Blog

By Jessica VanVorst

Having full visibility and control over your entire telecom inventory landscape, from hardware, software licenses and digital assets, is one of the most effective ways to reduce costs, minimize fraud, better manage capacity and automate chargebacks across your organization. Telecom inventory management plays an important role for supporting proper asset tracking and provisioning. How well you manage telecom inventory can be measured by a number of business outcomes – some good and the others, well, not so good.

Let’s look at potential issues that may arise when you don’t maintain accurate inventory:

• Incorrect Source of Record – Without accurate tracking and maintenance, the inventory can no longer be used as a reliable source.
• Business Decisions are Impacted – If you are looking for ways to cut costs, get more competitive rates, or want to start a new project with a vendor, inaccurate data can have negative consequences when it comes to making and supporting a business decision.
• Data Re-Build May be Required – The longer your data remains stagnant, the more unreliable it becomes.  If you find yourself in this situation, a re-build may be necessary. This means starting from scratch to regain a state of healthy record. This is a tedious and time-consuming task which requires reports to be pulled again from all of your vendors.
• Lack of Confidence by End User – The impact of inaccurate data can have implications to others within the organization.  Let’s say someone is using it to report on costs or trending, or perhaps as a basis to make a business case.  If the information isn’t reliable, confidence will quickly diminish.
• Return on Investment Diminishes – Incorrect data means you do not have the proof you need to re-coop costs or file disputes with vendors. You could be leaving money on the table.

Here is what you gain from maintaining accurate information:

• True Source of Record – Both you and your stakeholders will have peace of mind knowing that all inventory is accounted for correctly.
• Removal of Waste – Instead of having to check vendor reports to confirm the information is correct, your time and focus can be spent more productively at work
• Business Decisions Fueled by Accurate Data – With reliable data, comes more precision. You can feel confident having competitive conversations with vendors and make more fact-based decisions such as supporting technology changes.
• Recurring Contract Audit Benefits – When you’re able to truly look at what is being billed for versus what’s stated in a contract, you realize a higher ROI and increased audited spend.
• Disputes are Easily Identified and Submitted – More visibility into billing and contract alignment can lead to more disputes being identified, submitted and hopefully won in your favor.

When you are able to automate and centralize the management of all asset types, the results are tangible and affect your bottom line. With the ongoing shifts and moving target mode of so many telecom assets, it’s critical to apply a flexible, sophisticated inventory management solution that gives you visibility, automates processes and drives business value throughout the organization.

To learn more, check out my recent on-demand webcast from Calero World Online, “Inventory Build and Provisioning – Keeping It Real.” It outlines our best practices approach that companies apply today to effectively manage inventory management. It also addresses common industry hurdles companies face such as tracking conferencing and MPLS.