Your business is always changing. You don’t have a choice. You need to continually find new ways of doing more with less. You also have to contend with the fact that the continuous availability of new technology alters how you work. The volume of technology that needs to be managed is growing at a frantic pace.Having greater volumes of new technology in your organization also means is that you’ll have to track, manage, analyze, and report on more types of technology than you did before. Now, telecom and technology expense management (TEM) providers are a great fit to grow with your needs and manage it all. There are 6 new features that have made their way into the TEM industry. Make sure you can access these features:
- Dashboards and Default Reporting
There should be a certain level of reporting readily available in the software. You must be able to access reports immediately without waiting for them to be created for you. Your provider should empower you to properly view your data, understand it, and then take appropriate action.
- Configurability
Configurable Reports are the easy way to go. They provide administrators and managers with the ability to create reports that meet their evolving needs quickly and easily. Configurable reports should also allow you to manipulate the data. You should be able to drag-and-drop fields to reorganize report formats as needed; select or deselect the columns of data you want to see; sort and filter the information; group segments of information; conveniently choose to sum, average, count, or report minimum, and maximum values; and let’s not forget the ability to easily export the data. The level of reporting must be adaptable and flexible to your changing requirements.
- Scheduling
It’s great to be able to access the reports you need and to configure them as you like. It’s even better when you can have them automatically distributed without regular intervention. Your TEM provider should bring you the ability to automate the distribution of different reports at different times, to different people. It should be available for your default reports as well as the ones you’ve configured. This level of automation helps you focus on critical items, without having to send the same reports over and over again every month.
- Multiple sources of data
You need to have access to all of your critical information, from multiple sources, in one unified platform. Dashboards should display information across all sources and vendors, with easily-configurable reports to give you even more visibility. With the required business intelligence and reports at your fingertips, you can take action to:
- Reduce the number of zero usage services, including wireless, wireline, and IT assets.
- Easily compare spending trends.
- Detect over usage, cost spikes and inventory irregularities.
- Verify and challenge suspicious-looking charges.
- Keep track of cost cutting and automation initiatives.
- Keep track of ROI generated from activities and initiatives.
- Create reports across multiple data sources such as multiple vendors, multiple asset types, across multiple business units.
- Permission-based access to reports
Not everyone should be able to see all of the data nor all of the reports that are available. You TEM software should include some form of gate-keeping of data in order to address this. With role-based access, for example, you can decide on which types of information a user group should be able to see. This provides an added level of security for the entire company.
- Executive level reports
Executive level reporting plays a central role in demonstrating data to key decision-makers. Reports specifically built for executive reviewing should be made available. Ideally, with highlights on savings – both actual and potential. They should offer an extensive compilation of graphics and reports with expert recommendations based on an analysis of cost and usage for C-level executives to take note of in their decision-making process. By demonstrating an exhaustive breakdown on a regular basis, businesses can make well-informed decisions. These types of reports shouldn’t only be available in the software, you should also be able to automate the distribution of it regularly. Automation will save you time.
How much does report customization cost?
Let’s take a deeper look at the real costs of report tool customization. I’m going to give you the lowest typical cost (since the upper range can vary pretty wildly), but you’ll see that even that will be a pretty steep price. For a “simple” customization (i.e., where you need the report to output one or a few extra fields/parameters), you’d need:
- 8 hours of programming
- 4 hours of testing
The average cost per hour for this work is approximately $150 (which includes salaries of the workers who had to program the customization). This means a basic customization could cost around $1,800. Keep in mind that this is the low end of what you might be forced to pay to get something that really should have been included in the solution you already pay for. In more complex situations, that price can spike quite severely.
But what can you do? You really need the report.
Why wait around for costly TEM reports when you can have all of these features available directly within the platform itself? Seeking out a vendor that offers these kinds of services can go a long way. Cimpl allows administrators and managers to create reports that meet their evolving needs quickly and easily. In a world where requirements and parameters change all the time, being adaptable (and configurable) is an absolute must.
Want to learn more about how to make TEM reporting easy? Talk to us today!
