You just can’t survive without it. This is what telecom expense management practitioners will say about including wireless expense management along with their wireline offerings. Why would a company work with a TEM provider that only had wireline management tools? Even if the company doesn’t yet need the wireless component, they most likely will some day. Partnering with a TEM provider that rules only half the kingdom — whether it’s the wireline or the wireless side — is a questionable business decision.
TEM companies with one-sided offerings took note of an emerging demand for a unified TEM offering, causing an influx of mergers and acquisitions in the space. (Read Corralling Complementary TEM Solutions.) Case in point, 2007 saw mergers between Tangoe Inc. and TRAQ Wireless, Rivermine Inc. and BBR Wireless, Invoice Insight and Oreon Inc., the list goes on. And it doesn’t take a soothsayer’s declaration to predict that evolving technology will continue to drive activity in this space.
Never-ending change is the nature of managing mobility. Thanks to a widely dispersed variety of handsets, ever-evolving rate plans and good ol’ employee churn, the wireless TEM market only stands to grow as more and more companies cut the cords, so to speak. A report by AOTMP, “Wireless Mobility Management: 10,000 Decisions to Manage,” found on average enterprises support 7.5 different types of devices, three operating systems for wireless devices, more than four applications for deployments of more than 4,000 devices, and more than three wireless telecom service providers. The report notes that the complexity of managing wireless expenses is compounded by the fact that wireless providers are governed by different regulations, have different revenue models and bill differently than their wireline counterparts.
“Unfortunately, for many end-user organizations, the complexity of wireless management is not limited to just cost-per-minute and roaming charges,” said Ralph A. Rodriguez, senior vice president, research, technology markets group, at Aberdeen Group, in a recent report. “Without focusing on the total cost of ownership of a wireless deployment, enterprises can drown in activation costs and early termination fees.” In addition to the escalating costs of managing wireless devices and wireless plans, Aberdeen found a host of reasons driving companies to formalize their wireless expense management programs, including simply keeping up with moves, adds, changes and deletions (MACD) (see chart, Key Pressures Driving Wireless Expense Management).
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| Key Pressures Driving Wireless Expense Management |
Joe Basili, vice president of research at AOTMP, aid the wireless TEM market is not only growing, but it is maturing and evolving to include wireless mobility management as enterprises expand their wireless mobility programs from just cell phones into smart devices. “Enterprises must develop broader programs that address policy governance and endpoint security,” said Basili, pointing out the sensitive data that resides on these devices. AOTMP found that 96 percent of enterprises provide e-mail via smart device, and 51 percent of enterprises provide employees the ability to view documents. “Enterprises have significant exposure in terms of the ‘street value’ of an executive’s device that contains sensitive corporate data. The wireless TEM market now has an opportunity to mature by helping enterprises address this challenge with an offering that goes beyond expense management,” said Basili.
Al Rossini, senior vice president global sales and marketing for Tangoe Inc., agreed there is a movement toward mobile lifecycle management. He said TEM services have expanded to be
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