LinkSource Technologies
Strategy and Managed Services for Connectivity and Cloud
LinkSource Technologies
Strategy and Managed Services for Connectivity and Cloud
Have you ever struggled with tracking various digital assets, validating your device inventory, and keeping your entire tech budget balanced? You're not alone! Technology has evolved, and managing tech expenses has become a sophisticated project of managing various details, systems, and contracts. Tracking and managing technology expenses in a cost-effective manner has become a complex task. Technology expense management (TEM) is the solution.
In simple terms, TEM is management of technology, including wireless devices, hardware, software, and IT subscriptions, with the aim of reducing overall costs and eliminating risks. TEM solutions, however, offer far more than just cost savings.
Businesses are moving away from purchasing assets, especially those that get old and expire. Instead, organizations are subscribing to everything “as a service” (generically abbreviated as XaaS). XaaS is a recurring subscription model While this is quite good for ease of use, automatic updating, and compliance, it complicates contracts and payments. However, increased investment in XaaS can deliver more significant cost reductions and efficiency gains.
Rather than bearing the burden of cost, maintenance, and upkeep of ownership for a specific solution or device, Xaas allows you to pay for only the features and tools you need as you need them. As organizations look to more services and products provided via subscription, understanding and managing these expenses becomes a necessity. Technology leaders will have to either invest time into learning about these billing models or work with an expert partner who can provide advice gained from experience.
Enterprises typically deploy technology expense management solutions because they want to optimize and control their technology expenses. With the right TEM provider, you can identify each and every technology service being used, who in your organization is using them, and whether they're using them efficiently and to your plan. This allows you to quickly identify inefficiencies and improve your business in real time.
An effective TEM solution provides analytics and unparalleled access to real-time information about your expenses, which other tools can’t do. Modern expense management software includes dashboarding capabilities that can compile employee expense data and present it in an easy-to-understand graphical format. Managers gain access to much needed metrics, including options for reporting expenses by employee, project, category, or even by custom tags.
By centralizing equipment and services procurement, you can eliminate unnecessary costs, enforce corporate policies, and maintain an accurate inventory database. Leaders can gain insight into the average time it takes to move documents through the finance and accounting department, allowing them to identify opportunities for improvement and determine whether working with one vendor takes more team resources than others. This will help identify problems quickly and enable your organization to correct them as they occur.
The old days of submitting expenses with paper, and notes to drop off on the manager's desk are gone. Now that COVID-19 has changed the way we live and work, contactless expense management is becoming much more popular; sometimes, it’s the only way to manage billing and invoice reconciliation or reimbursement.
Replacing paper-based and Excel reports with digital expense tracking and reporting software helps to eliminate errors, provide faster approval and payment, and remove friction from expense processes. Paper is every finance team's worst nightmare, and it’s especially difficult to work with when practicing contactless expense reporting. Even if you've found a way to send the paper documents digitally, the finance team still must spend days entering data entry and correcting errors.
Expense automation allows you to eliminate some of the tedious and time-consuming aspects of processing expenses. Expense management software automates the workflow and provides completely digital experiences. Reports are automatically routed to the appropriate people for approval and sent to payroll, even when employees are working remotely.
Organizations like yours outsource technology expense management for many reasons beyond simple cost savings. To fully understand contracts, rate structures, and invoices, your business needs skills and technical expertise. An expert TEM partner can help improve all of your IT expense processes.
For more insights on helping your business manage your technology expenses, see our blog!
