Advances in Telco Utility Expense Management

TEOCO’s new Telecom Utility Expense Management service helps service providers create a more energy-efficient and cost-effective business.

An interview with Murtaza Amil, Vice President of Strategic Projects at TEOCO

Most people in the industry know TEOCO for telecom expense management. But now you’ve launched an entirely new service. What is telco utility expense management, and why did TEOCO choose to go into this area?

Murtaza: We’re still very much focused on the telecom space, but now we’re helping these same service provider customers manage not just their wholesale telecom expense, but also their utility expense. This includes a whole gamut of utility types – electricity, water, gas and even trash and sewage. The number of utility invoices that a large, Tier-1 provider receives every month is staggering, and these numbers will keep growing as network providers continue building out to support 5G, AI data centers, and more. They can have more than 100,000 different locations that receive utility invoices, including offices, retail stores, and cell towers; and each utility provider formats their invoices differently, with different due dates and terms. Some utility invoices arrive digitally over email, while others are sent through the postal service. If an invoice is lost or paid late – that service can get disrupted. That means the electricity gets cut off. On the surface, processing utility invoices seems like a commodity service; but It’s absolutely mission critical. If service is disrupted, critical network infrastructure components are negatively impacted.

Wow- that’s a lot to manage! Of those thousands of locations- are they primarily retail stores?

Murtaza: For our largest customers, there are over 130 different types of sites that receive utility invoices. These include those owned by the service provider, like a company store, corporate office space, or a cell tower. Then there are those owned by a landlord, which could be a university, an airport, or even a wireless installation attached to an office building. All these locations generate utility invoices. The ones involving landlords are often the most challenging to process due to non-linear behavior and lack of clear communication channels. For instance, the original utility invoice goes to the landlord and then the landlord creates another invoice for the service provider, which then comes to TEOCO for processing. Then there are solar providers as well, and this creates dual invoicing. We receive an invoice from both the solar provider and the power company. These include charges and credits that must be closely tracked and audited. There is significant complexity involved in these types of billing arrangements.

Just the act of getting so many utility invoices paid on time seems overwhelming. Are you providing any other services along the way?

Murtaza: We provide end-to-end utility expense management for our customers, which goes well beyond just making payments. There are many other areas that we address, like managing invoice disputes, verifying service activations and disconnects, following up on missing or late invoices, utility invoice audits, and even providing information for regulatory reports on energy consumption and green initiatives. We manage the entire process from end to end.
When an invoice arrives, TEOCO has an exhaustive set of checks and balances in place to identify anomalies. If there is anything that is unexpected, our process flags it. For example, let’s say we know historically that an invoice should be about $500, but now it’s $5,000. TEOCO’s managed services team does a complete review. Only once an invoice has been through these checks is it approved for payment.

Because we collect all the data from the invoices, we’re able to report on consumption for each site. For every invoice that comes in, meters are assigned to specific sites, and these sites are assigned to cost centers so we can perform detailed cost allocations. TEOCO also provides utility cost audits, which include filing disputes, if needed. For one customer alone, we’ve recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars from these disputes. In concert with our client, we look at the cost allocations and figure out which invoices can be paid right away, and which ones need another pair of eyes. TEOCO is unique in performing these types of audits on utility invoices.

And as a relatively new entrant to the utility expense management space, why do service providers choose TEOCO?

Murtaza: The other primary vendors in this space have been around for decades, but they don’t really analyze the invoice, they just pay them. Our customers like us because of our network centric focus; carriers want visibility on the expense side of running their network, including both wholesale telco and utility expense. Our customers know about our expertise in the telco cost management space. This is a very natural extension of what we’ve done historically; processing invoices, validating them, reporting on them, and extracting data to help our customers manage those expenses more efficiently. Meanwhile, power conservation initiatives have become a key focus for most telcos, and our clients want to gain deeper insights to manage their power usage more analytically while also gaining necessary information for their regulatory filings. And of course, expense reduction is a big driver as well. A February 2024 article from McKenzie & Company stated that the telecom industry can expect 15 to 20% savings by more closely managing their utilities expense.1

In addition to these drivers, I’d say the number one reason our customers choose us is our commitment to doing whatever it takes to make sure there is no disruption to service – that’s our priority.

What’s required to avoid service disruptions, and how does TEOCO’s process differ from others?

Murtaza: Let me explain how other utility payment providers work in general. Let’s say I expect to receive a customer’s invoice from the power company, but it doesn’t arrive this month. The payment vendor would typically send an email to the utility provider, letting them know the invoice is missing. They might also copy the client’s email address so they’re in the loop. If they don’t’ receive a response after three days, they send another email, and maybe a third one as well. If there is still no invoice, most payment providers would say ‘Okay, we did our job. We’re going to move on.’ After two or three weeks, if the telecom company doesn’t step in with an expedited payment triggered by being copied on an email, there is a disconnect. The power goes out and the network, or a store, or an office are impacted.

TEOCO doesn’t stop until we solve the issue. If we don’t have an invoice and the utility provider is not responding, we won’t rest until we understand why we don’t have an invoice. Was it sent to the wrong address? Has a site been made inactive? We will check for internal trouble tickets or call the utility provider or landlord to follow up. Our specialized “911 team” resolves these urgent issues fast. They are the first point of contact for anything that requires immediate attention. Whatever the issue is, we will work until it’s resolved. Our job is to cover all the bases and protect our clients from disconnects, because when these core services stop, business gets disrupted.

What type of technology do you use for your utility expense management services?

Murtaza: SmartCOGS is the technology our invoice processing team uses – it’s powered by TEOCO’s carrier-grade BillTrak analytics software, which includes over 2,200 AI-powered bots, allowing us to process all the different invoice types more efficiently. We built BillTrak to analyze and process wholesale telco invoices – which often include different services and hundreds of pages of call details records. While, in comparison, utility invoices are much simpler, we can provide our customers with the benefit of a proven audit framework.
Clients also have instant access to real-time payment data through our user dashboard, providing all the information they need, whenever they need it, along with regular reporting. These include weekly operational reports, as well as quarterly consumption and sustainability reports. All of this is included as an integral part of our service.

For more information about TEOCO’s Telco Utility Cost Management Services, visit us at: www.teoco.com/utility-expense-management/.

 

1. “The growing imperative of energy optimization for telco networks,” Feb. 23, 2024, By Javier Gil Gómez, Aleksander Matlok, Tiago Silveira, and Lieven Verboven.