The ICOMM Difference

Our oldest consulting client relationship is nearing the 19-year mark. As a result, we bring to TEM the deep telephony knowledge, “big picture” awareness, and ethical standards inherent in our consulting practice.

From our inception 20 years ago one of our major values to our clients has been helping them save money, whether it was in the purchase and implementation of a PBX or the negotiation of a multi-million dollar carrier contract. We began to formalize and expand our TEM work in 2000, at the request of existing clients who were coming under increasing pressures to cut costs. Since then, our TEM services have grown from an adjunct to larger client engagements to a full-featured service offering.

What do we mean by "full-featured"? Here are the key attributes that we think are critical:

Deep and broad telecommunications knowledge and experience

It is important that the supplier who manages your telecom expenses knows telecom, not just AP processes. Telecom services and the associated invoices are unique and complex. One of the problems many enterprises have is that their telecom bills are currently being processed by AP generalists. You don’t want to replicate that weakness when you select a TEM supplier.

At ICOMM we do not employ general knowledge clerks, as many TEM providers do. Instead, we staff our TEM team with telecom-knowledgeable people. You are ensured that the team members working with you will have telecom-specific knowledge and experience.

Staff members, not temps

Many TEM providers use clerical-level temps and contract workers. Does your enterprise do that to staff your core business? Neither do we. We make an investment in our staff members and provide them with competitive salaries, bonuses and benefits. We care about their long-term growth, and they care about the long-term strength of ICOMM and our clients.

A powerful in-house application

Our services inventory and expense management application, TMA (Telecom Management Application), is just that – our application. We’ve developed it over the last several years to serve as our own internal tool to enable us to support and manage our clients’ telecom environments. That means that it contains the features and functionality needed to both manage expenses and manage telecom in general.

As part of engaging ICOMM, whether for TEM or support services, you get the right to use TMA as an ASP application, at no additional expense. Several Fortune 500 clients use TMA as their primary telecom management application, and it is their evolving needs that drive our continuous development work. As with our day-to-day TEM work, our constant application improvement work is performed by our own development staff, not outside contractors. That enables us to turn on a dime and deliver customized, enhanced features quickly and, typically, at no cost to our clients.

Cradle to grave processes

Our broad expertise and mature application equip us to go from carrier selection to contract negotiation to service ordering to vendor coordination to electronic bill review to electronic bill payment to budget reporting.

A few words about venture capital

Many of the larger TEM providers have financed their growth by raising venture capital. Why should that matter to you? Well, once outside capital is involved, the people running the company have to start making decisions not just based on the long-term interests of the company and its clients, but on the interests of the VCs. Those interests – typically, a certain percentage of return within a limited time frame – often conflict with the goal of delivering the best possible service to the clients.

Providing a strong TEM solution does require a significant investment, in time, staff training and application development. At ICOMM, we have funded that investment internally. That enables us to focus our priorities on the long-term strength of our service offerings and on the benefits to our clients, rather than on short-term profit for a VC.