Hyperautomated

Vendor Expense Management

David Sonenstein

VP Product Strategy
AMI Strategies

AMI Strategies

About AMI

Company Background

Orchestrating Confidence in Enterprise Vendor Spend Since 1991

The AP & IT Finance Challenge

Rising Cost of Data Entry Labor

Adding & retaining staff for this type of work is more challenging than ever:

  • Manual & Repetitive
  • Unrewarding
  • High Turnover

Complexity & Depth of Critical Vendor Invoices

Hundreds to thousands of pages with tens of thousands of recurring and non-recurring cost items make it difficult to:

  • Categorize costs logically cross-provider
  • Quickly identify and address exceptions
  • Carve out provider billing errors

Valuable Data that
Slips Through the Cracks

Standard AP processes do not capture or catalog granular and invoice contents that would provide tremendous value to other departments

Insourcing Specialists Increases TCO

Staffing individuals who understand your vendors’ business practices increases your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and detracts from core business functions

Build vs. Buy

Building in-house vendor management tools leads to focusing on invoice process and data quality issues rather than managing costs

Money Left On the Table

Assumption that if the cost is funded by the PO, that those costs are accurate and in-line with the contract

Big-Ticket Vendor Management

Outsourced
Knowledge-as-a-Service

Best practices gained from 32 years working daily in multiple client environments 

Pre-Built Automations, Normalizations & Integrations

Purpose-built to normalize, inventory, audit, and allocate at scale allowing in-house teams to focus on content and  exceptions rather than wasting time on the process

Single Source of Truth
for Inventory & Costs

One pane of glass to view all dimensions of your vendor relationships

Change Management
Delivered Via ServiceNow

Centralized MACD & CMDB administration delivered via scoped, certified applications

Never Pay More Than
Than You're Supposed To

Complete confidence, transparency and accountability for every dollar spent

Hyperautomation that
Outperforms the Norm

Doing more than humanly possible

Easy-button-2

Hyperautomation

[ hahy-per-aw-tuh-mey-shuhn ]

Hyperautomation is a business-driven, disciplined approach that organizations use to rapidly identify, vet and automate as many business and IT processes as possible. Hyperautomation involves the orchestrated use of multiple technologies, tools or platforms, including:

  • Artificial intelligence (AI)
  • Machine learning
  • Event-driven software architecture
  • Robotic process automation (RPA)
  • Business process management (BPM)
  • Integration platform as a service (iPaaS)
  • Low-code/no-code tools
  • Packaged software
  • Other types of decision, process and task automation tools

AMI Vendor Hyperautomation
Delivered as a Managed Service

SmartCMDB™

Fully Automated Invoice-Based Inventory

Completed within minutes of invoice load
All invoice attributes are automatically populated into inventory
Any changes to rates, fees, service statuses, or assets are flagged
We know when change happens even if we are not involved

Enriched with Enterprise & External Data

Spend and Usage is Fortified with Data from Other Sources

Contractual terms and conditions
Business ownership and end user data (HRIS)
Cost center and general ledger data
Equipment and hardware details
Software and applications
Maintenance and other associated services
Projects and business outcomes (TBM)

SmartAudit™

Audit, Optimize & Dispute

Completed within minutes of invoice load
All flagged items are reviewed by analysts
Valid items are linked to Contract Profile including contract page number
Invalid items are managed as a dispute with vendor until it's resolved

  • Comparison Audits
  • Trending Audits
  • Usage Audits
  • Usage Trend Audits
  • Contractual Audits
  • Inventory Audits
  • Opportunity Audits
  • Custom Audit Rules

Automated Financial Operations

Allocate, Approve & Pay

Completed within minutes of invoice load
Runs in parallel with SmartAudit™
Cost Center/GL coding at lowest granular level
Threshold-based approval options for automation
ERP integration
Diversity spend attribution for invoice payment services

Change Management

Moves, Adds, Changes & Deletes

Scoped, certified ServiceNow applications
Plug and play implementations
Prebuilt workflows designed for category-specific MACD Bidirectionally integrated CMDB
Adds spend and usage to ITAM programs
All the good of ServiceNow without the limitations

Automated to the Hilt

Carrier, Sustainability, Service Provider and ERP APIs/RPAs

Instantaneous transactions
No waiting for service desks
No swivel-chair
Forced accuracy

Delivering the Right Business Outcomes

Reliable Outsourced Domain Expertise

Because in-house resources are expensive and hard to find

Reclaimed Capacity

Because industrial strength technologies are more efficient than in-house tools

Predictability with Variable-Cost Providers

So customers are never blindsided by fees or unexpected service experiences

Never Paying More Than You're Supposed To

Savings turn into cost avoidance if TEMs like us are doing their job

Our Expertise

Network & Telecom

Your Global Source of Truth for Telecom Owners, Inventory & Spend

  • Lower your telecommunications costs through benchmarking, consolidation, forensic audits and ongoing analysis
  • Automate your financial operations around telco
  • Centralize your change management activities
  • Bidirectionally integrated with ServiceNow

Managed Mobility

Because the Only Constant in Mobility is Change
  • Create predictability in your wireless spend month over month
  • Implement an accurate source of truth for inventory, usage, and spend that’s always up to date
  • Optimize your current mobility spend and implement cost-avoidance measures
  • API integrated with all major US carriers
  • MDM consulting, licensing, implementation and support

Cloud Management

A Single Management Console for your Public & Private Clouds
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Amazon AWS
  • Google GCP
  • VMware
  • Private Cloud
  • And more!

Utility & Sustainability

Smart Sustainability Decisions Begin With Good Data
  • Create the baseline and maintain an ongoing database of utility usage and spend across all locations
  • Define targets and measure results
  • Identify outliers and prioritize improvements
  • Compatible with all major sustainability reporting frameworks

ServiceNow Consulting

The Right Partner at the Right Time
  • Source ServiceNow Licenses
  • Provide best practices and design the right solution
  • Jump in to in-flight or stalled projects
  • Add developers to your existing bench
  • Project manage your roadmap
  • Develop, configure, deploy and maintain

Managed Automations

Your Easy Button for Automating Business Processes
  • Advice on what automation tech makes sense, and which don’t
  • Automate data retrieval from multiple sources
  • Abstract, transform and normalize data from multiple sources
  • Eliminate manual data entry and errors

Without Automation

Big-Ticket Vendor Management

Giving Customers Control Over Their Most Expensive Vendor Relationships

Deep Bench of Domain Expertise

32 years experience working daily with multiple client environments 

Our Clients Never Pay More Than They're Supposed To

And we offer historical forensic audits that help fund our go-forward services

We Eliminate the Manual Busywork Around Vendor Management

Allowing customers to scale their existing talent and keep them engaged

A Single Source of Truth

One pane of glass to view all dimensions of your vendor relationships

ServiceNow Savvy

We own and operate a ServiceNow consulting business

We Do More Than Humanly Possible

Hyperautomation is in our DNA 

Let's Go!

David Sonenstein

VP Product Strategy

(303) 641-4996

dsonenstein@amistrategies.com

My Background

  • 2001 – Started my career in Telecom/Tech (Allegiance, Sprint, Level 3)
  • 2009 – Accepted my first position in TEM (Visage Mobile, Ezwim, Blueprint, AMI)
  • 2017 – Joined ETMA Executive Board
  • 2021 – Joined AMI to start Extractbots™ as General Manager
  • 2022 – Joined AMI Executive Team as VP Product Strategy

What is
Vendor Expense Management?

What is
Vendor Expense Management?

A Good "VEM" Program is Defined by the
Business Outcomes
it Delivers

What People Say

AMI's Automation Evolution

32 Years of Deploying Cutting-Edge Automations Throughout our Operations

Invoice Lifecycle Management

Typical Financial Process

Production per Hour

4 Hours Work = 12 x 1-Page Invoices, 2 Line Items per Invoice

+ 5min-1hr Per Fallout Issue

Manual & Repetitive

Unrewarding Work

Easy to Miss Invoices

Late Fees & Avoidable Charges

Potential Service Disruptions

Only Checking for PO Funding

Forensic Telecom Audit

HIstorical Errors Beyond Commercial Terms

Oracle & SAP Savings Opportunities

License Management & Optimization Services
oracle

Microsoft Savings Opportunities

License Management & Optimiation Services

SD-LAN
Services

Hardware Agnostic LAN Management Solutions

Real-Time Network Monitoring

Network Monitoring, Alerting & Reporting Services

Benchmarking & Sourcing Services

$24B Telecom Benchmarking Database

End User Helpdesk

TIer 1, 2 & 3 Support by Phone, Ticket & Chat

Optimization Services

Quarterly Pool Management with Monthly Monitoring

MDM/UEM Support

Consulting, Licensing, Deployment & Support

Deployment Services

Carrier Migrations, Device Refreshes, Staging & Kitting

Device
Repair

Complete Coverage for All Types of Physical Damage

Advanced Exchange

Depot, Overnight Replacements & RMA Management

Device Recycling

Device Buy-Backs, Secure Data Wipes & Disposition

Non-Standard Devices

Certified Refurbished, Kiosks & IoT Sensor Devices

Historical Forensic Auditing

Historical errors, overcharges & incentive programs

Proactive Invoice Acquisition

Proactive management of missing, late & duplicate invoices

Eliminate Late Fees & Shutoffs

Create opportunities
for early payment
discounts

Sustainability Baseline Creation & Maintenance

All the data you
want, right at your
fingertips

ENERGY STAR
Portfolio Manager Benchmarking

Compare your buildings' performance against similar buildings nationwide

ENERGY STAR Building Emissions Calculator

Calculate your buildings' greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

Manual Equivalent of AMI's Automation

Customer Case Study

Invoice Retrieval: 

27.08 Hours

PO Verification & Financial Allocation:  

93.75 Hours

Approving Invoices for Payment: 

97.08 Hours

Sub Total: 218 Hours (5.5 FTEs) + 5-60min per P2P Fallout Issue

Accurate Organizational Chargebacks

1,000.8 Hours

Complete Validation of All Cost Items: 

3,543.2 Hours

Additional Time: 4,544 Hours (113.5 FTEs) + 5-60min per Disputable Charge

Total Time to Replicate AMI's Automation?

119 FTEs

To Achieve Complete Cost Assurance & Accountability

Fractured Inventory

Invoice
Cost & Usage Details

General Ledger
Cost Centers

Human Resources
Business Owners

Procurement
Contracted Rates & Terms

IT Asset Management
Hardware Details

MDM/UEM
Software & Applications

Information Security
Policies

Information Technology
Backup & Maintenance Services

Invoices Audited for Funding
(Not Accuracy)

Are the Invoiced Rates & Discounts In-Line with the Contract?
Are There New, Changed, or Missing Cost Items?
Are There Any Unusual Cost or Usage Spikes?
Am I Paying for Services That are Not Being Used?
Are There Fees or Surcharges I Can Avoid?

WOB_LONG_INFO_REVERSE_RGB

AMI's Average Turnaround

Across All Customers, Categories & Invoices Processed

Before Invoice Due Date

Fully Allocated

Fully Audited

Sent to AP for Approval and/or Payment

Self-Service Portal

BuiltonNow-white
Screenshot 2023-01-06 at 2.14.34 PM

All Credits Allocated Back

GL Codes , Cost Centers, Departments

EndofLifeServices

Device Refresh

Recovery Management

Certified Data Erasure

Recovery Management

Reuse & Redeployment

Cosmetic Grading

Diagnostic Testing

Reselling & Remarketing

Employee Buy Programs

Corporate Donations

AMI's Cloud Management Test Drive

Ready to see AMI's Cloud Management in action? Take a test drive with your existing cloud providers to see how easy it is to manage one or more public or private cloud environments
What We'll Need:
  • About 30 minutes with you appropriate cloud technical owners to establish the appropriate data feeds with your providers
What to Expect:
  • Pre Analysis: A quick call to learn a few things about your current environment and coordinate establishing the right data feeds. 
  • Post Analysis: A call once the analysis is complete to review your data in the AMI system.
What We'll Review:
  • A tour of your normalized cloud data in the AMI platform.
  • Rightsizing recommendations based on CPU, RAM and Storage for sizing, power state, and reserved instances in public cloud environments.
  • Identified security vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and other anomalies. 
  • An overview on how you can deploy 150x faster with role based access controls and group designations with built-in guardrails such as predefined catalogs and security policies.
Get Started Now:

Service Provider APIs & RPAs

Available 24/7
Instantaneous Transactions
Forced Accuracy
Faster Turnaround & Delivery

Allocate

Copied from Previous Period
& Fallout Flagged
for Analyst Follow Up

Approve

Settings Available for
Threshold-Based
Auto Approval to ERP

Pay

vCard, ACH or Check
90-Day Currency Lock
Diversity Spend Attribution

Apps

ServiceNow_technology-partner_logo_white-3
Scoped, Certified Apps for Plug & Play Implementation
on your ServiceNow Instance

Options

ServiceNow_MSP-partner_logo_white-2
Available for Customers Without an Existing ServiceNow Implementation

Know-How

ServiceNow_service-partner_logo_white-2
Solution Architects,
Design, Development, Deployment & Maintenance
BuiltonNow-white

SmartAudit™

Invoice Audited
Contract Terms, Allocations, Usage, Trending, Inventory, Cost Items, Opportunities
& Custom Audit Rules

Validation

Flags Researched
Valid Rates are Linked to Page and Paragraph in Contractual Document in the
AMI Contract Manager

Negotiation

Disputes Managed
Progress Tracked
in Real Time
and Credits are Validated
on Subsequent Invoices

Inventory Enrichment

One Pane of Glass For:

Business Owners

Spend & Usage

Policies

Cost Centers

Hardware Details

Periphery Services

Contracted Rates

Software & Apps

Maintenance Services

Master
Invoice Schedule

Never Misses Invoices & Identifies Duplicates

Automated Invoice Retrieval

RPA, API, EDI & BDF Technologies

Granular
Data Extraction

Lowest-level Cost & Usage Data

SmartCMDB™
Invoice Inventories

ETL: Inventories Invoice & Flags Changes
Rates, Fees, Quantities, Assets, Service Status, Entities, Addresses, Identifiers & Relationships

Schedule Time with an
AMI Partner Specialist

We will connect you with partner specialist to discuss:
  • What you are looking to achieve with an AMI partnership
  • Partnership options
  • Next steps
freelancer

Never Miss an Invoice

Predictive & proactive

Do More Than Humanly Possible

Exponential processing capability that forces accuracy

Keep Your Staff Engaged

Scale your talent by managing exceptions, not minutia

Fearless Change Management

Fully integrated with your inventory and validated for cost accuracy

Single Source of Truth

View all dimensions of your vendor relationships in one pane of glass

Never Pay More Than You're Supposed to

Complete confidence, transparency & accountability for every dollar spent

AMI's
Utility & Sustainability

Test Drive

Through our Utility & Sustainability Test Drive, you decide what you would like us to do.

We load three months of gas, water, and power invoices from your largest facilities through our platform. Then, our analysts review the results and prepare a summary of their findings.
What We'll Need:
  • Three months of your PDF invoices from any carrier in your environment (domestic and/or global)
What to Expect:
  • Pre Analysis: A quick call to learn a few things about your current environment and coordinate securely sharing your invoice data with us.
  • Post Analysis: A call once the analysis is complete to review our findings.
Option 1: Sustainability Baselining:
Complimentary review providing you:
  • A tour of your data in the AMI platform, detailing granular site-by-site energy consumption and spend.
  • Quick identification of usage spikes based on trending data
  • Avoidable spend savings 
  • An overview on how you can create targets, measure results, identify outliers and prioritize improvements.
  • A demonstration of how easy it is to integrate Scope 2 consumption data directly from our system to any desired environmental reporting framework.
Option 2: Historical Utility Audit:
Contingency-based audit that analyzes:
  • Site-by-site energy consumption and spend
  • Historical billing and tariff errors
  • Benchmarking recommendations
  • Underutilized tax incentives
  • Other state, local, and federal programs you qualify for
  • Alternative utility provider options (deregulated markets)
  • Green energy alternatives
  • Anything else that jumps off the page
Choose One or Both Options - Get Started Now:

Schedule Time with an
AMI ServiceNow Specialist

We will connect you with an expert to discuss how AMI can help you achieve your ServiceNow goals

Schedule Time with an
Managed Automation Specialist

We will connect you with a specialist to discuss:
  • Your current environment
  • The manual business process you want to automate
  • Automation solutions that make sense, and ones that don’t

AMI's
Complimentary
Mobility Health Check

Through this analysis, we run your latest three mobility invoices through the AMI platform. Then, our analysts review the results and prepare a personalized summary of their findings.
What We'll Need:
  • Three months of your PDF invoices from any carrier in your environment (domestic and/or global)
What to Expect:
  • Pre Analysis: A quick call to learn a few things about your current environment and coordinate securely sharing your invoice data with us.
  • Post Analysis: A call once the analysis is complete to review our findings.
What We Typically Review:
Recommendations on:
  • Domestic data & voice pool optimization 
  • Standalone & bundled plan optimization
  • Zero/low/high usage devices, plans & features
  • Overages & usage charges
  • 3rd party charges
  • Situational savings (early termination fees, activation fees, late fees, etc.)
  • Anything else that jumps off the page
Get Started Now:

AMI's Historical Telecom Audit

Through this contingency-based analysis, AMI can assist you in reducing your IT budget or unlocking new funds to pursue other projects through a complete MRI of your largest telecom service providers.
What We'll Need:
  • Three months of your PDF invoices from the largest carriers in your environment (domestic and/or global)
What to Expect:
  • Pre Analysis: A quick call to learn a few things about your current environment and coordinate securely sharing your invoice data with us.
  • Post Analysis: A call once the analysis is complete to review our findings.
What We Typically Review:
  • An extensive review consisting of thousands of automated audits that hunt for savings based on known billing errors, NNI/UNI/EVC correlations, filling in data from FCC databases/LERG/NECA/other industry databases, benchmark savings, service provider consolidation, and modernization savings.
How Far Back in TIme Can AMI Dispute Identified Billing Errors?
  • In most cases two years, but in some cases up to seven years.
Get Started Now:

Discover
Something Great

Book a time below and select any of our practices that interest you

Big, Complex Invoices

change-mobility3

Mobility & UEM

inventory-2

Network & Telecom

smart-sustainability-2

Utility Providers

one-screen-3

Public/Private Cloud

Hundreds to Thousands of Invoice Pages

Tens of Thousands of Cost Items

Mission Critical Services

Cross-Department Business Accountability

Impossibly Labor Intensive to Audit

Easy to Leave Money on the Table

5 Minutes Per Invoice

Manual Invoice Retrieval & Processing

Web Portal Download
Locating in Email
Scanning from Paper

12 Invoices = 1 Hour of Manual Work

Missed or Improperly Processed Invoices Create Service Disruption Risk

CostManagement

Monthly Invoice Audit Against Contract
Monthly Change Validation
Monthly Review of Preventable Costs
Quarterly Zero Usage Plans/Device/Features Review
Quarterly Pool Optimization with Monthly Overage Monitoring

WOB_LONG_INFO_REVERSE_RGB

AssetManagement

End User Requests & Approval Routing
Ties Devices to HRIS Employee Data & Organizational Groupings
Employee & Department/Group Inventories
Allocation Details Captured at Request Level
Spare Device Pool/Depot Management
Employee Onboarding & Offboarding
Monitors Hardware to Employee Status

MobileThreatDefense

All Threats

Malware
Phishing
Zero-Days
Ransomware

Data Leakage
Account Take-Over
Man-in-the-Middle
Bot Attacks

All Vectors

Malicious Emails
Malicious Websites
Rogue Networks/Apps

Theft or Loss
USB
Human Error

All Devices

Corporate Owned

BYOD

DeviceControl

Full-Service MDM/UEM Solutions

Ongoing Administrative Support (Settings/Config Changes)
Locking/Unlocking/Wipe/Erase End User Devices
Application Administration, Deployment & Restriction by Group
Device to Application Issue Resolution
Easy Website Bookmarking, Whitelisting & Blacklisting
OS/Application Forced Updates or Deferrals
Location of Corporate Owned Devices
Security Policy Enforcement
Kiosk Mode (Locking a Device to a Set of Applications)

HelpDesk

Multicarrier
8x5x5 to 24/7/365 Options
Tier 2 Support for Services Specifically Defined
General Issue Diagnosis & Resolution
Device Email Support
Device Disposition, Recycling, Buy Back
Carrier Liaison for Issues
Break/Fix Support
Term-Based & Project-Based Options

FulfilmentServices

Provisioning

Porting

Transfer of Liability

MDM/EMM Config

Profile/Policy Enablement

Application Loading

Restriction Policies

Settings Management

Accessory Pairing

Asset Receiving & Tracking

Staging & Imaging

Kitting

Reporting

Training Documentation

OrderPortal

API Integrated with All Major US Carriers

Big, Deep & Complex Invoices

change-mobility3

Mobility & UEM

inventory-2

Network & Telecom

smart-sustainability-2

Utility Providers

one-screen-3

Public/Private Cloud

Hundreds to Thousands of Invoice Pages

Tens of Thousands of Cost Items

Mission Critical Services

Cross-Department Business Accountability

Impossibly Labor Intensive to Audit

Easy to Leave Money on the Table

Pop-up in a pop-up!

5-60 Minutes Per Issue

Managing Unexpected Cost Items

Anomaly Research
Evidence Collection
Dispute Process

6 Anomalies = 30-120 Minutes of Manual Work

Requiring Verification in Multiple Systems and Managed by Phone or Email

5 Minutes Per Invoice

Manual Approvals & Payments

Emails
Phone Calls
Initiating Payment by Paper Check or ACH

12 Invoices = 1 Hour of Manual Work

Slow Approval & Payment Processes Result in Late Fees & Service Disruption Risk

5 Minutes Per Page

Financial GL Code Cost Allocation

12 Pages = 1 Hour of Manual Work

Reporting is Limited to Financial Structure, Not Business Structure

3 Minutes Per Line Item

Manually Checking Against the PO

10 Line Items = 1/2 Hour of Manual Work