TEM supplier offers no-charge, self-service wireless expense tracking and analysis
Getting a comprehensive view of your overall wireless spend can be tricky, particularly if employees receive reimbursement via departmental expense reports. But one supplier has launched a way for you to jump right in using a self-service approach that costs … wait for it … nada.
The former Invoice Insight, which has been in the business of helping enterprises audit their telecom bills to find savings for more than a decade, has renamed itself Xigo and is offering a baseline wireless expense management (WEM) cloud service at no charge. The offering, dubbed Xigo Now, enables wireless users to upload wireless bills and receive savings recommendations in minutes, the company says.
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Xigo Now “will be free for life,” pledges Dave Snow, CMO at Invoice Insight — er, Xigo. The service “is not a pilot or a free trial [with an end date]. It will meet 100% of the requirements for a vast majority of companies with [mobile expense management] needs.”
Xigo documents indicate that enterprises can expect an average of 5% to 20% recurring savings on their wireless bills using the free SaaS, which provides cost allocation, inventory management, reports, invoice data capture and other services.
Granted, with a mouse click, you can move beyond the free Xigo Now to Xigo Pro, which costs about $1,000 per year and adds workflow automation tasks associated with mobile cost management. And Xigo is likely hoping you might.
Still, Snow indicates he expects many organizations to be satisfied with the free stuff. With wireless spending now outpacing wireline expenses, there’s high motivation in the CFO’s office and purchasing departments to get a handle on what the organization is spending.
“Some companies in our beta program used Xigo Now to move IL [individual-liable] devices into their enterprises,” Snow says. “When all you see is a travel expense report, it can be hard to know if the IL user is operating inside of company policy. Xigo Now provides visibility and control into some behaviors and expenses in the IL space.”
Eric Goodness, a research VP at Gartner, adds that the Xigo approach provides an option to a “wholly underserved area of the [expense management] market: those businesses with under 500 devices.”
These companies have trouble getting the attention of expense software and service suppliers “and usually pay 50% more than their peers” if they do find a solution, he says.
Xigo is taking a “very bold and calculated approach,” says Timothy Colwell, senior VP of global performance management at AOTMP, a telecom expense management consultancy in Indianapolis. Instead of spending time and money evaluating slight differences among TEM/WEM vendors in a market plagued by “‘me, too’-isms, enterprises can just give it a try.”
Enterprises have to configure a few business rules about what to do if an exception is seen to the policy — for example, whether to reject the whole submission or that single expense.
Xigo has also learned that users want to be able to filter personal usage off their wireless expense submittals. “That’s not a current feature, but it’s definitely on the road map,” Snow says.
