Breaking Down TEM
If you are a business owner or a finance manager, you’ve probably heard the term “TEM.” But what does TEM do?
Defining TEM
T-E-M stands for Telecom Expense Management better known as Telecom Category Management. What is Telecom Category Management? At its simplest definition, a Telecom Category Management system allows businesses to manage their telecom and IT networks and the data and information associated with them.
With TEM, you can store and maintain your IT network infrastructure, supplier contact information, billing accounts, products, and contracts in one central location, ideally in the cloud so the information is accessible by many, in real time.
Just like ubiquitous CRM platforms such as Salesforce.com, a Telecom Category Management system is similarly built around people relationships, and your business network needs. And that’s exactly why it can be so valuable for a fast-growing business.
How does TEM work?
As a business either with a domestic or international operated footprint you have offices. With multiple offices you have employees and customers. Yet, as your company grows, so does your IT operational requirements. This leads to IT network infrastructure, for example connectivity to connect your offices, branches, warehouses, customer locations, data centers. Provide mobile devices or mobile software across your employee base, hardware infrastructure, software, data centers, colocations, storage, power, etc. the list goes on. This in turn leads suppliers, various products, rate types, spend and contracts and obligations. And a massive inventory of IT network infrastructure. Which all leads to complexity as the business network requirements and supplier relationships grow more sophisticated!
It’s not just a transaction between the buyer and seller. You start to manage a myriad of connections, across time, within each company you do business with. You need to share information across various teams within your own organization who are working to deliver a project or turn up a new network component. A Telecom Category Management system can serve as a vital hub to manage the many projects and network initiatives that happen in a growing business.
How do you translate the many streams of data coming in from network engineers, project managers, finance, and procurement teams, into actionable business information?
A TEM solution gives everyone across the business, including engineering, service delivery, finance, revenue assurance, and sourcing, a better way to manage the IT category, supplier relationships and interactions that drive success. With visibility and easy access to network inventory data, such as service IDs, cost information, service term start and end dates, product information, and location details, a TEM system can give you a clear overview of your suppliers and network. With an easy-to-use, customizable application built to deliver transparency through dashboards and reports, you can see a 360-degree view of the Telecom and IT category, all in one place.
How TEM Can Impact Your Growing Business
For small businesses, a TEM system may simply help you put your data in the cloud, making it accessible in real time, across any device. But as you grow, a TEM can quickly expand to include more sophisticated features to help teams collaborate with colleagues and suppliers, send orders directly from your TEM vs. sending manual emails, gather insights on project status in real time, and get a holistic picture of your business spend and network infrastructure in real time .
Today growing businesses manage network connections and supplier information in a variety of ways. Some use old fashioned home grown access databases. Others store information on their personal “C drive” which no other team members have access to. Others use Excel spreadsheets or macro spreadsheet – “just press the button and watch” or Google docs. While that may help in the short term when you have a small team and don’t plan on scaling your business, if you want to scale for fast growth, it may be time to consider a TEM system to help you collect your precious business data (What should you look for in a TEM solution hyperlink) in on in one place, make it accessible via the cloud, and free up your time to focus on future state network goals rather than letting valuable insights and information fall through the cracks.
Though TEM systems have traditionally been viewed only as a way to validate and pay invoices by finance departments, network teams are seeing big benefits with an end-to-end Category Management platform like Temforce. For example, today’s sourcing teams have a wide variety of channels to choose from when procuring services with a supplier — they may start by sending and receiving a few emails or pull information across several system to gather requirements. A Category Management platform helps service teams, network engineers, and sourcing teams manage requests coming in through one channel without missing a beat.
Why You Should Get Started with Cloud-based TEM
It’s 2020, the idea of not using applications hosted in the cloud sounds like an ancient concept. By moving to the cloud from on-premise software, businesses are freed from the need to install software on every single employee desktop computer and mobile device at their organization worldwide. By moving data, software, and services into a secure online cloud environment, businesses can increase productivity, reduce cost, and increase scalability. Cloud-based TEM systems mean every user is working off of the same information, all the time — it’s automatically synced. Your employees can work from anywhere on the road that is able to instantly update information after a project implementation. Plus, there’s no hardware to set up or upgrade, keeping IT costs low.
Wondering if your business can benefit from a TEM system? Check out the new step-by-step guide, starting with Chapter 1: 6 Ways Telecom Category Management helps your business.