A lot of IT and finance teams treat telecom expense management (TEM) as a defensive discipline: keep costs in check and fix problems fast. The most successful organizations think about TEM differently. As transformation accelerates and macro forces compound, the companies getting the most value from TEM aren’t just managing invoices and spreadsheets. They use TEM proactively – making smarter, data-driven decisions around costs and spending to maximize ROI and efficiency.
Modern TEM – the discipline of using centralized data, automation, analytics, and AI to simplify operations, uncover waste faster, improve visibility, and make smarter decisions at scale – remains an untapped opportunity. And the best part? It doesn’t require massive investment. It starts with gaining tighter control over the telecom environment you already have.
Here’s how to make this strategic shift, no matter what your current TEM environment looks like. But first, some fundamentals.
Modern TEM is about getting stronger visibility, automation, and control for a more governed operating model across the telecom environment and more proactively managed costs at every step.
Companies with a traditional TEM approach discover circuits billing at closed offices or services nobody uses in a routine audit – far after the cost impact has already happened. Those with a modern TEM approach have already built a system to prevent that impact from happening, and in a way that keep teams out of the weeds of manual, inefficient work.
Modern TEM involves so much data that it’s impossible for teams to manually manage it all. An AI-powered TEM platform like Tangoe One solves for this by continuously ingesting and normalizing data across key systems, creating a real-time view of your telecom environment that stays current as operations evolve. Automation takes on repetitive, manual work, while AI continuously monitors and analyzes data to uncover trends, anomalies, and optimization opportunities. Less time in the weeds = more time for smarter decisions that drive ROI.
Let’s look at the core pillars of TEM and what a modern environment looks like.
Modernizing IT inventory management means going from manual spreadsheets – too often a frustrating loop of duplicates, missed updates, and then wasting hours each week playing detective – to a centralized, continuously updated source of truth. Nearly 90% of organizations agree that IT inventory management is a challenge.
Modernizing telecom invoicing and bill pay means going from a monthly scavenger hunt to gaining a single view of what’s owed, what’s been paid, and where costs are trending – across multiple vendors, currencies, and languages. As companies modernize TEM, 80% of executives see manual bill pay as a roadblock.
Modernizing telecom contract and vendor management means going from scattered agreements, surprise renewals and price increases, and limited negotiating leverage to deep visibility and control understanding your commitments, what you’re paying, and what you could be paying using market price intelligence. Telecom costs can drop by as much as 30% with the right strategy in place.
Modernizing telecom ordering and provisioning means going from “Where’s my order?” and “Who approved this?” to requests, approvals, and fulfillment all tracked in one place – and inventory always staying accurate and up to date. This is a classic bottleneck in traditional TEM environments, which is why investment in telecom order management is predicted to nearly triple over the next decade.
Telecom inefficiencies compound: a missed disconnect becomes wasted spend, a provisioning error becomes an inventory problem, an inventory problem leads to duplicate orders. Modern TEM breaks this cycle by treating telecom as a connected, lifecycle-driven process.Every stage generates data that informs the next, creating a continuous feedback loop of visibility, control, and optimization.
Here’s how a TEM platform like Tangoe’s makes it happen.
The “Crawl” stage is about getting control. Instead of looking back and wishing you’d done things differently, you can take the right steps now to ensure successful progression.
You’re in the “Crawl” Stage if:
A shocking amount of telecom waste starts with operational breakdowns upstream. It’s worth linking to this guide again because it goes deep into these process issues.
Right now, you’re probably paying for more than you think.
Create a process for monitoring contract renewals, expiring discounts, and promotional pricing so they don’t impact bills. This is especially critical with the rapid sunsetting of POTS.
The “Crawl” stage focuses on cleaning up and gaining visibility. Teams in the “Walk” stage begin using that visibility proactively to optimize telecom costs and spend.
You’re in the “Walk” Stage if:
Start evaluating options early and know how your rates stack up before sitting down at the negotiating table. Tangoe’s TEM platform has benchmarking analytics built in, allowing you to compare your current costs using our deep industry data along with your own historical spending trends.
Could a solution shift provide similar performance at a lower cost? How do you stand to benefit from emerging solutions like LEO satellites? These are the kinds of questions you should be asking as you start optimizing, and Tangoe has expert advisors who can help you through them.
Time to pick up the pace. The “Walk” stage focuses on optimizing what’s in front of you. The “Run” stage is strictly strategy – aligning telecom investments with future growth and transformation.
You’re in the “Run” Stage if:
This is often the stage where advisory services provide significant value. Whether you’re evaluating vendors, preparing for a renewal, assessing new technologies, or navigating regulatory and tax changes, outside expertise can give you the lift you need.
The same financial discipline and governance you’ve worked hard to build into your telecom environment can (and should) extend to other domains like mobility and cloud. This is where you unlock the greatest value, driven by an understanding of your total technology costs and spend. Tangoe’s unified technology expense management platform, Tangoe One, supports telecom, cloud, and mobility in one ecosystem.
With Tangoe, you’ve got a partner who has been pioneering telecom expense management for 25+ years. The Tangoe One platform is purpose-built to streamline, simplify, and optimize TEM, using advanced AI end-to-end so you spend less time managing telecom and more time getting value from it. And when you’re ready, the platform expands to other domains like cloud and mobility, so you can simplify and optimize spending across your entire IT ecosystem.
While the platform has everything you need to modernize TEM, there’s additional support through Tangoe’s Technology Consulting and Advisory Services.
No matter where you are in your TEM modernization journey, Tangoe can help.
