Most enterprises think their telecom inventory is more centralized than it actually is. The evidence usually shows up in the first hour of working with them. Someone confidently opens a spreadsheet, and within a few minutes we find circuits that are billing but not listed, sites that are not in the file, and a column labeled “notes” that turns out to be doing a lot of the actual work.
If any of the following sound familiar, your inventory is probably not the single source of truth you think it is.
Sign 1: It Lives in a Spreadsheet
Not “it started in a spreadsheet.” Lives. Present tense. If the file has a version number in the filename, if someone has to email you the latest copy, if you have ever had a moment of “wait, is this the current version,” it is not really an inventory. It is a document.
Real inventories update from invoice data automatically. If the source of truth requires a human to remember to update it, humans will forget.
Sign 2: It's Owned By One Person
Ask around. Who owns the inventory? If the answer is one name, that is the sign. It is not a criticism of that person. They are probably the only reason the inventory exists at all. But when a company depends on one person to know what circuits are running where, that is a governance problem, not a knowledge problem.
If the person owning the inventory leaves next quarter, does anyone else know how to keep it accurate? Does anyone else know the shorthand in the notes column? Does anyone else know which sites they were about to add?
Sign 3: Site-Level Services Aren't in It
Corporate telecom inventories almost always focus on enterprise services. WAN circuits, MPLS, the big-ticket items. What tends to be missing is everything at the edges. Guard desk internet. Kiosk connectivity. The service running the badge readers at the loading dock. The temporary line at the construction site that everyone forgot to turn off after the build finished.
These services do not feel important individually. They are individually small. Collectively, they add up to real money, and they are the ones most likely to cause a disconnection incident because nobody is watching them.
Sign 4: You Can't Answer "What Is This Circuit For?"
Pull a random invoice from your largest carrier. Pick a line item. Can you tell:
- Which site it serves?
- Which contract governs its rate?
- Who the business owner is?
- Whether it is being used?
- Whether it is on the current agreed-upon rate?
If you can answer all five for every line, you have a real inventory. Most enterprises can answer two of the five, sometimes three. If you have to make a phone call to find out, you do not have inventory. You have vendor documentation.
Sign 5: New Circuits Show Up That Nobody Ordered
Or, more accurately, nobody remembers ordering. A new line item appears on an invoice one month. Somebody eventually asks about it. A carrier rep says it was ordered by someone who no longer works at the company. The paperwork is somewhere. Maybe.
This happens constantly. Not because carriers are billing you for services you did not order (occasionally they are, and that is a separate problem), but because your inventory is not tightly coupled to your ordering process. Someone at a regional site called the carrier directly and got a circuit installed. It happened. It is on your invoice now.
A real inventory catches this. A spreadsheet does not.
What "Actually Centralized" Looks Like
- One system that all invoices flow into.
- Every circuit tied to a vendor, an account, a contract, a site, and an owner.
- Automatic detection when something new appears or something disappears.
- Every business unit can look up their own services without asking IT.
- Finance can look up spend by site, by carrier, by service type, without exporting anything.
- New site opens? Circuit gets added to inventory before the first invoice arrives.
- Site closes? Circuit gets flagged for decommissioning before it stops being used.
That is what “clean inventory data” means. Understand what you have, where it is, and how much it costs. Everywhere. Centralized inventory data is the first pillar of a mature TEM program.
Not sure how many of the five signs apply to your environment? AMI can run a free service provider inventory report against your top carriers and show you the gaps. It usually takes about a week.
David Sonenstein - Vice President of Product Strategy
AMI Strategies
With over 20 years in the industry, David helps orchestrate AMI’s vision for vendor hyperautomation. While contributing to AMI’s adoption of automation technologies, system integrations and technology frameworks, his research focuses on enterprise market and technology trends and where automation solutions can help organizations achieve their desired business outcomes. He currently serves on the executive board of the Enterprise Technology Management Association (ETMA) and is an associate of the Technology Business Management (TBM) Council.
