What Is Communications Lifecycle Management (CLM)?

Communications Lifecycle Management (CLM) combines all the activities required for administering, managing, and maintaining an organization’s telecommunications, mobility and information technology services. CLM extends deeply and broadly. This means it goes far beyond Telecom Expense Management (TEM) or Wireless Expense Management (WEM), for example. By its nature, of course, CLM includes those areas. Yet it reaches further to embrace a holistic approach to all aspects of an enterprise’s communications services – think the standard categories plus internet of things, cloud, and so on.

In addition, CLM oversees more than just the expense management of these services. The scope includes infrastructure & project design and implementation, service (and sometimes device and circuit) procurement, contract negotiation, end-of-life decommissioning, and more. Think of CLM, then, as the evolved version of Telecom Expense Management (TEM) and Wireless Expense Management (WEM).

Some vendors round out their approach to CLM by offering far more than software as a service or one-time audits. These providers go the extra mile by delivering fully managed CLM.

What Does Fully Managed Communications Lifecycle Management Look Like?

The list below details what top-tier CLM vendor will provide – including to small and mid-sized organizations with $1 billion or less in annual revenue. Fully managed CLM will do the following:

Centralize Management
& Improve Decision Making
  • Establish single-source-of-truth for all corporate IT, mobile, and telecom devices, assets, services, contracts, SLAs
  • Protect, control all corporate assets by enforcing procurement, usage, disposal, and security policies
  • Maintain compliance with industry and government regulations
Optimize Communications
& Technology Expenditures
  • Optimize investments in all communications devices, equipment, services, software by balancing cost-effectiveness and service quality – “pay for what you need”
  • Reduce costs by effectively managing contracts, enforcing SLAs, eliminating erroneous charges – “pay for what you use”
  • Promote financial accountability through reporting of indiscriminate use of company resources
Provide Around-the-Clock Help Desk
Staffed by Specialists
  • Obtain real-time updates associated with all service, repair issues
  • Reduce downtime through our dedicated carrier escalation channels
  • Lean on our team for moves, adds, changes, and disconnects
Deliver Expense Management
/Bill Pay
  • Simplify invoice management
  • Audit services monthly to identify billing anomalies, control expenses
  • Improve employee productivity – streamline invoice management through consolidated repository for all services
  • Ensure on-time payment of invoices with advance bill payment; eliminate rushed invoice validation
Offer Sourcing,
Procurement
  • Identify, eliminate unnecessary services through inventory centralization, visibility
  • Avoid unnecessary rate hikes through contract lifecycle management
  • Use carrier-agnostic system to ensure the right services drive operational excellence
  • Handle commissioning, deployment of telecom/network services, mobile assets
Supply Usage Optimization
/Cost Recovery
  • Translate usage trends, turn business needs into implemented changes
  • Prevent indiscriminate usage through granular reporting
  • Recover billing errors through our fully managed bill dispute process
  • Provide visibility to end users, management through shared services charge-back reporting
  • Confirm receipt of appropriate credits through fully managed SLA enforcement
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One Source’s Communications Lifecycle Management Solution Overview