What a question. Of course it does. And it should! Because, while 11 cents, in and of itself, may not sound like much, 11% of your annual spend equates to thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.
And yet we hear from IT managers all the time who tell us they know they could "do better at managing expenses" but are already time strapped putting out fires and dealing with demands from end users. They don't have the time and personnel to police every bill and eliminate every piece of unused equipment.
While it's understandable, it's a costly attitude. Now, more than ever, IT/telecom managers need to get out of the mentality that IT/telecom bills are like rent – just a necessary cost of doing business. Yes, they are necessary, but that doesn't mean you can't shave those costs down.The good news here is that the 11% of every dollar that you are probably losing comes from an area that you can identify and correct: billing errors. These are errors that could have been tackled up front, if only you knew and could do something about them.
One thing is for certain. You won't get a courtesy call from a supplier, telling you that "we found a billing error and we'll refund you the money". To be fair, they probably don't even know they billed incorrectly. This is especially true these days. Everyone is short staffed. That can lead to even more mistakes being made. And it's up to you to be your own advocate.
Start by taking a hard look at your supplier contracts. There may be clauses contained in those contracts that place a limit on the time you have to dispute an incorrect invoice. That means that you need to catch those errors before time runs out.
This is why you need to identify tools to help you find those errors and correct them, because you don't have the resources to spend hours pouring over every single invoice. That's where a technology expense management system or "TEM" comes in. A good TEM will provide fast, accurate visibility over all your IT/telecom bills, pointing out discrepancies, so that you can take care of them well before your dispute period runs out.Overpaying invoices should never be viewed as just a "cost of doing business". Companies that do nothing will literally "pay the price". Make sure you're not one of them.
Contact us and let's talk about your challenges. Odds are you have plenty of them these days. We know because we talk with IT and telecom managers all the time. We understand your world. And we can help.