How to Tell If Anyone Is Actually Managing Your Technology Spend

Somebody on your team approved a technology invoice this month. Odds are nobody actually checked it against the contract you signed, the services you still have, or what you’re actually using. That’s not negligence, it’s just that reviewing invoices line by line has never been anyone’s specific job, it’s one task out of a hundred for whoever owns it.

Tommi Ellis is Channel Director at Intratem, a technology expense management company built around a human-led, data-backed approach to auditing telecom and technology bills against contracts, usage, and inventory. She’s seen $4,000 a month sitting unnoticed on a 270-line wireless account, and audits on larger accounts recover as much as $1.2 million a year. In this conversation, she and Max Clark get into why invoice approval and invoice validation are two different jobs, what happens to that knowledge when the one person who understood it leaves the company, and why a good contract can quietly stop being a good deal within a few years if nobody’s checking it.

Want the full six-point audit to run against your own next invoice? Read the full breakdown: https://www.itbroker.com/blog/technology-invoice-audit

Find Your Situation

• Your invoice approval process is really just someone recognizing the vendor name and clicking approve. Jump to 07:06
• You’ve signed with a vendor whose behavior is to bill you first and only credit you back once you catch the mistake yourself. Jump to 07:32
• The person who understands your vendor relationships and billing history is getting close to retirement, and nobody’s replaced that knowledge yet. Jump to 08:42
• You’ve canceled a service and never actually checked whether the next invoice reflected it. Jump to 29:18
• Nobody has ever compared your first invoice on a new service against the actual signed contract. Jump to 31:07
• Your CIO and your CFO are looking at the same technology spend problem and calling it two different things. Jump to 1:00:48
• You had a good contract three years ago and haven’t looked at it since. Jump to 1:06:39
• You’ve never heard the term MACD, and you’re not tracking any of the four things it stands for. Jump to 1:31:20

Chapters

• 03:24 What “technology expense management” actually means, not just phone bills
• 06:09 Why IT and finance both think TEM is the other person’s problem
• 07:32 How some vendors profit from you never checking the bill
• 08:42 What happens to your invoice knowledge when that one person leaves
• 29:18 You canceled the service. The carrier kept billing you anyway.
• 31:07 Why the first invoice on anything new is almost never right
• 1:00:48 Why “CIO problem” and “CFO problem” are actually the same problem
• 1:06:39 You can negotiate a great contract and still lose control of it in three years
• 1:31:20 MACD: the industry term for every kind of billing change worth tracking

What We Mentioned

• Intratem

About Tommi Ellis

Tommi Ellis is Channel Director at Intratem, where she was brought on this year to build out the company’s partner and channel program. Intratem positions itself as human-led and data-backed, auditing telecom and technology invoices against the contracts, inventory, and usage behind them rather than just processing the bill.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommi-ellis-3a92b0112 Company: https://intratem.com/

About Signed

Signed is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, sits down with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who’ve lived inside real enterprise tech deals. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast.

If you’re in the middle of a real tech decision and want someone in your corner, book an intro call at itbroker.com. Buy tech without regret.