Managing mobile telecom costs is a challenge for enterprises in this time of flexible work and digital transformation. Trends such as bring your own device, growing adoption of 5G, heavier use of cloud applications, and remote work all make it challenging to keep on top of operational expenses, device inventory, and voice and data usage.

Companies need smarter ways to understand how much mobile telecoms costs them, with insights into wastage, abuse, vendor performance and cost optimisation opportunities. With mobile expense management processes and tools companies can better monitor and control device, data and voice costs in real time.

Here is a guide to some best practices for getting mobile expense management right in your business:

1. Understand your baseline

The first step in mobile expense management journey starts with automated baseline reporting. Here, you can audit and verify bills, and find irregularities or inexplicably high costs. You’ll be able to get a breakdown of voice and data usage across your cost centres.

2. Automate to simplify operations

Automation is the key to more disciplined mobile expense management. Streamlining and automation of previously manual processes makes mobile cost management more accurate and comprehensive. It also enables your team to spend their valuable time on more strategic matters than repetitive, routine data capture and analysis tasks.

3. Guide users with clear policy

One of the keys to successful mobile expense management is a policy that outlines which telecoms expenses are reimbursable, how much the employee’s voice and data allowance is, and which documentation they need to support claims for voice and data usage.

4. Make it simple for end-users to report and claim expenses

The process for tracking expenses, allocating costs, and reporting or claiming costs should be as simple as possible for employees. Cutting edge mobile expense management solutions allow user to easily allocate calls and data according to business or personal use.

5. Empower employees to control costs

Smarter expense management solutions allow your users to load all of their company-owned devices and SIMs onto a mobile app. This enables them to receive real-time data around usage, so they can keep costs under control and avoid out of bundle spending.

6. Embrace smarter inventory management

Companies should create a centralised asset database spanning SIM cards, contracts, infrastructure, and mobile devices. By tracking all these assets, your finance and technology teams can work together to optimise the entire asset lifecycle

7. Find a solution that integrates with service providers and-house systems

Companies can benefit from mobile expense management platforms that integrate with third party systems – such as service request and ERP systems – to simplify operations as well as collect and verify data directly from multiple service providers.

8. Work with an independent partner

Mobile expense management isn’t only about technology—a knowledgeable consulting partner can help you analyse and optime costs through best practice advice as well as work with you in engaging with service providers and vendors.

9. Look for rich, real-time reporting

To optimise mobile expenses, you need smarter analytics tools that offer detailed telecoms spend insights. With the right platform in place, you’ll have live usage tracking, analytics, dashboards and reporting to support budgeting and forecasting.

10. Take an approach of continuous optimisation

Forward-thinking organisations take a long term approach to mobile expense management, continuously seeking ways to reduce wastage and achieve better value for money. The right tools and processes help them simplify collection, enrichment, and verification of enterprise usage, spend, and vendor performance to achieve this goal.

1Nebula has been helping companies to optimise technology and telecom costs for more than two decades. Our knowledgeable teams have partnered with some of South Africa’s largest enterprises to automate complex IT and telecoms tasks, simplify management of heterogenous technology environments, and embrace DevOps and FinOps processes. Contact us to learn how we can partner with you in optimising the performance and costs of your IT environment as you accelerate digital transformation.