Technology Expense Management

That Doesn't Feel So Temmy

David Sonenstein

VP Product Strategy
AMI Strategies

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
Previous
Next

What is TEM?

Other than Totally & Exceptionally Mundane

A Good TEM Program is Defined by the
Business Outcomes
it Delivers

What Business Outcomes Should You Expect from a Good TEM Program?

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

But Let's Talk About You

Wheel of Fortune

Where You Capture Revenue Today

Complex Invoices Create Complex Labor Problems for your Clients

Keeping Clients Happy & Running a Successful Agency Also Takes a lot of Manual Work from your Team

Including:

  • Gathering client requirements for quotes
  • Processing client orders and contracts
  • Project managing client implementations
  • Auditing client invoices for accuracy
  • Maintaining an accurate service inventory
  • Assisting clients with issues and escalations
  • Auditing your commissions for accuracy

What if Your
Business Outcomes Were:

1. Saving both you and your clients time and labor expense

2. 100% visibility into your clients’ contract terms

2. Fully automated invoice audits in under 3 minutes

3. Fully automated service inventory creation and management

4. Unlocking new budget so clients can purchase more

5. Creating new revenue streams around already sold services

6. Quickly identifying new opportunities for your brokerage

7.  Helping your clients scale their existing staff through automation

8. Fully automated commission validation

AMI Strategies

About AMI

Company Background

Orchestrating Confidence in Enterprise Vendor Spend Since 1991

We Assist "Between Signatures"

In the Areas that are Labor Intensive

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

Big-Ticket Vendor Management

Connectivity, Voice, Collaboration, Energy, Cloud & SaaS

Outsourced
Knowledge-as-a-Service

Deep expertise administering Telecom, Wireless, Cloud, Utility, ServiceNow, & Managed Automation environments that alleviates the burden of in-house effort and attention.

Automated Financial Operations

Complete automation of invoice lifecycle from invoice collection, to audit, to coding, to approval and payment.

Comprehensive Service Provider Inventories

Contractual terms are married with auto-populated invoiced rates and assets and then enriched with enterprise data for 360-degree visibility into users, groups, and locations and their corresponding assets, software, services, usage, and costs.

Cost Containment for Variable-Cost Vendors

Category-specific audits, right-sizing, and dispute management services to ensure you never pay more than you’re supposed to with variable-cost vendors and service providers.

Change Management Delivered Via ServiceNow

Scoped, certified ServiceNow applications that centralize change management for existing and non-existing ServiceNow customers.

Hyperautomation that Outperforms the Norm

RPA, AI, ML, API, EDI and ITSM baked into our operations that outperforms traditional inhouse vendor-management processes and procedures.

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

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

What Do You Need
To Get Started?

Three Easy Things

1

Access to Your Clients’ Invoices

2

Access to Your Client’s’ Contracts

3

Permission to Share that Information with AMI

Let's Go!

David Sonenstein

VP Product Strategy

(303) 641-4996

dsonenstein@amistrategies.com

Self-Service Portal

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

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

WOB_LONG_INFO_REVERSE_RGB

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

Cart

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

Discover
Something Great

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

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:

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:

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

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

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 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

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:

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

Inventory Enrichment

One Pane of Glass For:

Business Owners

Spend & Usage

Policies

Cost Centers

Hardware Details

Periphery Services

Contracted Rates

Software & Apps

Maintenance Services

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

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

Pop-up in a pop-up!

Click here

Service Provider APIs & RPAs

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

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

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

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

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

3 Minutes Per Line Item

Manually Checking Against the PO

10 Line Items = 1/2 Hour of Manual Work

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

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

5-60 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

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