At Cymer, for example, says CIO Haught, "we're still trying to work out some of the basic strategies, and we need to get down to data for that. Once we have a sustainable operation, we can push further into managed services."

To help figure out his current telecom landscape, Haught hired telecom expense management firm Avotus as a consultant. Regis's Wiens did the same, hiring American Business Communication to figure out what was already in place.

Choosing Outside Help

With their internal telecom house in order, CIOs can face the next challenge: finding the right technology and services to manage telecom expenses and assets. That's not simple. You can currently choose from more than 120 vendors and as an industry, these companies are as fragmented as the enterprises. The industry started with billing management, helping accounting payables groups manage invoices, and in some cases, supporting contract negotiation. But that billing focus is misplaced today, says Elisabeth Rainge, a director at IDC (a sister company to CIO's publisher). She recommends that CIOs look at telecom expense vendors that also offer management and analysis services. "A focus on management pays off more for IT since it aligns [telecom approaches] with business goals," Rainge says.

Today, only about 30 of the telecom expense management providers handle that full range of telecom services, covering at least the first five parts of Aberdeen's six-stage telecom lifecycle, Basili says.

Before diving into the pool of vendors, CIOs should figure out which of three deployment models best fits their enterprise's culture and resources, says Kathleen Adams, a research director at Gartner. Those models are do-it-yourself, joint management with a vendor, and complete outsourcing. Complete outsourcing is most popular, followed by joint management. Least popular is the self-service approach, in which the enterprise installs telecom management software and relies on a vendor only for delivering regularized bill feeds from the carriers, Basili says, because this requires the most in-house resources. (In all models, you have access to billing data and analysis, and sign-off on payments.)

Regis's Wiens uses the complete-outsourcing model for his voice lines, because it would be too costly to develop the internal resources to manage them. (He has very few data or cellular lines, so his group manages those internally.) Thus he used American Business Communication to inventory the telecom equipment in place, figure out what services were necessary and unnecessary, recommend a consolidated set of providers, and negotiate the contracts, saving approximately $5 million during the past five years. "We didn't know how to negotiate all the contracts with each of the telecoms. Their contracts are the most complex we've ever seen," he says.