IBM has announced a new global service, the IBM Telecom Expense Management Service (TEM), to help companies manage the skyrocketing volume and expense of the myriad telecommunications services needed to stay competitive in business.

"Communications anytime, anywhere have become increasingly critical to innovation and to the business. As a result, between wireless and wired connections-a list that includes an ever-expanding array of wired and wireless devices with changing services- CIOs are faced with the daunting chore of dealing with the labor and infrastructure costs to manage these services and paying too much for expenses that are in error," said Laurence Guihard-Joly, IBM's vice president, Integrated Communications Services.

The IBM Telecom Expense Management Service allows clients to tackle ballooning communications expense management issues, according to the company. The service automates all aspects including ordering, billing, and inventory. Benefits include:

·        Enhanced visibility into spending

·        Reduced costs

·        Increased audit readiness

"The Telecom Expense Management Service from IBM will allow us to increase business controls and gain visibility into our total telecom spend," said Ian Primrose, manager global telecommunications at Hess Corp. "The comprehensive TEM service from IBM will help drive down the complexity of managing our spend and improve processes for order management, bill management, and dispute resolution in one integrated, consolidated, and automated solution."

Managing communications expenses can be expensive just considering the manual labor to audit invoices and approve payments. In addition, because employees change features or even add or remove service entirely, it is common for invoices to be wrong. On average, IBM has found that between 5 to 15 percent of communications expenses companies receive are in error, which can add up to millions of dollars a year.

"By automating the ordering, billing, invoice validation, and cost allocation of voice, data and wireless services, clients may be able to redeploy staff to communications projects that could provide them a competitive advantage," said Guihard-Joly.

The IBM Telecom Expense Management Service, available worldwide, begins with a six-to-eight-week engagement to identify areas of potential cost savings opportunities. After designing and implementing the solution, IBM provides the ongoing management of TEM processes, which can save money for clients over time. IBM has partnered with industry leader Rivermine as its telecom expense management software provider.

"This new TEM solution is important to controlling a key source for our network information and communications spend, and will move our existing environment to a proactive end-to-end integrated business process." Hess' Primrose said.

More information about IBM is available at www.ibm.com.