Inventory

The inventory represents the foundation for a next generation telecom expense management solution. If well designed and maintained, an inventory system can provide organizations with a centralized, accurate database of all telecom assets, allowing for invoice and contract validation. The inventory is also a critical component in contract negotiations and network migrations, providing up-to-date knowledge of the assets in place at each location.

MBG understands the importance of having a detailed inventory and has developed a flexible inventory solution that allows large organizations to view all of its assets by type, location, and across vendors. The MBG Inventory solution has proven its value for the validation of contracts and invoices for the entire organization. Once the MBG Inventory solution is implemented, organizations will only pay for services they use and will have real-time knowledge of the assets in place.

An Inventory Solution Designed for Telecom Assets

The MBG Inventory solution can include any data field required. The information in the inventory is normalized across all vendors (ex. circuit type, router) to enable simple searching capabilities. Moreover, the data is normalized across all vendors to also enable robust reporting capabilities. A user has the ability to search for circuits by speed, or class of service without having to search by vendor. The standard fields for all vendors include: contract information, disconnect dates, and allocation of services down to the item level. Furthermore, the allocation of costs for an item in the inventory, such as a leased line, can be split among different cost centers depending on shared usage for chargeback.

Maintaining a Real-Time Inventory: Integration With Provisioning

The MBG Inventory solution integrates with MBG's Provisioning solution to manage and track service requests, and maintain an up-to-date inventory. This is a key feature of the MBG telecom expense management platform, where each component integrates seamlessly to provide a complete procure-to-pay solution. With provisioning serving as the starting point, it is important that the inventory is updated with Moves, Adds, Changes, and Disconnects (MACD's) as they happen. The MBG Provisioning solution has been designed to automatically update the inventory as orders are completed, ensuring the inventory is up-to-date at all times, allowing for accurate monthly invoice validation.

Quick Queries

The inventory solution is designed so users can perform robust queries by site or by company hierarchy. Searches and reports can be based on a wide range of criteria, including circuit type location, billing number, and vendor site. Details for a specific employee, including all items assigned to that employee can be viewed as well. As an example, MBG's Inventory solution allows a company to accurately track cell phone usage and discontinue paying for services after an employee leaves the company.

First Steps: Creating a Billed Inventory

MBG begins building the inventory of circuits and assets from the electronic feeds that can be obtained from vendors. These electronic feeds provide the greatest level of detail offered and serve as an excellent starting point to create a "billed inventory." In addition, when building the billed inventory, MBG will compare what is being billed by the carriers versus an organization's own internal inventory. This will ensure that an accurate inventory is built during implementation.

Learn how MBG was able to help one of the largest transportation organizations in the United States build a billed inventory configured to its specific hierarchy.
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Specific Features for the MBG Inventory Solution Include:

Ability to support Telecom and IT Assets including circuits, stations, contracts, locations, and wireless devices by employee
Tight integration with the MBG Provisioning solution, so updates to the inventory are made automatically when new services are added or terminated
Validation of invoices by comparing them to internal inventories
Stores chargeback details for all inventory items; recharges can be presented in Chargeback if desired
Maintains accurate inventories of physical assets (i.e. cell phones, pagers, calling cards, workstations)
Centralizes the storage of asset data, allowing different business units (i.e. finance, telecom, engineering) to utilize the same system, and access relevant data sets