Rodent Regatta

Businesses doing approximately $500 million or more in annual sales often have telecommunication expenses that exceed $150,000 per month. Take into consideration every pager, cell phone, key system in the branch locations, PBX’s at headquarters, local lines, long distance, data lines, VPN’s…you get the picture.

A frightening fact is that the invoices from all the suppliers for these goods and services are very often wrong. A bank with hundreds or thousands of ATM’s may see an invoice with 20,000 or 30,000 line items on it. The task of ”auditing” that invoice prior to paying it might consume 2 weeks for 2 accounts payable or telecom analysts.

Yesterday, I visited a business that has carved its niche from the errors, costs and time required by big companies when they are auditing and accounting for their telecommunication costs. The company is Asentinel. Currently a private firm, the future looks incredibly bright. By auditing, automating and reporting on telecommunication usage and expenses using methods that business people can understand, Asentinel is paving its way as a revolutionary in the fractured and nasty world of legacy telecom.

When you see the results of an Asentinel audit of an EDI invoice from one of the major carriers, it makes you wonder how the carriers have held on as long as they have. One reason is that all of them have similar kinds of errors in their billing systems.

Keep your eyes on this business. It’s likely to be one of the first great break-out stories when this economy turns. With paybacks in certain instances of as short as 3 months, Asentinel is clearly meeting the aggressive ROI requirements that today’s CFO’s put on software projects.