from quotes and submissions to approvals and tracking. Moves, adds, changes, and disconnects are all handled and tracked from start to finish for full visibility and control.
- Built-in guardrails help ensure orders are complete, accurate, and properly approved. Instead of relying on people to remember policies (opening the floodgates for manual errors), orders simply follow the right steps, get the right approvals, and stay compliant automatically.
- See every telecom order, past and present, in one place, with clear visibility into status, vendors, and outcomes.
- A dedicated team manages fulfillment and goes to bat when things get messy. We handle placing the orders, working with carriers, following up, and confirming completion. Most importantly, we chase down the answers you need. When you’ve been in the industry as long as us, you know who to call and how to get things moving with contacts and insight most simply don’t have access to.
Our consulting and advisory team – a separate arm of Tangoe – can also step in to help in a number of ways, from comprehensive inventory support (auditing your current inventory or building a new one from scratch) to contract negotiations and quotes to make sure you’re getting the best rates and terms.