Mid-market enterprises managing large communications footprints across multiple locations face rising costs, complexity, and inefficiencies. For most, the day-to-day administration of WAN, voice, unified communications, and contact centers often doesn’t get handled or is delegated to overqualified IT resources.
Common telecom inefficiencies
- Companies overspend on telecom by over 30%
- It takes one full-time employee to manage $150,000 of invoices monthly
Communications Lifecycle Management (CLM) can transform your telecom investments from a liability into a competitive advantage by saving time and money while improving performance. This article tells you how.
What is Communications Lifecycle Management?
Communications Lifecycle Management (CLM) is a tech-enabled service that helps multi-location companies buy, manage, and optimize connectivity, unified communications, and collaboration and contact center solutions through a wide range of service providers. As this vendor-neutral, outsourced extension of your IT team manages the full lifecycle of your voice and data assets, you can recover the resources spent managing mission-critical infrastructure—plus liberate your IT team to focus on strategic priorities and key projects. Today CLM services are available at a price point that makes enhanced support attainable for the mid-market.
Mid-market enterprises managing large communications footprints across multiple locations face rising costs, complexity, and inefficiencies. For most, the day-to-day administration of WAN, voice, unified communications, and contact centers often doesn’t get handled or is delegated to overqualified IT resources.
Common telecom inefficiencies
- Companies overspend on telecom by over 30%
- It takes one full-time employee to manage $150,000 of invoices monthly
Communications Lifecycle Management (CLM) can transform your telecom investments from a liability into a competitive advantage by saving time and money while improving performance. This article tells you how.
What is Communications Lifecycle Management?
Communications Lifecycle Management (CLM) is a tech-enabled service that helps multi-location companies buy, manage, and optimize connectivity, unified communications, and collaboration and contact center solutions through a wide range of service providers. As this vendor-neutral, outsourced extension of your IT team manages the full lifecycle of your voice and data assets, you can recover the resources spent managing mission-critical infrastructure—plus liberate your IT team to focus on strategic priorities and key projects. Today CLM services are available at a price point that makes enhanced support attainable for the mid-market.
How can Communications Lifecycle Management benefit your enterprise?
With CLM, you can offload the full spectrum of telecom management tasks to an expert third party dedicated to helping you conserve costs, save time, and improve performance.
Save Money
- Communications audit & benchmarking
Evaluate all services, costs, and contractual obligations across providers. Using customer benchmarking data, identify overspend or inefficiencies, then build a savings roadmap. - Contract management
Manage all aspects of communication service contracts, including negotiation, renewal, and compliance. - Expense management
Monitor and control communications service expenses, including managing budgets, identifying cost-saving opportunities, and resolving billing errors.
Increase Efficiency
- Invoice management
Handle the tedious and time-consuming process of reviewing, reconciling, and paying telecom invoices. - Installation and project management
Ensure implementation of infrastructure and related projects is completed on time, within budget, and meets required specifications and quality standards. - Inventory management
Efficiently track and manage telecom equipment and related assets to ensure availability for use, minimize unnecessary purchases, and reduce costs. - Vendor management
Manage communication service vendor relationships, negotiate rates, and ensure compliance with contractual obligations.
Improve Performance
- Vendor analysis and selection
Lead technical review, pricing evaluation, competitive analysis, and negotiation. - Solution design
Help select and implement the optimal technologies to achieve strategic goals. - Reporting and analytics
Provide deep visibility into the organization’s communication services through comprehensive reporting and analytics on usage, expenses, and performance. - Usage & billing optimization
Analyze service and billing patterns and make recommendations for optimizing usage, decommissioning obsolete assets, renegotiating contracts, reducing waste, and identifying cost savings. - Lifecycle management
Serve as the single point of contact managing the full spectrum of services across all providers so IT can focus on mission-critical work.
Why choose Communications Lifecycle Management vs. other third-party vendors?
CLM outperforms other third-party vendors by taking a holistic approach to managing all aspects of your enterprise communication infrastructure.
- Comprehensive solutions: Unlike the traditional agent model, CLM offers end-to-end solutions that cover the entire communication spectrum, from procurement to retirement, ensuring seamless integration and optimized operations.
- Cost control and performance improvement: Beyond the cost controls of telecom expense management (TEM), CLM improves performance through proactive planning so your enterprise can keep pace with rapidly evolving technologies.
- Unified platform: In addition to procuring and managing multiple communication services as aggregators do, CLMs also manage contracts and vendor relationships to enhance overall performance and productivity.
What makes a great Communications Lifecycle Management partner?
The right CLM partner for your mid-market enterprise will offer comprehensive solutions that address your unique needs, while providing excellent customer service, proactive communication, and a focus on continuous improvement and innovation. Specifically, they should bring:
- Expertise and leadership
Dedicated account management provided by an experienced team of telecom professionals who conduct regular business reviews and serve as relentless advocates for your enterprise. - Transparency and tech-enabled service
Dedicated software should automate and streamline the CLM process—plus provide a single, comprehensive view of communications services across all locations to identify trends, usage patterns, and cost-saving opportunities. - Cost savings and optimization
Your CLM should help realize significant savings—up to 50% per month. To minimize your risk, look for an optimization guarantee which ensures if the savings realized don’t exceed the fees paid, you get a refund for the difference.
Time savings and peace of mind
The right CLM will help your enterprise reclaim at least one hour per location per month, plus ensure the right team members are doing the right work.
A CLM program can achieve an average ROI of 180% for mid-market enterprises
How can Communications Lifecycle Management benefit your enterprise?
With CLM, you can offload the full spectrum of telecom management tasks to an expert third party dedicated to helping you conserve costs, save time, and improve performance.
Save Money
- Communications audit & benchmarking
Evaluate all services, costs, and contractual obligations across providers. Using customer benchmarking data, identify overspend or inefficiencies, then build a savings roadmap. - Contract management
Manage all aspects of communication service contracts, including negotiation, renewal, and compliance. - Expense management
Monitor and control communications service expenses, including managing budgets, identifying cost-saving opportunities, and resolving billing errors.
Increase Efficiency
- Invoice management
Handle the tedious and time-consuming process of reviewing, reconciling, and paying telecom invoices. - Installation and project management
Ensure implementation of infrastructure and related projects is completed on time, within budget, and meets required specifications and quality standards. - Inventory management
Efficiently track and manage telecom equipment and related assets to ensure availability for use, minimize unnecessary purchases, and reduce costs. - Vendor management
Manage communication service vendor relationships, negotiate rates, and ensure compliance with contractual obligations.
Improve Performance
- Vendor analysis and selection
Lead technical review, pricing evaluation, competitive analysis, and negotiation. - Solution design
Help select and implement the optimal technologies to achieve strategic goals. - Reporting and analytics
Provide deep visibility into the organization’s communication services through comprehensive reporting and analytics on usage, expenses, and performance. - Usage & billing optimization
Analyze service and billing patterns and make recommendations for optimizing usage, decommissioning obsolete assets, renegotiating contracts, reducing waste, and identifying cost savings. - Lifecycle management
Serve as the single point of contact managing the full spectrum of services across all providers so IT can focus on mission-critical work.
Why choose Communications Lifecycle Management vs. other third-party vendors?
CLM outperforms other third-party vendors by taking a holistic approach to managing all aspects of your enterprise communication infrastructure.
- Comprehensive solutions: Unlike the traditional agent model, CLM offers end-to-end solutions that cover the entire communication spectrum, from procurement to retirement, ensuring seamless integration and optimized operations.
- Cost control and performance improvement: Beyond the cost controls of telecom expense management (TEM), CLM improves performance through proactive planning so your enterprise can keep pace with rapidly evolving technologies.
- Unified platform: In addition to procuring and managing multiple communication services as aggregators do, CLMs also manage contracts and vendor relationships to enhance overall performance and productivity.
What makes a great Communications Lifecycle Management partner?
The right CLM partner for your mid-market enterprise will offer comprehensive solutions that address your unique needs, while providing excellent customer service, proactive communication, and a focus on continuous improvement and innovation. Specifically, they should bring:
- Expertise and leadership
Dedicated account management provided by an experienced team of telecom professionals who conduct regular business reviews and serve as relentless advocates for your enterprise. - Transparency and tech-enabled service
Dedicated software should automate and streamline the CLM process—plus provide a single, comprehensive view of communications services across all locations to identify trends, usage patterns, and cost-saving opportunities. - Cost savings and optimization
Your CLM should help realize significant savings—up to 50% per month. To minimize your risk, look for an optimization guarantee which ensures if the savings realized don’t exceed the fees paid, you get a refund for the difference.
Time savings and peace of mind
The right CLM will help your enterprise reclaim at least one hour per location per month, plus ensure the right team members are doing the right work.
Make optimized communications your competitive advantage
Offloading day-to-day communications administration to an expert, dedicated partner is a proven path to reducing costs, saving time, freeing up IT resources, and improving operational performance across multiple locations. With CLM, your telecom investments can become your competitive advantage.