Most Companies Ask the Wrong Question When Evaluating a TEM Partner
When an organization evaluates a new telecom expense management (TEM) provider, it usually asks questions like “What services do you offer?”, “What savings can you generate?” and “What does your platform look like?” But the most important question is one few people ask: “How do you actually deliver results?”
This may seem irrelevant as long as results are achieved, but the answer changes the whole outcome. It comes down to what is happening behind the interface: whether the processes are genuinely automated, partially automated, or dressed up to look automated while being largely manual underneath.
That difference determines the accuracy of your data, the reliability of your invoices, the speed of your operations and, ultimately, whether your TEM program delivers real business value or just a recurring report.
Why Invoice Processing Is Harder Than It Looks
Invoice processing is the core of any TEM program, and it is far more complex than most people realize. Large organizations deal with many vendors, invoices in different languages, large numbers of line items per invoice and different contract terms for each. Processing those invoices means handling many tasks at once: validating accuracy across thousands of line items, allocating costs across business units, securing payment approvals, reconciling payment records and resolving the exceptions that inevitably arise at every step.
The questions an effective audit and optimization process has to answer are deceptively simple:
- Are credits and discounts applied properly?
- Are disconnected services still appearing on invoices?
- Are payments applied to the right accounts?
- Are service plans aligned with actual consumption?
- Are assets and licenses still in active use?
Applied across thousands of line items, each of these questions represents an enormous operational burden, one that simply cannot be handled accurately and completely by people alone.
Manumation: The Detail That Makes a Big Difference
Many TEM providers claim to offer automated invoice processing but actually deliver something quite different: “manumated” processes. Manumation is a combination of manual work and automation that looks like the real thing on the surface but relies heavily on people underneath.
It typically works like this: an automated tool handles the visible, straightforward parts of the process, the ones that are easy to demo, while complex exceptions, edge cases and multi-step validations are quietly handled by people behind the scenes. The client sees dashboards and reports. What they don’t see is the team working to reconcile what the system missed.
The problem with manumation is not just that it is slower and more error-prone than real automation. It fundamentally limits what the partnership can deliver. When much of the processing depends on people, capacity becomes a constraint, errors become inevitable at scale and financial opportunities are consistently missed, because the process was never designed to handle the volume.
| Manumation | Real automation |
|---|---|
| A manual and automated hybrid presented as fully automated | End-to-end lifecycle automation with no manual gaps |
| Exceptions handled by people, not systems | Exceptions flagged and routed automatically |
| Capacity constrained by team size and availability | Capacity scales with the business, not the headcount |
| Financial opportunities consistently missed at scale | Financial opportunities identified in real time |
| Error rates increase as volume grows | Accuracy improves as volume and data grow |
| Results depend on individual performance | Results are consistent and auditable at every step |
The difference between these two models might seem small from the outside. It is not. People cannot execute every invoice processing decision required each month without making mistakes, and manumation consistently misses the financial opportunities that real automation would catch.
What Automation Unlocks: Three Types of Efficiency
Operational Efficiency
- Cost optimization: repeatable processes run automatically, freeing people to make higher-value decisions instead of executing routine tasks.
- Faster fulfillment: manual friction and delays in the request-to-delivery workflow are eliminated, speeding up service delivery to internal teams.
Financial Efficiency
- Reliable budgeting: accurate, real-time financial data on assets, services and licenses makes forecasting and budgeting far more dependable.
- Waste elimination: better audit and optimization outcomes reduce the financial waste that builds up when errors go undetected at scale.
Technical Efficiency
- Digital transformation: accurate, current data on assets, services and their actual usage accelerates technology transformation initiatives across the organization.
- Integration and visibility: a clearer understanding of the technology ecosystem enables better-informed, top-down technology decisions across the business.
Asignet in Practice: What the Numbers Look Like
The value of genuine automation is clearest in the results it produces for real organizations. Here is what Asignet’s platform delivered for one multinational enterprise in 2022.
The Environment
- 350+ vendors managed simultaneously
- Thousands of invoices received every month
- 100+ employees involved in the process
- Invoices in multiple languages and currencies
The Results
- Invoices in multiple languages processed in hours instead of days
- 98% validation accuracy, dramatically reducing manual intervention
- 30% gain in invoice processing efficiency
- 12% savings in contract negotiations through better accuracy, visibility and control
The 98% validation accuracy figure is particularly significant. In a manual or manumated environment, maintaining that level of accuracy across thousands of invoices every month is not realistic; the volume and complexity mean errors accumulate. Asignet’s RPA platform achieves it consistently, at scale and across multiple languages, because the validation logic is built into the automation rather than depending on individual human review.
What to Demand From Your TEM Partner
Knowing that manumation exists, and that it is often presented as full automation, changes how organizations should approach TEM partnerships. Transparency is not a nicety. It is a prerequisite for making informed decisions about what your program can realistically deliver.
- Dig deep into what is and isn’t automated. Ask specifically which steps in the invoice processing workflow are fully automated, which are partially automated and which require people. The answer reveals the actual capacity and reliability of the service.
- Ask to see the automation, not just the demo. A demo shows a polished interface. What you need to see is the workflow logic behind it: how exceptions are handled, how errors are caught and what happens when a billing item falls outside the standard rules.
- Invest in your own people alongside the technology. Automation is essential, but the people on your side who act on automated process outcomes are just as important. Building that internal capability turns a TEM program from a service you receive into a strategic function you own.
- Measure the right results. Audit and optimization savings tell one part of the story. Process efficiency gains, such as how quickly invoices are processed, how accurately they are validated and how much manual intervention is required, tell the rest. A complete picture of TEM program performance requires both.
The Asignet Platform
Asignet is a full-lifecycle IT expense and asset management provider. Our platform is built on patented robotic process automation (RPA) combined with AI and machine learning, designed specifically for the complexity of enterprise telecom, mobility, cloud and IT expense management. This is not generic automation applied to TEM. It is automation built from the ground up for the 10,000+ decisions that need to be made every billing cycle.
Our low-code platform, Wayfast, lets us adapt workflows to each client’s specific environment, so the automation fits the business rather than the business fitting the automation. And because the platform is genuinely end-to-end, our clients get the accuracy, speed and financial visibility that manumation cannot deliver.
“When we say 98% validation accuracy across thousands of invoices in multiple languages, those are not projected numbers. They are the results our platform produces in production environments, for real multinational organizations, every month. That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and the standard we believe every TEM partner should be held to.”
Jason Koenigsberg, President of Technology Expense Management, Asignet
Ask How, Not Just What
Many vendors claim to offer automated invoice processing, but that is often only half the picture. Full, end-to-end automation is what makes the real difference and produces the best measurable results.
Asking how a provider achieves results, not just what results it claims, is the question that separates average TEM partnerships from high-performing ones. The answer, and the evidence behind it, tells you more about the potential value of the relationship than any demo or savings forecast ever could.
Talk to Asignet and ask us how we deliver results.
