Wireless Management

The Telecom Expense Management Industry Association (TEMIA (News - Alert) to you and me) is gearing up to offer a host of new Webinars on a broad range of topics for “improving industry knowledge, fostering ongoing TEM performance improvement, and reducing market friction for delivery and ultimate success of TEMIA members,” according to company officials.

Worthy goals all. The association sees it as its mission to help members by “promoting telecom expense management, enhancing the category image through education, marketing and developing industry standards to augment overall service quality.”

The Webinars are part and parcel of that mission. Members can download past Webinars.

To that end, the organization is offering educational Webcasts for enterprises, government and other organizations, featuring members of the association speaking on a range of topics, including best practices for a TEM program, Key Performance Indicators, standards and benchmarks, overcoming the challenges of international TEM programs “and other subjects that will respond to areas that enterprises want to learn about,” officials said.

What is TEM, exactly? According toIts product suite includes inventory, service, contract, invoice and reporting management tools.

As Barber explains, a TEM team will “keep track of your telecom assets. Each device, wireless or wireline, is tracked. They know who has it, where it is, what it is, and everything else about it. That inventory is updated regularly in order to maintain an accurate database.” Robert A. Barber, “The Cliff’s Notes version of the explanation is the process of fine-tuning your telecom usage so it is as efficient as possible, while reducing your expenditure. That is a vastly oversimplified way of saying it, but that’s what it does.”

One such vendor is Amtel (News - Alert), a company with an approach for managing telecom assets and their invoices, reducing the cost of managing voice, data and mobile telecom assets.

They’ll then make sure that “each device that is returned or purchased/leased is appropriate for the user, and that it is on the approved list of compatible equipment. Without that kind of oversight, your company could be supplying everyone with the most expensive wireless device on the market, when a simple cell phone might do for some of them.”

Future Webinars scheduled include presentations on electronic billing media, eBonding, and international billing: “We are also working on hosting a presentation on trends for international tariffs in Europe, Asia, and India,” company officials said.