PINNACLE Featured Article

After teaming with Intelisys Business Solutions – a strategic alliance designed to allow small-to-medium (SMB) businesses and institutions to leverage the benefits of enterprise-class Telecom Expense Management – PAETEC (News - Alert) Software Corp. has continued to solidify its place in the TEM market.

 

Now, PAETEC Vice President and General Manager Larry Foster has been tapped as president of the Telecom Expense Management Industry Association, or "TEMIA (News - Alert)," further extending the company’s influence in this burgeoning space.

 

TEMIA's mission is to raise awareness and knowledge of the benefits of TEM solutions, to improve the quality and value of TEM solutions through the development and promotion of industry standards, and to cultivate shared industry knowledge among TEM providers, business partners, telecom service providers, and enterprise clients.

 

“TEMIA has demonstrated how the power of collaboration can influence the industry for the betterment of our customers,” said Foster. “TEMIA is poised to build upon the successes we have achieved and help our clients' maximize their investments by streamlining their relationships with their technology supply partners."

 

Foster and PAETEC appear a natural fit to lead the organization into the future.

 

The recent deal combines PAETEC's PINNACLE Communications Management Suite with Intelisys Business Solution's Customer Resource Management system, and is expected to provide the SMB market with solutions traditionally reserved for large enterprises with multi-million dollar communications budgets.

 

In addition, the appointment of Foster comes on the heels of recent industry concern over Internal Revenue Service guidelines that requires split billing between corporate and personal usage for cell phone expenses.

 

Under the current requirements, the 1989 law calls for employees to keep a record of each call and the time it is made, as well as its business purpose. These calls are expected to be itemized on a monthly statement and identified as personal or business, ultimately being reported to the IRS.

 

The IRS is classifying mobile phones and pagers as "listed property," making them subject to strict substantiation requirements, and business use of listed property is excluded from the wages of the employee as a working condition fringe benefit.

 

And the regulations are anything but rudimentary, as the IRS has implemented rules requiring records, including written documentary evidence sufficient to establish each element of business use, and include detailed listings of calls made and costs of equipment and service.

However, all the talk of cell phone tax compliance has brought attention to the TEM space, which focuses on managing telecommunications service expenses with a combination of software tools and manual auditing.

 

TEMIA reportedly has opposed the tax on employee use of employer-paid mobile devices and is expected to release a statement paper this week calling the tax an outdated one that should be abolished.