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There are many telecom expense management (TEM) companies in existence today, but a recent Gartner (News - Alert) report for 2007, MarketScope for Telecom Expense Management, indicates that not all of them perform or are viewed equally. In fact, the IT research and advisory firm gave only three TEM providers its “strong positive” grade: Tangoe (News - Alert), Invoice Insight and Rivermine.

 

The findings in Gartner’s report will be discussed at the fourth annual National Summit on Telecom Expense Management, scheduled for June 2-3 in San Francisco, Voice Report said in a recent article.

 

And what findings might those be?

 

Voice Report said Gartner graded 17 other TEM providers as “positive” and nine others as “promising.” Below that, one company—Control Point Solutions (News - Alert)—was given a grade of “caution,” but none fell so low as to be graded “strong negative” by Gartner.

 

Altogether, Gartner gave grades to 21 TEM firms, just below the 23 it ranked in the 2006 edition of its MarketScope report. (In that report, three firms earned “strong positive” grades and two were graded “caution.”) The slight drop in total number of firms graded could be inconsequential, or possibly the result of a consolidation trend in the industry as TEM firms that previously specialized in wireline or wireless join forces.

 

Not surprisingly, Control Point disputed its “caution” grade, calling into question the validity of Gartner’s research. Voice Report quoted Control Point’s CEO, Bob McMullan (News - Alert), as saying the firm boasts some quite high-end clients (10 of them with more than $100 million in TEM spend under management by Control Point) and this indicates the company’s success.

 

McMullan blamed any decrease in number of client companies on mergers.

 

CEOs at other TEM firms left off Gartner’s list altogether, Voice Report said, also cried foul. These firms claim that, although there are more than 100 TEM providers in business today, they don’t all get an equal chance to compete because enterprise executives tend to pick vendors based on lists like Gartner’s.

 

In rebuttal, Voice Report quoted Gartner researcher Eric Goodness (whose name often comes up when TEM-related market intelligence is cited) as saying that company selections for the report are based on TEM firms enterprise clients of Gartner most often ask about, rather than the business relationship of these companies and their customers.

 

This debate will no doubt continue at the TEM National Summit in June, when TEM vendors vie for a better position in the market and CIOs/CEOs/other executives check out the exhibits and attend sessions to be come better educated about best practices for managing enterprise telecom spending.