Advantage | Keeping Track of Contract Renewals: Don't Let Them Slip

Teams at multi-location enterprises can’t let contract renewals slip through the cracks. 

Overlooking deadlines and important details can lead to unexpected financial losses and regulatory compliance complications.

Let’s explore the best way to prevent these oversights and ensure effective management of contracts and renewals across your enterprise.

Why multi-location enterprise contracts are complicated

Managing contracts in multi-location businesses presents unique challenges due to vast geographical spread. To ensure connectivity and compliance, enterprise teams must cope with different time zones, language barriers, and bureaucratic red tape.

For instance, companies with offices in Asia, Europe, and America have trouble sourcing telecom vendors, managing contract renewals, implementing new technology, scaling up or down, and maintaining regulatory compliance across different regions with varying rules.

As a result, in-house teams struggle to keep track of diverse contract details, often resulting in missed invoices, unchecked statements, and unintentional payments.

Common pitfalls in enterprise contract management

Managing and renewing contracts is fraught with pitfalls, ranging from procedural oversights to reliance on outdated tracking methods.

Many teams in enterprises still depend on spreadsheets and basic ticketing systems. These outdated methods can lead to missed renewal deadlines and overlooked contract terms, which opens the door to financial risk through non-compliance and other unexpected costs with IT management.

The old approach to telecom expense management (TEM) places an unnecessary burden on small IT teams. Already stretched thin, in-house teams find themselves distracted from their core responsibilities. They spend considerable time setting up new user accounts and ensuring compliance. This diversion from essential tasks affects overall efficiency.

Addressing the following procedural challenges is critical for efficient enterprise contract management.

1. Over reliance on antiquated manual methods (i.e., spreadsheets)
2. Failure to comply with or adapt to global contractual variabilities
3. Poorly managed contract renewal and termination processes
4. Finding partners who also offer implementation support
5. Inadequate real-time vendor monitoring
6. Analyzing cost per location

Strategies for efficient multi-location contract oversight

Effective contract oversight and renewal management requires a strategic combination of internal and external resources.

While dedicating in-house staff to manage contracts can improve control and understanding of the process, it falls short in addressing company-wide challenges like time zone differences and language barriers. These limitations can restrict a company's ability to scale effectively.

To counter these issues, leveraging the right partner for support is crucial. Industry specialists help companies navigate global operation issues and ensure the best possible deals.

Streamlining contract management with the right partner

Next, let’s review the procedural elements behind keeping contracts on track.

The choice of partner can make a substantial difference in effective contract management, especially in telecom. When comparing global connectivity managed service providers with typical TEM partners, the contrast is stark.

Conventional TEM services often fail to offer comprehensive lifecycle support, vendor sourcing, effective deal negotiations, technology implementation, and real-time insights about vendors and contracts.

On the other hand, a global connectivity partner excels where TEM falls short, offering more negotiating power, a larger network of providers, and full lifecycle optimization. This option leads to the most savings and best experience for multi-location companies. 

A global partner streamlines contract management, ensures more informed decision-making, and fosters a broader scope and deeper level of service.

The following table illustrates the differences between a global connectivity managed service provider and a telecom expense management partner:

Consolidating IT and telecom contract management

Integrating contract management with overall IT and telecom expense management is crucial for operational efficiency. This holistic approach ensures contract management aligns and never burdens in-house teams.

By consolidating these functions through a global connectivity management partner, enterprises gain enhanced negotiating power and access to a wider network of providers, leading to the most favorable rates.

Unlike traditional TEM partners that charge clients for these services, Advantage shifts these fees to vendors, offering clients complete technology lifecycle optimization at no additional cost.

Advantage’s proprietary Command Center portal is a prime example of one of the benefits of process integration. It offers enterprise teams a real-time platform for managing expenses, contracts, and provider details, like cost per location.

Conclusion: Partner with Advantage for expense management

Navigating the complexities of contract management and renewals in multi-location enterprises requires a blend of vigilant oversight, strategic planning, and the right partnerships.

By combining internal expertise with comprehensive support from a partnership with Advantage, businesses can effectively overcome compliance and regulatory risks, outdated ticketing systems, poor expense tracking, time zone challenges, and other intricacies of global operations.

Partnering with Advantage to optimize and manage the complete technology lifecycle ensures streamlined contract management and optimal cost savings. Embracing this all-encompassing solution is crucial for enterprises aiming to prevent overspending on IT.

Contact Advantage's global connectivity technology experts to learn more about managing your contracts and renewals seamlessly and never letting renewals slip through the cracks again.