Understanding what truly constitutes contract value intelligence (CVI) is a crucial starting point for strategic cost management, expense management and enterprise spending analysis.
Telecom or technology contract value can be determined by the quality of the service in relation to your overall technology and telecoms spend, which you must be aware of to determine whether you are using the best plans for your business and if the value of your spend is fully optimized.
For example, if you pay for 100GB of data and unlimited calls but only use a fraction of it, there may well be a cheaper option available.
Failure to identify spend optimization opportunities across thousands of plans routinely results in massive overspending, which impacts enterprises globally by more than $800bn per year.
This is based of the fact the average annual spend on telecoms among enterprises equates to 1-2% of overall revenue, a statistic that indicates the huge bottom-line impact that the lack of business intelligence analytics can have when it comes to technology and telecoms expense management.
Contract Value Intelligence automates the arduous processes and considerations associated with traditional telecoms spend management, reducing monthly costs and providing the necessary insights to negotiate better contracts with telecom suppliers in future.
This technology has an important role to play in your telecom audit trail, effectively identifying opportunities, reducing inaccuracies and carrying out complex tasks that would take human teams a lot of time to complete.
There are numerous challenges associated with uncovering spend optimization opportunities without automation on an enterprise-wide basis.
For example, it can be difficult for individuals and teams to assess whether they can make telecom cost savings when changing plans or incur fees that negate the potential savings. This is made increasingly challenging when reviewing thousands of different contracts.
Cost is not the only variable that must be considered when optimizing supplier contract value. While there may be savings or cost reduction opportunities available by switching plans, the salvaged financial value may be undermined if the new contract leads to poorer coverage, adding complexity to the decision-making process.
Improve contract lifecycle management with contract value intelligence
Many organisations choose not to address this widespread drain on costs, opting to believe that savings will only be minimal.
In the case of large organizations, even an optimization of £10 per phone can be significant, especially when tens of thousands of devices are used by workforces.
The challenges associated with doing this frequently discourage organizations to uncover opportunities, so understanding them is crucial.
At the core of this complexity is the need to be able to efficiently extract text from invoices and contracts, a process that must be carried out my machine learning or AI solutions.
Perhaps more challenging still is the need to meaningfully classify the data that has been collected through automation. This involves breaking the data down into attributes, including details of what a specific product or service is.
Another challenge that Contract Value Intelligence is designed to help overcome is merging different document formats.
This involves creating one data management layer that can be used to house a variety of different document types.
The technology also facilitates logical checks relating to all the meaningful attributes associated with telecom or technology contracts.
The evolution of contract value intelligence
Adopting contract value intelligence and spend analysis software is critical to laying the foundations for becoming a data-driven procurement organization.
An enterprise business that successfully achieves this status will be able to optimize its technology service spend and efficiency in a perpetual way.
A best in breed approach will be essential for success, whereby organizations work with a range of niche solutions that fit together to create a unified platform.
The Thinking Machine Systems solution is a prime example of a best in breed solution, designed specifically to tackle the challenges related to technology services.
Our solution is also able to democratize access to data intelligence across organizations, enabling large numbers of people to utilize rich, clean data.
This allows teams across various business functions to make better, data-driven decisions that yield enhanced results.
This highlights the fact that contract value intelligence is not only about optimizing spend, but also about providing the wider business with valuable, easy to use data models.
Actionable Contract Value Intelligence powered by Thinking Machine Systems
Thinking Machine Systems has designed a machine learning solution to extract contract text and classify it efficiently.
This artificial intelligence and machine learning innovation is referred to as the Knowledge Model, a unique system that plays a vital role in business intelligence analytics process.
This Contract Value Intelligence technology automatically provides ready-made analytics that are repeatable and verifiable, enabling clients to easily identify hidden spend management and cost optimization opportunities.
In contrast to the arduous, traditional telecom audit options, the Thinking Machine Systems solution provides the opportunity to track telecom spend in an ongoing way.
This allows category management teams and procurement procurement teams to identify new cost optimization opportunities and prove the value of previous savings recommendations simultaneously.
Leveraging this solution is an effective way to equip your enterprise business with leading contract value intelligence.
The Thinking Machine Systems solution is unique because of the way that it can integrate data.
The solution has been designed to create layers based on the integrated data to make it easier to understand and use, enabling us to deliver a highly visible stream of hygienic data that connects every area of your business and spend.
Find out more through our interactive platform demo.
