According to a research, more than 50 percent of companies are unaware about their annual telecom services expenditure. Enterprises can lean on telecom management services that can help them efficiently manage their telecom environment. However, Telecom Management is still a nascent field in India with just a handful of solutions that do not target the telecom mismanagement process effectively. The solutions available in the market offer the reimbursement software, few offer call-accounting software, then there are some other resellers-turned-auditors who target only on rate-plans, and few who are independent consultants - a one-man-army. However, none of them have adopted the holistic and unified approach to Telecom Management, which is the need of the hour. Filling this void and helping Indian enterprises gain financial efficiency through use of Telecom Expense Management (TEM) services is Intellibuzz. The company identified early that an organization spends a lot on voice, data and wireless telecom services with an estimated 10 percent being errors or unnecessary expenditures. This not only drains the value and sustainability of the telecom environment, but also impacts the organization’s financial climate. Based on these facts, the company has devised a portfolio of TEM services that incorporate telecom bills Auditing, Consultancy, Telecom Invoice Processing & Telecom Optimization services.

“We stumbled onto this industry by chance,” says Director Pranay Sanghavi. “We consulted a couple of small companies to streamline their telecom inventory, which dramatically reduced their service inventory cost. Then we moved on to bigger enterprises. We saw a consistent pattern of telecom mismanagement clearly emerge from almost all companies,” he adds about the initiation of the company. As an increasing number of clients were impressed by the results delivered, the company’s reputation started becoming stronger. There has been no looking back since and in the last 3+ years; Intellibuzz has served more than 55 small, medium and large enterprises, across the industry types like construction, hospitality, banks, financial services, insurance houses, food companies, etc.

Intellibuzz’s strategic approach is designed to help these large TEM providers to focus on their customers and core business. “Our framework for operational efficiency enables them to streamline operations by transitioning service delivery and back office operations to Intellibuzz and by improving the customer experience,” says Pranay.

Under the umbrella of TEM, the company’s primary service is Telecom Invoice Processing. The company is also on the verge of launching ExpenseBuzz.com, an innovative software product platform that empowers enterprises to tightly control, smartly manage, automatically track & drastically slash their Information & Communication Technology expenses. It would be offered through a cloud [SaaS model] or on-premise platform.

The Process

One of the primary challenges faced by enterprises in terms of telecom expense management is the lack of centralization of data and scattered inventory. Several companies still manage their telecom data on Excel sheets, papers or in emails. This is inefficient and disintegrated, as the data is lost, 'hidden inside emails' and it becomes outdated as soon as it is printed. This ultimately creates more complications especially when the telecom manager leaves the organization. Owing to such methods of storing data a large number of companies don’t know their annual telecom expenses. A mid-to-large company is typically spread across a number of geographical locations being served by multiple telecom service providers for service types like landline, PRI, mobile, data cards, leased lines, etc. Intellibuzz aim is to use the best-practices approach to centralization of inventory and consolidation of invoices.

The invoices are then processed, month after month by a six-sigma-adapted proactive, strategic business approach to validating, verifying and efficiently managing those connections, contracts, invoices and payments. “In about a quarter, our analysts come up with the recommendations for optimizations, and we also detect the discrepancies in the invoices,” explains Pranay. This Telecom Invoice Processing cycle works hand-in-hand with the procure-to-pay cycle, sustainably reducing costs by up to 33 percent or more on the fixed and mobile telecommunications expenses for both voice and data.

Expense Buzz ExpenseBuzz aims to turn telecom departments from a cost center into a profit creating department. The platform integrates all the telecom information to a central repository, keeps it up-to-date, and helps clients manage from a single browser window. Disparate telecom managers across the company now have access to all the latest data, such as about number & details of connections, expiry/renewal of contracts, rate plans, invoice soft copy, vendor/carrier account managers and billing intelligence.

This powerful and secured enterprise software has an innovative [patent-pending] intelligent-engine at its core, which automatically parses the telecom invoices and extracts the billing intelligence from them. Using intelligent MIS Reports & analytics, telecom & admin managers can easily process the invoices, validate the charges, analyze the trend and control the entire telecom landscape-down to the last connection in remotest area from their desks.

Clintele

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