Based on the Telecommunications Market Association, the total spending in the U.S. telecommunications market in 2005 amounted to $856.9 billion with an expected growth of 9% per year via 2009. International spending (excluding the U.S.) for 2005 was at $1.8 trillion and expanding much more sharply. This explosive growth fuels the need for Telecom Expense Management (TEM), of which Invoice Management is really a main component.

Invoice management consists of the administration, verification and reconciliation of invoices. Advantages of an automated Invoice Management system contain:

* Prevention of penalties for late payments

* Reduction of telecom expenses by catching billing errors

* Verification of invoices against contracted rates ensuring negotiated rates are becoming applied

* Having an accurate inventory of current telecom facilities relative to billed facilities, which may well save yet another 5-25%

* Reconciliation of actual calls based on CDR from PBXs and wireless devices against invoiced calls from carriers

Historically, telecom invoices were issued in paper form. Large enterprises may well obtain hundreds of them and they had been a nightmare to verify and reconcile, because of their volume and complexity. Today, invoices have electronic counterparts, which make computerized invoice management much more feasible.

A further complication is that several various vendors might be involved in providing telecom services. Integrating invoices from all these different vendors into the invoice management program can be a major challenge. Some vendors might offer paper invoices only, requiring manual data entry, whilst others might use a number of electronic media.

Fortunately, there's a move towards standardizing electronic invoicing within the business, but even so the invoice degree of detail may vary from vendor to vendor, which adds to further complications. In selecting a telecom expense management method, it's vital to pick a system that can deal effortlessly with these disparities.

As soon as an invoice management method is operational, the time and expense savings may be considerable. Based on the size of the enterprise, this can quantity to many thousands of dollars, which means the program will pay for itself in short order. Savings can be even higher if effective inventory manage is instituted as part of the (TEM) method.