In today's business landscape, technology expense management (TEM) is a must-have. Technology spending now averages roughly 5.7% of company revenue across industries in 2026 — climbing to 7-10% in financial services and technology, and 6-9% in healthcare.

Fables have long warned that dependence comes at a cost: Aesop's man who trades his freedom for a farmer's protection, or Faust's bargain for knowledge and power, both find that the more they lean on something, the less control they retain over it.

Organizations face a modern version of this trade-off. As they grow more reliant on cloud platforms, Software as a Service (SaaS) tools, and mobile connectivity, they become more exposed to cost overages, idle or dormant software subscriptions, and vendor sprawl — challenges exacerbated by trends like remote work and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies.

TEM gives businesses back that control through disciplined technology spend management, bringing visibility to an ever-expanding mix of cloud services, software subscriptions, communication channels, and connected devices

What is TEM? 

TEM — sometimes referred to as IT expense management — is the discipline of proactively and systematically analyzing, managing, and optimizing all technology-related expenses. TEM solutions give organizations the insights they need to improve resource utilization and spending, which, in turn, helps them save money and provide peace of mind.

While TEM has continually evolved over time, its origins go back to the 1980s with telecom expense management. Before the proliferation of SaaS, cloud services, and other IT expenses, businesses were mainly concerned with managing the costs associated with their phone and communication lines.

At that time, TEM providers helped companies with billing error recovery, carrier invoice audits, and contract management. Now, the scope of TEM has expanded considerably.

What are the Benefits of TEM? 

The benefits of working with a TEM provider are not simply nice to have — they are increasingly essential as an organization's IT spend continues to sprawl out of control. These benefits include: 

• Visibility

• Consolidation

• Governance

• Cost Recovery 

Visibility

Many businesses simply do not know exactly how much they are paying for technology. TEM sheds light on technology spend, giving IT and finance the ability to drive cost optimization, accountability, and smarter investment decisions.

Consolidation

Often, vendor contracts and SaaS licenses are negotiated in isolation over considerable periods of time and by different representatives from the company who might not even work there anymore. TEM addresses these two compounding cost drivers through stronger contract management — consolidating point solutions into fewer, better-negotiated agreements and right-sizing licenses.

Governance

Best-in-class TEM suppliers will work with customers to create tailored strategies to get certain expenses under control, such as establishing policy and process controls that prevent waste from re-accumulating. Ultimately, this frees up ongoing savings for other strategic projects and builds toward an optimized tech stack that better serves the organization's core objectives.

Cost Recovery

Regular invoice audits through TEM uncover billing errors, unused services, and overpayments. These efforts enable billing error recovery that can return savings to the business immediately, on top of other longer-term gains from consolidation and governance.

The Four Main Areas a TEM Provider can Help With  

Conectrix has many different TEM providers in our portfolio. These are the four main areas that TEM providers focus on to identify cost savings:

1. Telecom

2. Mobility

3. SaaS

4. Cloud 

Telecom 

While telecom expense management was the original category of TEM, telecom is often the line item that gets the least attention in IT budgets today. Our telecom expense management suppliers focus specifically on these critical expenses, performing telecom audits for areas like internet circuits, Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), and 4G and 5G devices.

Mobility 

Thanks to remote work and BYOD policies, an organization's employees can work from anywhere on several devices, including personal ones. If not properly scrutinized, mobility expenditures — such as cellular data plans, device stipends, roaming charges, and mobile hotspot fees — can balloon out of control. 

Mobility expense management suppliers help customers control and optimize these expenses, enabling personnel to continue enjoying the freedom of remote work and BYOD.

SaaS

SaaS solutions — from Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace, Salesforce, and Oracle — have become not only ubiquitous across the business landscape but pivotal to day-to-day operations. However, companies can often lose track of their SaaS spend as these investments scale, causing unused and duplicative subscriptions and licenses that waste precious resources.

Our TEM providers can help with SaaS spend management, discovering unused applications, tracking purchases, monitoring usage, and even negotiating renewals.

Cloud

Cloud computing is another expenditure which can spiral out of control (and unknowingly too) if not carefully managed.

Consider that businesses often use a mix of private and public cloud environments, spanning Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platforms for computing and storage as well as Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) tools for voice, video, and messaging. Additionally, egress fees — charged when data is transferred out of a cloud provider's network or data center to an external location — are notoriously hard to track across these environments.

A TEM provider can implement a cloud cost management strategy to help reduce spending across both IaaS and UCaaS.

How Conectrix Can Help Reduce Your Technology Spend

If your technology expenses are starting to feel overwhelming, don’t worry — we can help you get your arms around your entire technology spend and identify ways to optimize costs through our TEM services.

Our top-of-the-line TEM providers can perform a one-time or an ongoing monthly technology expense audit, helping you discover missing invoices, incorrect billing, and other errors.