Asentinel Writes the Book on TEM

Cara Sievers

Just up the road from my neighborhood in Memphis is a thriving telecom expense management company called Asentinel. Recently, I dropped by for a chat with CEO David Perdue to learn more about the company and hear about its newly granted U.S. patent covering core elements of its TEM software, Asentinel 5.0.

The six-year-old company spawned from a sister company in Romania called Asentinel SRL, which still executes all Asentinel product development, while the support and sales functions are based here in Memphis.

Why Memphis? In the beginning, the Romanian Asentinel was doing contract programming work for Global 500 companies, one of which was Memphis-based Union Planters Bank. During one of those engagements, Union Planters asked the programmers to write some software to help them manage their telecom invoices and spend, which at that time was $37 million per year. Perdue said the software saved the bank $500,000 in just the first three or four months of using it.

Seeing what a great product they had on their hands, the principals of Asentinel SRL approached Perdue because of his telecom background to spearhead this TEM software sales company, and Asentinel, as we know it, was born. Jason Fisher, who was president of the sister company, came to Asentinel as chief software architect.

Perdue is especially proud of Asentinel’s recently granted patent. The patent (U.S. Patent No. 7,340,422), entitled, “Systems and Methods for Processing and Managing Telecommunications Invoices,” has 56 claims covering a broad range of TEM functionality, including multivendor invoice importation and dissection.

“We have long highlighted that when we introduced our Asentinel TEM software, we were the first to develop truly innovative solutions to address the challenging task of processing telecom invoices,” said Perdue. “This patent, granted from an application filed in 2003, serves as a testament to this view, and recognizes our industry leadership.”

David C. Perdue serves as CEO at the helm of Asentinel.

Perdue said he hopes it’s the first of many patents to be granted to Asentinel. The company is working on more patent applications and also has filed applications in Canada and Europe. Perdue noted that some Asentinel competitors might have patents on their pieces of the TEM business; but he is not shaken by this – the patent office had to have found that Asentinel’s 56 claims were unique from anything else out there or the patent wouldn’t have been granted.

The Asentinel 5.0 software, sold on a perpetual license or subscription basis, features reporting and business intelligence capabilities, as well a Java-based EDI translator written by Asentinel software engineers. In addition, Asentinel 5.0's optimized code means the software has minimal customer database and hardware requirements. The software uses AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) technology to power its business intelligence engine.

 
Laurentiu Herbei, senior software engineer at Asentinel, takes a moment to demonstrate some of the tool’s reporting capabilities.

Asentinel sells both direct and through affiliates. The company has a handful of reseller and consultant partners and is looking for more to help it broaden its reach.