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Five Best Practices for

Communications Lifecycle
Management

A White Paper on Managing Your Business


Telecommunications Assets, Services, and Costs

The Challenges

CIOs are often baed by the challenges of navigating the everevolving communications landscape. Balancing the intersection of
business and IT processes with the need to cut costs has made
communications more and more complex to manage.
Some enterprises are playing defense and thus doing only a fair to poor job of handling
these communications challenges. Others are finding success by being more proactive in
this area. Regardless, questions like these are usually hard to answer:

How can I forecast, budget and accrue my communications costs easily and
accurately?

How can I get a good handle on all my telecom assets (lines and equipment) at
each location?

How do I find out the true costs of these assets and if they are able to meet
business needs?
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How can I articulate best practices and cost control policies to everyone managing
the domestic and international telecoms of my business and measure their
performance?

Could I save the business large sums of money by eliminating billing errors and
instilling tactical processes around telecom vendor contracting and procurement?
Addressing these questions satisfactorily requires the proper tools and business
processes for managing communications. The ability to extract and present information
in a meaningful way is vital for organizations to manage their communications lifecycle
eectively. Any data e.g. telecom inventory, costs, accrual, contracts, order catalogs
must be transformed into actionable insight so that people across dierent areas of the
business can perform their tasks eectively.

What is Communications Lifecycle


Management?
Many organizations that have used a telecom expense management
(TEM) platform view it as a glorified bill-payment system. Unfortunately,
that perception is justifiable based on what most TEMs actually do.
How do you get more out of your TEM?

The answer lies in embracing communications lifecycle management


(CLM) processes and choosing the right tools and services that can do
justice to each component of the communications lifecycle.

Communications lifecycle management is a set of practices and


processes that lets managers, teams and people from dierent
business areas (e.g. IT, AP/Finance, Procurement) find, share and use
actionable information related to their telecom assets, services, and
costs. This information is suitably married to organizational information
on business units, employees, policies, procurement, business
locations and equipment. It also provides:
A continuous flow of information for business processes that are transaction- or
collaboration-based

Highly analytical and tactical reporting to make smart operational decisions for
managing telecom environments and costs
Many organizations today struggle to forecast eectively, plan telecom budgets or
perform what-if analysis for tactical cost reduction. A primary reason for this dilemma is
the absence of a proper database for telecom assets and inventory.
IT assets usually get catalogued in an asset management tool. However, if catalogued at
all, telecom inventory is found languishing in an in-house database that is either not
current or not integrated with business processes. Any policy creation or best practices
communication and compliance then becomes a laborious exercise at best.
Tracking costs to the circuit and site level is virtually impossible because of the eort
involved, and businesses have to make do with the best available information for making
tactical decisions. In addition, the deficient quality of information on telecom hurts costreduction eorts. This exacerbates the challenges of auditing and compliance, as the
information cannot be easily compared with vendor contracts.

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Best Practices for Communications


Lifecycle Management
The following best practices will help you address the challenges described above.

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Step 1: Knowing What You Have and Where
Building a thorough telecom
inventory that is mapped to
each business location is the
first step toward managing
inventory from procurement to
consumption. Quite often,
telecom vendors do not
provide the detail on the
invoices (even on invoices in
electronic data interchange, or
EDI, format) that you need to
map out information such as
service location, service type
and price elements.
A superior alternative is to
outsource this activity and
engage inventory experts to
establish this database on a project basis. These people will likely order customer
service records and detailed technical reports from vendors to map all this information.
This exercise will likely unearth billing errors that will generate some ROI and also
uncover scenarios such as I thought we shut this location I never knew there were all
these circuits still billing!
Once you have visibility into what telecom you have and at what location, you will have
excellent insight into the configuration and the costs at each location. At this point, you
may choose to create standard site telecom profiles based on the type of site (e.g.
warehouse, factory, sales oce, regional oce). This is the best way to cookie cutter
your telecom to manage it eciently.

Step 2: Integrating Ordering with Inventory

Once a solid telecom inventory is available, the next step is to establish good control
over ordering processes. A robust ordering process is one that is integrated with the
inventory database. This is the best way to ensure your telecom inventory stays clean.
Various disconnected tools are typically used for the dierent business processes of
ordering, contracting and expense management/accounting. A simple integration of
these tools into a single solution can unlock significant value. For instance, the inventory
database once married to the contract database and ordering catalogs provides valuable
information to flow into the ordering processes. While ordering, you will be able to find
out things like:

The lowest cost of that type of line


The configuration that is already available at that location
The equipment that is installed at the site
The account that the new line should be put on
The site telecom manager and supervisor to support the installation
Bulk orders can also be greatly facilitated. For example, if you are getting quotes from
various local exchange carriers (LECs), it will be easy to send them an extract of your site
telecom and even do an RFP since your demand set is clearly available. Plus, if you
have high-quality inventory, it will also provide information on features (e.g. hunting) that
have been configured on dierent lines. This will allow you to ensure the new vendor
provisions the new lines in the same way, causing minimal inconvenience during cutover.
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Step 3: Integrating Inventory with Invoices


It is not enough to have a laundry list of
lines and circuits, even if it is wellintegrated with the provisioning
processes. If these items are not
reconciled and integrated with the vendor
invoices, there is a big risk of billing fraud
going undetected.
By providing billing information that is
confusing and lacking in detail, telecom
vendors do not make this eort any
easier. It is almost impossible for IT to take
a telecom invoice and be in a position to validate all charges. Therefore, the only check
that is usually carried out is on the invoice totals; if the dollars are anywhere close
to the previous months invoice, they get approved for payment. Complaints like Im an
engineer, not an auditor; how am I supposed to validate and approve such invoices? ring
out quite often in IT departments of large organizations.
Many TEMs have claimed to solve this business problem by making grand promises on
how their systems can load EDI data and provide information to the lowest level of detail.
Unfortunately, the business problem remains and is somewhat worse compared with
when invoices were available only in paper format. The reason is that too much data is
not necessarily a good thing if it is not mapped correctly or married suitably to
organizational and inventory data.
The vendors also do not make it any easier by being inconsistent in how the billing
elements are itemized in EDI. The resulting presentation of invoice information is
confusing and almost impossible to validate. Which highlights why software can never be
an absolute solution. Rather, good software needs to be complemented by a layer of
professional high-quality analytics services that makes the various databases talk to one
another while maintaining the integrity and consistency of the information. Moreover,
Fortune 1000 companies with numerous large locations are usually heavy on custom
configuration of big pipes for data and voice. In such cases, the one-code-suits-all
philosophy of the TEM software just does not jibe with the business needs.
The ideal solution is to find a CLM partner that implements software for day-
to-day management of invoices and takes responsibility for integrating the inventory
information with the invoices and the electronic billing systems of various vendors on
an ongoing basis. While building a telecom inventory is usually a one-time exercise, the
software and services must be robust enough to handle ongoing integration and
maintenance. Although this practice requires a certain degree of rigor from the CLM
partner it goes a long way in simplifying the invoice management processes including
invoice validation, budget management, stopping billing fraud and also assist greatly with
the procurement processes.

Step 4: Finding the Spend at Risk (Procurement)

The CIO of a Fortune 500 manufacturing enterprise was shocked to find that
over 30% of his $50 million annual communications spend was at risk i.e. not
covered by any valid contracts. This is more likely to happen if people without a telecom
background manage procurement of telecom services. Even those with some telecom
experience may find it hard to keep track of all the dierent accounts, services and
locations as well as the accounts that may have fallen o-contract in the constantly
changing telecommunications environment.
The same challenges arise if the procurement function is decentralized. Frequently,
contract documents end up in someones e-mail inbox rather than on a centralized data
server. Moreover, the occasional M&A activity can easily lead to a chaotic environment in
terms of managing the dierent contractual and vendor relationships of dierent
business entities.
All of these issues can be addressed with an outsourced CLM solution that also
provides analytical and audit-based professional services for compliance and
reporting related to vendor contracts. There are many benefits to outsourcing the
analytical aspects of this function, such as:

The software part of the solution should provide a good document management
system that allows the procurement department to house, track and monitor all
documents easily.

The CLM experts can then create a database of all terms and conditions and rates that
will be available for invoice validation and provisioning new lines.

The database can also track all the relevant dates and in eect provide an earlywarning system for any contracts about to expire, as the renegotiation process should
start at least six months prior to the expiry date.

Having all rates information handy makes it convenient for Procurement to include
newly added business entities in the master contracts for benefits of volume pricing.

Auditors can then use this information to identify any at-risk spends, accounts that can
be brought under the corporate umbrella and billing discrepancies.

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Step 5: Bringing it All Together

For a successful implementation of a CLM solution, all three departments (i.e. IT, AP/
Finance, Procurement) must be suciently committed to the task at hand. By
outsourcing the managed services part of the solution, you can ensure the new tool is
minimally intrusive to the existing business processes. This, in turn, makes adoption
across the organization much easier.
Once the solution has been fully implemented and the business processes fully
integrated, KPI reports can be set up to deliver business metrics and provide an easy-onthe-eyes assessment of the organizations CLM health. KPIs can include progress made
on cost reduction, optimization, process integration, spend-at- risk reduction, auditcompletion percentage increase and policy compliances. The solution should also
significantly reduce labor hours spent in validating invoices, provisioning services,
porting from one LEC to another, budgeting and invoice review and payment, and vendor
management.
Simply being able to clearly see what phone lines and circuits exist at what location
allows IT departments to create and enforce policies. It will be a simple task to find out if
a site manager is doing a good job or not based on the data of the site under his
management. Once site managers are trained to follow the CLM processes and best
practices the telecom health of each site will remain sound.
Lastly, marrying the dollar information to the technical information opens up numerous
opportunities for tactical planning of telecom spend. All accounting information needed
for accrual, budgeting and forecasting will be available easily thereby simplifying the job
of the AP and IT departments of keeping costs under control.
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The Time is Now

Given the complexity of todays telecom environment (wireline and mobility), creating
an eective CLM structure is essential. By following the best practices described here,
you can get better visibility into your spend and assets, better control over the allied
business processes and a good handle on your cost reduction, risk management and
future planning eorts. A comprehensive solution will unlock a number of opportunities
and create a significantly positive ROI for your business.

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About the Author


As GSGs Vice President of Operations, Mohan Sathes
role is a pivotal one. He established the companys
oshore operations center, which is staed by over 200
telecom and financial experts who provide the knowledge
and skill that help power the GSGCloud platform. Hes
responsible for the delivery of service for all of GSGs lines
of business, which includes designing and customizing
the development and deployment of GSGs
communications lifecycle management platform. He also
oversees the financial, cost, and regulatory management
for our India subsidiary.
Before joining GSG, he was a partner at D.V. Sathe & Co.,
where his responsibilities were financial forensic and investigation audit and assurance,
tax consulting, project finance, valuation of business, performance and risk advisory
service. Prior to that, he served as a financial controller at Gateway Systems, where he
was accountable for the overall financial and cost management. Mohan is a member of
the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

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About GSG
Founded in 2003 by telecommunications industry veterans, GSG is
a global leader in communications lifecycle management and
enterprise mobility management/mobility managed services.
We combine proprietary business intelligence tools with the
experience and know-how of dedicated telecom domain experts to
help businesses solve their toughest telecom management and
expense challenges.

Our GSGCloud platform is a modular cloud-based solution that supports the full
lifecycle needs of telecommunications management. This always-on, alwaysupdated, accessible-anywhere platform supports a suite of applications that lets
you manage, streamline, and optimize your telecom operations. These
applications orchestrate hundreds of tasks and the related data required to
operate your telecom department, integrating actual telecom platforms and
processes along with that data to help organizations make the most of their
telecom equipment, services, and budget.
Our open, modular platform goes beyond providing telecom management
software; it also integrates with a wide array of dierent applications, such as
MDM, workflow management, HR and financial systems. This functional, flexible
approach makes it possible to build custom solutions that are tailored to fit an
organizations specific needs, and unleash the full potential of their telecom
system.
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Contact Us
Online
Visit our website at gsgtelco.com or our various social media accounts using these easyto-remember URLs:

Blog: bit.ly/gsgblog
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Twitter: bit.ly/gsgtwitter or @gsgtelco
YouTube: bit.ly/gsgyoutube

Call or Email Us
Call us toll free at +1 (800) 601-1641 or email us at info@gsgtelco.com.

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Acknowledgements
The image on page 6, Recording Data, was created by Gary Peeples of the US Fish
and Wildlife Service and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
license. The original can be found on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/
usfwssoutheast/5514830585/
The other photos that appear in this case study come from various stock photography
libraries.
All other content in this document is 2014 GSG.

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