6 Pitfalls To Avoid When Choosing IT Expense Management Solutions and Partners

Selecting the correct telecom expense management (TEM) solutions is fraught with hidden challenges for multi-location enterprises.

The path is often murky, from navigating complex vendor networks to avoiding costly contractual traps, leaving businesses vulnerable to operational and financial missteps.

This article explores the key pitfalls to avoid and offers tips for ensuring a smooth journey in choosing effective multi-location telecom management solutions.

1. Recommendations driven by poor industry experience

Recommendations driven by small networks limit the effectiveness of traditional TEMs.

Compared to global managed service providers offering the entire lifecycle of technology services, TEMs have less negotiating power because they only manage specific aspects of an account.

This limited scope restricts their ability to identify and capitalize on opportunities for bundling services and reducing redundancies, which are crucial for cost-effectiveness in multi-location companies.

Tip: Adopting a complete lifecycle approach with global IT management support ensures enterprises benefit from enhanced sourcing and negotiating power and savings.

2. Sales pressure driven by commissions

Sales pressure driven by commissions often distorts TEM suggestions. Forbes reports commissions are not conducive to building long-term account relationships. 

Traditionally, TEMs prioritize deals that benefit providers offering the highest commissions. This approach leads to biased recommendations motivated by short-term financial gains, which overshadow the client's best interests and compromise the quality of service for enterprises.

TEMs, driven by the lure of bonuses, overlook the need to improve the full spectrum of telecom services for enterprises. A shift towards working with global telecom management companies alters this dynamic. Service quality takes precedence over commission-based motivations when the goal is to service every location effectively and eliminate redundancies.

Tip: Assess whether the recommendation will genuinely help the company. Don’t rush into a new management agreement without exploring your third-party options.

3. Rigid contract, inflexibility, and penalties

Contract inflexibility in TEM agreements can hinder company growth. This issue is particularly relevant for multi-location companies planning for scalability and adaptability.

Rigid long-term contracts often come with steep penalties for early termination, which can be detrimental if a company's needs change. It's crucial to inquire about trial periods or proof of concept stages and to negotiate scalable and flexible terms.

Tip: The primary goal is to minimize investment risks and prevent being locked into contracts that become obstacles as the company grows or needs to pivot.

4. Purchasing a solution that is not scalable

Choosing non-scalable TEM solutions compromises future business growth. This concern is crucial for businesses planning expansion both locally and internationally.

A scalable TEM solution should not only adapt to the growing demands at each current location but also extend support to new areas, including different regions, states, and countries. Opting for a solution that can't scale with your business often results in financial waste and considerable frustration. Companies either pay fees to opt out or double down on service providers until contracts run out.

Scalability isn’t linear. Enterprises also need the option to scale down based on market volatility and demand changes.

Tip: To avoid expensive issues, businesses must prioritize scalability in their telecom strategy, prioritizing partners that support expansion or contraction in all operational areas.

5. Providers that don’t support implementation

Providers that don't support implementation present significant challenges for multi-location businesses. This is particularly true for companies with limited in-house IT resources.

The piecemeal approach to TEM might initially seem advantageous for financial management, but companies actually spend more attempting to navigate technology providers in-house while simultaneously increasing workloads and stress levels for small in-house teams. Moreover, the absence of implementation support requires additional spending for help from third parties who charge a premium for short-term contract work.

Tip: To avoid hidden costs and resource strains, enterprise teams must seek partners capable of offering comprehensive implementation support.

6. Insufficient account visibility

Poor visibility in IT expense management significantly hampers a company's ability to manage its telecom services effectively—leaving enterprise teams stumbling as they blindly search for financial oversight details.

Traditional TEM models rely heavily on outdated and error-prone tracking methods, like manually updated spreadsheets and tracking tickets that fail to provide real-time expense data or cost analysis per location.

The absence of real-time, location-level expense monitoring prevents businesses from accurately tracking and managing their telecom expenses, leading to inefficient financial spending and delayed issue resolution.

Tip: Enterprises must consider partners that provide transparency and real-time oversight to overcome these challenges.

Conclusion: Leverage global support for the entire tech lifecycle

Overcoming the pitfalls in technology expense management is crucial for multi-location companies. Focusing on broad network capabilities, unbiased guidance, flexible contracts, implementation support, and enhanced account visibility significantly improves operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Partnering with traditional expense management MSPs leaves savings on the table. Unlike typical TEM vendors, Advantage offers its services at no charge to customers opting for a holistic approach to enterprise connectivity management.

A comprehensive strategy for technology lifecycle optimization reduces expenses and issues while catering to the diverse needs of growing, multi-location businesses. For this, enterprises must consider a global connectivity technology partner. 

Enterprises in markets that demand persistent communications, cybersecurity, high-speed data, and resilient network infrastructure need a business ally with the expertise, services portfolio, and global partner network to design, deploy, and manage IT environments from end to end. 

Contact Advantage to discover how much your enterprise can save by optimizing the entire technology lifecycle.