Expense Management

A communications tool that targets and delivers cost efficiencies

Greater Insight

NEC's Expense Management solution makes staying on top of costs associated with telecom networks by helping to manage enterprise communications costs, boost team visibility and maximize staff resources.

How It Works

Expense Management compares all invoice data against contract agreements with service providers. Through its use, real device usage, online inventory and additional equipment and services can be analyzed. Set parameters work to ensure information is consistent and includes the most up-to-date information about invoice dates, statuses and line-item details.

Expense Management can also be programmed to send notifications to external invoicing systems and provide baseline communications usage data.

Key Benefits

Monitors usage and controls expenses
Offers a robust, feature-rich call accounting system which delivers complete visibility into telecom usage. In addition, its invoice management functionality validates telecom inventory, maintains records of all invoices, automates the invoice validation, approval and exception processes, and allocates charges to the appropriate cost centers. The Expense Management solution offers an integrated reporting engine which delivers baseline communications usage information to corporate decision makers in a business-ready format.

Easy-to-use and interfaces with other corporate systems
The day-to-day operation is simple and intuitive, requiring no technical expertise. This fast, lightweight system and extensive set of reports allow businesses to make informed decisions for controlling enterprise usage and related telecom costs ï¿½ all from a web-based portal. Easy access allows businesses to control their day-to-day tasks from one screen and do everything from tracing a call within a few seconds to monitoring corporate-wide usage information. In addition Expense Management can transfer company data to and from the PBX as well as interface with other information systems such as those used for finance, HR and ERP.

Improves customer
service
By providing the tools to manage telecom assets and associated usage and costs enables enterprises to improve customer service. End-user registration and organization tools are offered, and registered end-users (i.e. a organization's corporate customers) can be assigned relevant services and resources. Customers are served with speed and accuracy, and customers' satisfaction with those services improves.

Growth Potential

Powerful and scalable, Expense Management can handle jobs of nearly any size; it works as well for a global corporation's multiple high-traffic, heavy-volume sites as it does for a small organization with minimal traffic. It also provides multi-vendor PBX support and additional inputs including online mobile call detail records.

The system's modular architecture supports the ongoing expansion of system functionality. Additional modules may be added based on customer request. The application is designed around a multi-tier processes, queues and services architecture, which offers the benefit of distributing loads across multiple servers and provides growth opportunities and flexibility.

Core Capabilities

Contract definition
Probably a great deal of time and money is spent negotiating contracts for the terms and services required. Those contracts needs to be proactively monitored to manage spend rate. Expense Management documents the details of service provider contract terms, such as payments, schedules, costs, discounts, assets and other conditions. These details can be used for verification and reconciliation of service provider invoices and against Expense Management's asset repository.

Invoice and service data collection
Because many providers offer electronic invoicing, clients can now receive information about their wireless usage that they have always wanted, such as long distance calling patterns and the details of specific calls. Expense Management supports electronic/automatic (file/ftp/EDI) and manual invoice importing through the use of pre-formatted digital invoice templates and also collects data from these invoices as part of the built-in collection and mediation process. The data can then be used for reconciliation.

Bill reconciliation
New services, accounts and features can slowly creep into invoices. Over time, these charges can raise the total invoice amount to levels that are no longer within a company's service/solution contract goals. Expense Management can address these issues. When monthly invoices are loaded into the system, it automatically matches invoice details against service provider contract terms for special rates and discounts, collected usage data, services and equipment supplied.

Baseline inventory reconciliation
Asset management is the backbone of any good expense management tool, and NEC's Expense Management has it. Our tool helps build a baseline inventory that corresponds to agreed-upon services and assets. As invoice charges are processed, an automatic matching of the invoice details is carried out against the baseline inventory for any new, missing, or changed assets ï¿½ including features and charges.

Dispute management
Billing problems are a fact of life and errors usually favor the service provider. Expense Management provides the support needed for these issues. When there is an invoice dispute, the processing workflow is determined for each vendor and service using a proactive rule set. Correspondence with the service provider can be tracked and retrieved for an online history of billing problems for better leverage when a contract is up for renewal.

An online portal
An online portal, called My Portal, provides different views and provides visibility that leads to accountability. Managers can access their departmental costs using this resource to see asset, leasing, service and usage charges. This data can be quickly accessed and immediate investigations regarding calls can be performed, using the My Portal call component with its extensive search capabilities.