Discover the important aspect a TEM solution must have
Before you head down the dark side of a TEM RFP here are the 4 key important aspects to consider with when procuring a TEM solution:
1 – Workflow Controls and why they are important:
If you’ve been reading our blog post you’ve probably come across ‘Why you should be thinking about workflow management” (http://www.temforce.com/why-you-should-be-thinking-about-workflow-management/) within this article we covered 3 key areas of workflow management.
1. Standardizing the way information is collected as it comes into the organization – Location details, cost center information, approvals etc.
2. Tracking activity, request, orders, quotes, disconnects, changes etc.
3. Managing teams actions – who owns the action, capturing important delivery dates, understanding when and where delays exist.
Often times problem arise with managing inventory as a result of lack of workflow management controls. You can try to manage this demand in emails, and spreadsheet but when you’re processing 100 – 500 changes per month you can bet mistakes will be made and things will get lost. The front end aspect of how information is captured is probably the most import aspect of TEM. Without a tight workflow process your inventory management, invoice validation, reports and dashboards will be meaningless.
2 – Inventory Management
Its normal for organizations to have some form of an inventory whether it be the printed out spreadsheet on the wall from 2009, or the in house developed access database by the chap who had no clue what telecom was, there is usually something people use to keep track of their inventory. The problem is unless there is a workflow mechanism updating the inventory it’s going to go out of date real quick. Especially as soon as Pete leaves because he can’t be yelled at one more month because he continues to take the grunt of the supplier invoice not being correct! Nor are we talking about a workflow that is updated by cc’ing a made up email address which is searched on every time there is an outage and the NOC is trying to find the order and circuit ID.
Going back to our first point, a proper workflow control will automatically update the inventory once the request has been completed. Believe it or not there are some TEM companies that have a great inventory system but no workflow keeping it updated. As you go to RFP don’t just ask “Does your software have an inventory?” dig deeper understand how the inventory is maintained and kept up to date. Better yet ask to see a demo or a trial version so you can see and test for yourself. This can be the kicker which comes back to bite you later!
3 – Invoice Processing
Invoice processing is usually the top reason why most companies are looking to implement a TEM solution. There are a few important considerations and decisions to make at this stage. First and for most, think through how your process works today when you receive an invoice.
Normally this process looks something like this:
Hopefully from this diagram you can see where the problem lies.
Usually the accounting clerk has no clue whether or not the invoice is correct or why the cost have gone up 20% from the last months invoice. The Accounting clerk can go back and search the catch all inbox or lookup on the wall at that spreadsheet from 2009 or nag Pete who’s up to his eyes in MACD and then just maybe, they will get lucky and someone can confirm, who signed off on the order, what business unit the order is for, and just maybe find a project code with the cost center to book the cost to.
Feel exhausted? Welcome to trying to process a carrier invoice with hundreds of lines of data, which is made up of carrier codes and terms the person processing the invoice has no clue what they mean.
As you perform your research you will read and hear all about how TEM providers will take over this process and manage this for you. Indeed some can but be prepared to 1 – fork over a pretty penny to pay for this service and 2 – still end up questioning whether or not outsourcing your invoice processing to a third party was the correct decision.
Outsourcing your AP and inventory management has its own challenges. Anyone can download an invoice and batch it for payment. The key aspect is to challenge whether or not the invoice is correct. It’s also important to think through why you are outsourcing this process in the first place. Is it because you can’t be bothered anymore? Or is it because some TEM company promised they could solve all of your troubles?
Whether you choose to believe the hype or not, eventually passing the hot potato is going to burn someone either you or your TEM provider.
Either your cost are going to spike 1 – because of lack of workflow or 2 – because your TEM provider has no clue about your business, i.e. who is ordering what or even worst every month they simply download your invoices, and manually update the inventory to match the invoice. Once a month your CFO will receive a batched summary report stating “here is everything that is ok to pay.” With everything else the CFO has going on, do you really think they have time to challenge this? This is the stuff that should keep you up at night.
We will restate our point again in case you missed it – the front-end workflow process is extremely vital when it comes to invoice processing! Keeping the inventory updated based on the MACD activity ensures when it comes time to validate your carrier invoice, you can rest assured the inventory source you’re validating the invoice against is correct.
In terms of the invoice validation aspects as part of your RFP process really, drill down into how this process works. (Don’t just simply ask does your TEM solution have a validation process? The answer could be “yes we have a team who physically reviews all invoices.”) The invoice validation process should automatically flag up the variances too. As soon as the invoice is injected into the system the variances should be identified immediately. As variances are identified reports should be available and a bulletproof dispute management workflow process should be available within the TEM application.
We’ve covered other blog post on TEM such as Traps to avoid when outsourcing TEM (http://www.temforce.com/traps-to-avoid-when-outsourcing-a-network-expense-benchmark-to-a-tem-provider/). We encourage you to browse through and read our other post as well.
4 – Reports and Dashboards
With TEM, Reports and Dashboards is “what’s up” “what’s cool” and usually where people get really excited when seeing a demo of a TEM product. (By the way this is usually why your TEM provider starts here and why we start with workflows!)
Look – reports and dashboards are “what’s up” but the most import element here is – do the reports and dashboards provide the right information you’re looking for?
When you send out your RFP don’t just ask, “does your TEM solution contain reports and dashboards?” Think through what information you need to pull out of the system and what the information will be used for. Challenge the TEM provider to show you OR produce example reports. It’s all fine and dandy to see charts and line bar graphs but if it’s just a meaningless pretty chart of skittle dots it’s 100% useless! (I bet Pete in sourcing has a really good idea what kind of reports would make his life easier bring him to the demo.)
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