The CPO “Telecom Network Pop Quiz” Is your team on top of your TEM?

If your CPO walked in your office tomorrow could you or your team answer these 7 simple questions related to your telecom environment in less than 1 business day and with a high-level of confidence?

• Who are our top 10 suppliers?
• What is our annual spend broken down across all products and services?
• What is our total data network capacity and cost per meg? How does our cost per meg compare against the industry benchmark?
• What are our top voice destinations (markets called), monthly usage and average cost per minute broken down by voice, mobile and audio conferencing?
• How many services are up for renewal and what is the current value of spend broken down by product, supplier in the next 30, 60, 90 and 180 days?
• Summarize the top 20 non-performing services across our network in the last year?
• How much was recovered in annual SLA credits for network related outages?

Why should you challenge your team?

To assess if this information is readily available across your organization because – what you don’t know does hurt!

• If there is a lot of moaning or groaning or panicking – raise a flag.
• Understand how many teams were involved in gathering the data. i.e. Is one or multiple people responsible? Did they have the information available or did they “have to get back to you tomorrow?”
• Identify were a lack of transparency lies across your environment and aim to close these gaps. For example, if that data service between London and New York fails one more time before you’re able to settle your trades or P.O.s your CIO next to you might not be around for much longer because no one flagged up the service was re-routed 3 months ago and has a single point of failure.

Are you up for the challenge…or do you already know the answer and you’re laughing in your head about the idea of even asking?

Chances are the information is available but… 

• It’s not kept up to date a.k.a well we’ve been referencing a spreadsheet and the whiteboard from 1996 that Bill created
• We have the contracts but, they’re stored in someone’s file cabinet drawer
• We don’t actually create orders we just generate PO numbers
• Sorry but data is not structured in a reportable manner unfortunately
• The thing is we have the data, but I need time to build the query and poll the network
• Or teams are just too busy and do not effectively communicate with each other

If is broken fix it!

Have a leadership mindset and drive change across your organization. Before you bring in the cavalry (a.k.a consultants and audit firms) meet with your team leads across IT, Sourcing, Network Managers, and Finance to understand what challenges each team faced in putting the information together. For more help check out our Ultimate Guide to Telecom Savings or our learning zone for more assistance.

In a solution like temforce, TEM doesn’t just mean validating this month’s invoice is correct. TEM means simplifying and driving transparency across your entire team, suppliers and telecom portfolio management. These 7 basic questions can be answered in a matter of minutes vs. days.

Temforce – Category Management SaaS enabling teams to manage their Telecom, IT Categories and Suppliers through 1 easy to use application.