eBusiness and eProcurement

The key attraction of MDSL's telecom expense management solution lies in its ability to help companies improve and automate their existing working practices and share with employees the up-to-date information necessary to do their job successfully. eBusiness and eProcurement applications place business managers in the driving seat and allow telecom and finance managers to focus beyond the daily complexities, and deliver higher value. As a result, your organisation will:

• Reduce costs on a recurring basis
• Increase productivity surrounding telecom cost management processes
• Ensure spend visibility across the whole organisation
• Reduce risk and improve manager control

Using web portal applications, eBusiness and eProcurement applications offer the ability to automate tasks, share information and streamline telecom cost management processes. As well as adding accountability and control to human processes and system activities, they provide further efficiency gains by managing access to different kinds of data:

• Reporting and Business Intelligence

  Online Portal

  A user friendly web interface for end-users and managers to easily analyse usage, view inventory, request new services or change services. The portal becomes an easy to use operational tool when you want to declare the loss of a mobile, change your profile or need for a faster ADSL link at home.

  Managers can track their team's requests, usage, ranking and other cost tranparency information for better cost governance.

  The MDSL's Online Portal is more that a simple reporting tool – it represents the window between users and internal IT.

  Corporate Vision

  A personalised business intelligence environment with a simple-to-use dashboard interface.

  • Personalised dashboards inform corporate users of current performance and trends.
  • Access to expanded data sources keeps your telecom cost management decisions aligned with corporate goals.
  • Build attractive, interactive dashboards quickly.

  Personalized information

  • Drag-and drop-interface lets you create dashboards on the fly.
  • Modular report creation lets you build dashboards using existing report elements.

  Operational dashboards

  • Track core operational processes with continuous data refreshes.
  • Monitor ongoing operation parameters.

  Strategic dashboards/Scorecards

  • Monitor execution of corporate strategic objectives at each level of the organization.
  • Track progress against strategic corporate goals.
  • Map key connections among departments and cause-and-effect relationships between or across departments.
  • Drill-down to reports and analysis for additional information or context.

  Multi-Dimensional Reports

  Many analysts in organizations have a need to deliver summarized telecom cost management information that goes beyond the basics that come from dashboards or operational reports.

  For example, for tariff optimisation, a company might wish to analyze some financial data by type of calls, by time-period, by city, by destinations and by comparing actual data with a budget.

  A financial analyst might want to view or "pivot" the data in various ways, such as displaying all the countries down the page and all the call type (mobile to mobile, VOIP breakout…) across a page. This could be for a specified period, version and type of expenditure. Having seen the data in this particular way the analyst might then immediately wish to view it in another way.

• Request and Procurement Management (RPM)

  Automating the request for new telecom services is a major part of a successful TEM solution. Delivered through the Online Portal the Request and Procurement Manager ia a web-based, self service eProcurement application for end users and managers – as well as tier approval and workflow for purchase authorization. End users can request services from an easy to use and secure browser interface choosing from a catalogue of services and equipment that you control.

  • A unique interface for all request services across the world.
  • Presentation of the local catalogue according to user location.
  • Price showed in preferred currency – which can be modified by user.
  • Automation of all eProcurement activities across your vendors (wireless, fixed or services)
  • Personal order tracking improves user visibility of the process.
  • Managers can order on behalf of their end users.
  • Ensures compliance with internal policy.

  The RPM solution delivers a flexible and secure platform which provides an easy-to-use requisitioning and eProcurement capability for handling telecom assets. Alongside MDSL’s TEM system, RPM offers a complete telecom Procure-To-Pay solution.

• Self-Certification

  The Self-Certification module allows financial or telecom managers to communicate internal costs to business managers for service validation and cost approval. Helping them to optimise and significantly reduce their spend.

• Call Tagging

  MDSL’s Call Tagging module is designed to help organisations better manage their mobile phone spending. Vodafone research* has shown that for every 500 handsets, companies spend £64k ($128k) per year trying to manage, identify and recover personal call charges. The module lets employees see their monthly call record online and mark calls as either business-related or personal, cutting administration costs by up to 90%.

  * Vodafone Research, July 2006. Sample base: 7,500 large sized companies (over 250 employees). On average 1000 hours a month was spent across an organisation (with 500 company provided mobile phones) managing bills.

• Budgeting & Forecasting Management

  MDSL’s Budget Management module puts financial controllers firmly in control of Business Unit historical services spend by making information visible, available and accessible in real-time to the people involved in the budgeting process. Financial controllers can create rules for next year’s budget, simulate future budgets and seek approval from relevant people. When budgets are approved, information can be communicated to the General Ledger and automatically updated in the MDSL application for regular budget management reporting for the next year.

• Customised BPA solutions

  Because customers always have additional requirements, MDSL offers an extensive range of consulting, design and support services to develop, implement, and maintain tailored BPA solutions.