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Telecom Cost Management Steps out of the Shadows

By MAE KOWALKE TMCnet Associate Editor for Channels

In the old days of analog telephony, telecom cost management served a relatively general purpose. That telecom cost management purpose was to manage phone bills in order to reduce expenses. Traditional telecom cost management focused primarily on billing errors, volume discounts and phone system inventory audits.

Today, telecom cost management is still about those things, but it is about much more as well. Telecom cost management is not just a way to manage fixed-line telephony assets. Wireless phones and other new ways of communicating can also be managed using telecom cost management.

In a way, although telecom cost management retains its telephony-based moniker, it has become about managing communications systems more broadly. Telecom cost management is not just about voice calling but also about video conferencing, smartphones and PDAs and instant messaging. Any communications expense that a company has on its budget is fair game for telecom cost management.

The telecom cost management solutions available today are also somewhat different than their predecessors. Telecom cost management, to be sure, still involves audits and invoice optimization. But modern telecom cost management software provides dashboards and other tools for efficiently managing the entire spectrum of communications systems. As mentioned earlier, telecom cost management is no longer just about phone bills.

The breadth and depth of today's telecom cost management solutions and services reflect the changes described above. Take a telecom cost management provider like AnchorPoint. AnchorPoint's telecom cost management offerings include the management of usage, assets, invoices and wireless. AnchorPoint also offers services that traditionally would not have been part of telecom cost management, like e-911.

You could say that, once companies discovered the benefits of telecom cost management for voice services, they began applying its benefits to other areas of operation. This is how telecom cost management providers have morphed into specialists in managing all types of communications.

The goal of telecom cost management today is not just to lower costs but also to improve customer service and allocate resources/staff more efficiently. Telecom cost management has stepped out of the shadows to become an asset in and of itself.

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Mae Kowalke previously wrote for Cleveland Magazine in Ohio and The Burlington Free Press in Vermont. To see more of her articles, please visit Mae Kowalke's columnist page.