Telecom Invoice Management – Keeping Up With Explosive Growth By Peter Verhoeff At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

According to the Telecommunications Industry Association, the total spending in the U.S. telecommunications industry in 2005 amounted to $856.9 billion with an expected growth of 9% per year through 2009. International spending (excluding the U.S.) for 2005 was at $1.8 trillion and expanding even more sharply. This explosive growth fuels the need for Telecom Expense Management (TEM), of which Invoice Management is a major component.

Invoice management includes the administration, verification and reconciliation of invoices. Benefits of an automated Invoice Management system include:

* Prevention of penalties for late payments

* Reduction of telecom costs by catching billing errors

* Verification of invoices against contracted rates ensuring negotiated rates are being applied

* Having an accurate inventory of existing telecom facilities relative to billed facilities, which might save another 5-25%

* Reconciliation of actual calls based on CDR from PBXs and wireless devices against invoiced calls from carriers

Historically, telecom invoices were issued in paper form. Large enterprises might receive hundreds of them and they were a nightmare to verify and reconcile, due to their volume and complexity. Today, invoices have electronic counterparts, which make computerized invoice management much more feasible.

A further complication is that many different vendors may be involved in providing telecom services. Integrating invoices from all these different vendors into the invoice management system can be a major challenge. Some vendors may provide paper invoices only, requiring manual data entry, while others may use a variety of electronic media.

Fortunately, there is a move towards standardizing electronic invoicing in the industry, but even so the invoice level of detail may vary from vendor to vendor, which adds to further complications. In selecting a telecom expense management system, it is vital to select a system that can deal easily with these disparities.

Once an invoice management system is operational, the time and cost savings can be considerable. Depending on the size of the enterprise, this can amount to many thousands of dollars, which means the system will pay for itself in short order. Savings can be even greater if effective inventory control is instituted as part of the (TEM) strategy.

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