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Telecom expenditure management (TEM). This is what I was told by the person on the other end of the phone when I asked him what business his company is in. A few more questions and counter questions, and I had decided that I must meet them.

The short discussion was an eye opener. TEM companies help organizations reduce their communications services expenses. The savings could range from 8% to 34%. That is a huge amount of money for organizations where monthly communications expenditure runs into lakhs and crores of rupees. What surprised and actually disappointed me was the observation of this TEM expert that in many cases operators actually mislead their customers, and then take advantage of their lack of understanding of the nitty-gritty or the fine print. And yes, sometimes organizations pay more due to wrong technology or service decisions that they took.

The operators might not like this, but I am really happy that someone like this has now come to India. In a very fast growing yet budget conscious market, something like this will hopefully force operators to be careful because in most cases, the high costs of communications are passed down to end customers.

TEM companies actually go beyond advising organizations on how to monitor and track their communications bills, they can guide on how to select the right service bouquet too. They can also tell how to negotiate the best SLAs and also how to read the SLA fine print. TEM also advices on how to manage the distribution and monitoring of communications services internally: how many people should get an STD/ISD line; and how to track which desk has spent the maximum time on outbound calls, and at what time; etc. It could be a big help in terms of security too.

Not just service providers, TEM companies will also help organizations in selecting the right technologies that they need to deploy. Technologies that will suit their requirements, and give them best value for money. Often organizations get fancy and jazzy stuff, most of which remains highly under-utilized and does not fetch any advantage.

One has not heard of similar services for mass market consumers, but I would strongly recommend that the benefit of this service should be available to them too. I would not be surprised if we have some young entrepreneur offering this as an off-the-shelf web or online service, which consumers can just pay and use. I believe that if consumers can get tools that empower them to better control and manage their spending, churn will automatically come down.

Good news it maybe, but TEM companies will have a tough task. They will not only be getting on the wrong side of the service providers, they will also be challenging their customers' internal users who have been used to certain services. And last but not the least, TEM might also annoy the technology vendors who keep coming out with the latest, the best, and the costliest.

Ibrahim Ahamad
ibrahima@cybermedia.co.in