Valicom's presentation from the Wisconsin Healthcare Technology Association, Fall Meeting 2015. Unlock IT Saving - three areas for major improvement within your telecom environment.
3. Why Valicom?
Flexible – Wide range of TEM Solutions from DIY
to BPO + Web-Based Software
Experienced – Over 23 years in business
Independent – We work only for you
Ethical – Proud member of TEMIA
Diverse – Certified 100% woman owned business
6. Why.
• Priority for TEM in healthcare
• Up to 35% of telecom invoices have ERRORS
• No telecom expense management program
= 22+% MORE spent in total annual costs
7. How.
Keys to Improvement:
• Financial
• Budgeting and Forecasting
• Contract Negotiation
• Operational
• Invoice Processing and Auditing
• Cost Allocation
• Technological
• Tools: Invoice Approval and Bill Pay
10. “Telecom costs are among the largest
operating expenses for organizations.
Yet, they’re often the most
inconsistently managed.”
11. Back to Business Basics
Your telecom costs are hurting more
than just your IT budget.
• Draining budget for exploring new technology
• Consuming internal employee resources
12. Budgeting / Forecasting
TEM affords you:
• Accurate budgeting and forecasting
• Precise cost management
• Transparency and advanced reporting
• Tracking by variance (a time savings to you)
13. Budgeting / Forecasting
CASE STUDY: Energy Industry
2011 – New Client!
– $145k in one time credits, $400k in annualized
2013 – New telecom manager comes on board
– Reconfigures cost allocation codes in Clearview
– Customized & advanced reporting available
2014 – Transparency for budgeting and forecasting
14. Contract Negotiation
• Contract negotiation is the easiest way to save money
on your telecom costs.
• It may seem simple…Your goal is to get the most
flexible, most competitive contract.
• There are options for outsourcing negotiation…
you can hand part or all of it over to the experts.
15. Contract Negotiation
Your telecom confidant.
Partner with a telecom contract expert to:
• Bounce ideas and questions off of them
• Access benchmarked industry data
- or -
• Turn entire negotiation over to TEM team
16. Contract Negotiation in Practice
CASE STUDY: Print & Broadcasting
$1.3 M annual telecom spend
Engaged Valicom to re-evaluate / negotiate contracts
‘Out of the box’ thinking for RFP
RESULTS:
3 months into the contract, Valicom renegotiated a single
contract… saving $126,000.
Valicom assisted in RFP, and found a reseller for 56% savings for
their local services.
18. Invoice Processing
Why? Workload.
Mid to Large healthcare orgs
receive 400 telecom invoices
monthly.
Do you have the time and
resources to review and audit
them?
19. Invoice Processing
Why? Errors.
• Up to 35% of telecom invoices have ERRORS
• 87% of invoice errors disputed are $1-499
… It adds up!
20. Invoice Processing
• Central, digital invoice repository
• On-going audits to check for variances
• Errors? We’ll request credits on your behalf
21. How will your processes change with a new tool?
• Streamlined invoice processing
• Notification for unusual costs and usage
• Automatic bill pay
• Contract renewal notifications
22. Cost Allocation
CASE STUDY: Hospitality
Annual Spend: $50M
Focus on Cost Allocation & Charge Back
Corporate Savings Achieved: $5M
Spread telecom costs across departments.
• No more ‘who is going to pay for this?’.
• Spread costs across departments, locations, etc.
• Granulize to 1% of the total invoice
24. Downfalls:
o Lacking in specific telecom functionality
o Cost Allocation
o Contract Renewal Notifications
o Cannot be accessed or edited by multiple users simultaneously
o High risks if that employee responsible leaves
Most telecom invoices
& billing processes
are managed in
Excel spreadsheets.
28. CASE STUDY: Healthcare System
Background:
• $2.2 M annual telecom spend
• 42 Locations
Challenges:
- Continuity between locations
- Invoice Processing
- Transparency between departments
Solution:
- Policies & Procedures
- Cost Allocation
- Valicom Invoice Processing Bill Pay
29. Why Partner with Valicom?
– Experience = 24 years
– Add new services to your business
– Create recurring revenue
– Back office services
– White / Private Label our TEM tool, Clearview
– Target market spend range
– Joint Marketing
Valicom Channel Partner Program
The first financial opportunity for improvement is budgeting and forecasting.
The second are of improvement within Financial processes is contract negotiation.
Let Valicom be your telecom confidant. At account set up, we’ll review all of your current telecom contracts, so that we have a good idea of what is within your environment and what you are paying for it.
The second area for improvement within the operational processes is cost allocation.
So often we come across organizations and consultants using complex Excel sheets to manage their telecom environments. And just like the teaspoon is no good for scooping a bowl of ice cream, and Excel sheet is not giving you the functionality or efficiency that a dedicated TEM tool would give you.
That’s where Clearview comes in. Clearview is Valicom’s TEM engine – it’s the tool we built for managing these costs.
The goal when we built it was to bring transparency into your environment, for example - what devices are being billed, what has been disconnected, and what remains active. Our second goal with Clearview is to bring meaning and report ability into your spend – for example how is your spending changing in the last month, quarter, and year? What has changed, and how are we reacting to those changes?
One of the biggest advantages to Clearview, is that it is a web based tool. Which means that we push all of the new features and updated to you automatically. There are never any software installations or updates necessary.
Another advantage is that your entire team can access Clearview concurrently. With a Excel spreadsheet – you are stuck saving as, and trying to work from the most recent version – making it hard for more than one person to be working on the telecom processes at the same time.
And finally – something that we don’t talk about enough is that Clearview allows you to assign role based permissions to as many people within your team as necessary. For example – your accounts payable team might have read-only access, and your telecom manager has full editing permissions.