Business Continuity for Telecoms Expense Management

Today the importance of business continuity for TEM [Telecoms Expense Management] really hit home for me.

What prompted my thinking was a conversation with a colleague around a national hotel chain in South Africa; to whom we provide our TEM Solution. He had just finished his first meeting with the new IT Manager. I asked him how it went?

Now picture yourself as a new IT Manager for a large hotel chain trying to get to grips with Strategy, Management, Measurement and Implementation of Telecoms Expenditure over a large geographical area.

Where do you start? Especially considering that the entire management team had recently left.

Well in the first meeting my colleague had sat the IT Manager down and walked him through a high level view of everything he needed to know about the group’s telecoms requirements; from -

• Documented strategy and procurement policy for telecoms
• Suppliers and their SLA’s
• Business need
• A summary of the last 12 months worth of reporting
• Current implementation plan and future requirements for new hotels

All of this backed up with 12 months reporting and an intimate knowledge of the group’s business need.

The IT Manager had walked into a job where the encumbent had left him a structured and well managed Telecoms infrastructure with a solutions partner who catered for this exact eventuality and ensured that no matter who the role player was, they would be able to pick up where they left off.

The lesson for me is that without a TEM solutions partner this would have been difficult to accomplish and documentation would have been open to intrepretation. Businesses cannot afford to take the risk alone anymore. Skills in South Africa are hard to come by and with a mobile workforce your risk in the area of continuity is high. Most importantly, it takes time to build up these partnerships and get the knowledge in place. Sometimes years as opposed to months!

We advocate that you cover your business risk by partnering with a TEM solutions provider who knows how to ensure you get that continuity. And much like our other customers, your ROI will be higher than if you attempt to do this yourself.

Peter Walsh
Cape Town - July 2010