The Technology Expense Management (TEM) industry continues to navigate a landscape marked by persistent challenges and new, customer-driven demands. Building on the foundational insights from 2024, this 2025 update highlights both the enduring issues and the emerging priorities that will shape the sector as we look toward 2026.
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RECAP: 2024 INSIGHTS
The 2024 State of the Industry report identified several key themes, which remain highly relevant today:
- Stagnation in TEM growth despite large market potential.
- Disconnect between buyer expectations and vendor capabilities, leading to high churn and dissatisfaction.
- Narrow focus on cost savings rather than broader value creation.
- Need for improved communication and transparency between buyers and vendors.
- Call to action for industry-wide transformation toward strategic partnerships and innovation.
2025 UPDATE: PERSISTENT & EMERGING CHALLENGES
Ongoing Challenges
- Stagnant Growth: Most TEM providers continue to struggle with scaling, especially compared to adjacent industries like ITSM and CRM.
- High Customer Churn: Dissatisfaction remains high, with many organizations feeling their needs are unmet.
- Limited Value Proposition: The industry still largely focuses on cost savings, missing opportunities for strategic impact.
Emerging Customer-Expressed Challenges
- A-Team vs. C-Team Experience: Customers report receiving top-tier talent during the sales process, only to be handed off to less skilled teams post-sale, leading to a decline in service quality and trust.
- Lack of True Innovation: Vendors are criticized for incremental improvements rather than genuine innovation. The focus remains on minor feature updates instead of transformative solutions, leaving customers feeling underserved.
- Off-Shoring & Resource Quality: There is growing frustration with extensive off-shoring practices, particularly when unskilled or undertrained resources are assigned to critical roles, impacting service delivery and customer satisfaction.
- Inflexibility in Solutions & Processes: Customers increasingly demand adaptable, customizable solutions. Many TEM vendors are seen as rigid, unable or unwilling to tailor offerings to unique business needs.
- Customer Confidence in Asset & Service Inventory: Confidence in the accuracy and completeness of asset and service inventories remains low. Customers express concern about data integrity, which undermines trust and complicates decision-making.
OPPORTUNITIES & INDUSTRY RESPONSE
Strategic Shifts
- Redefining Value: Leading vendors are beginning to move beyond cost savings, emphasizing strategic partnerships, transparency, and proactive insights across the technology lifecycle.
- Holistic Lifecycle Management: There is a growing focus on end-to-end management, from design and procurement to ongoing optimization and support, to deliver greater business impact.
- Trust & Transparency: Building trust through clear communication, reliable inventory management, and transparent processes is increasingly seen as a competitive differentiator.
Innovation Watch
- AI & Automation: The integration of AI and automation is accelerating, with the potential to streamline processes, improve data accuracy, and enable proactive management. However, adoption remains uneven, and many vendors lag in delivering truly innovative capabilities.
- Customer Experience: Companies are rethinking their go-to-market and support models, seeking to unify customer engagement and ensure consistency from sales through ongoing service.
THINGS TO WATCH FOR IN 2026
- AI-Driven TEM Solutions: Expect greater adoption of AI for inventory management, anomaly detection, and personalized insights, with vendors differentiating on the depth and usability of these features.
- Talent & Service Quality: Customers will increasingly demand transparency in staffing, with a premium placed on continuity and expertise throughout the customer journey.
- Flexible, Modular TEM Platforms: Vendors that offer customizable, modular solutions will be better positioned to meet evolving enterprise needs.
- Trust as a Core Value: As digital threats and data complexity increase, trust and data integrity will become even more central to vendor selection and retention.
- Strategic Partnerships: The most successful TEM providers will act as true partners, supporting clients’ broader technology and business strategies rather than merely managing expenses.
VALUE FOR CUSTOMERS & THE INDUSTRY
The Technology Expense Management (TEM) industry stands at a pivotal moment. While the core challenges of 2024 persist, heightened customer expectations are fundamentally reshaping the standards for service quality, innovation, and trust. For customers, this shift brings tangible benefits:
- Elevated Service Quality: As vendors invest in talent and expertise, customers gain access to more knowledgeable support teams, resulting in faster issue resolution and more proactive guidance throughout the technology lifecycle.
- Meaningful Innovation: Embracing new technologies, particularly AI-driven insights and automation, enables customers to optimize costs, improve asset visibility, and make smarter, data-backed decisions with greater confidence.
- Enhanced Transparency & Trust: Vendors prioritizing transparency provide customers with clearer reporting, real-time inventory accuracy, and open communication, empowering organizations to manage risks and align technology investments with business goals.
- Greater Flexibility & Customization: The move toward modular, customer-centric solutions allows organizations to tailor TEM services to their unique needs, supporting both operational agility and strategic transformation.
Vendors that respond decisively to these evolving demands by investing in talent, embracing true innovation, and prioritizing transparency will not only secure their own growth and relevance but will also deliver greater value and measurable outcomes for their customers as the industry moves into 2026 and beyond.
LEADING THE WAY: HOW AOTMP® EFFICIENCY FIRST® SOLUTION CERTIFIED VENDORS ARE ADDRESSING TEM INDUSTRY CHALLENGES
The Technology Expense Management (TEM) landscape is evolving rapidly, with persistent challenges and new customer expectations shaping vendor strategies. The following section highlights how Accenture, Sakon, TDM, vCom, and zLinq are proactively overcoming industry hurdles and setting new standards for value, innovation, and customer experience. In addition, it highlights how Morgan Lewis supports customers by helping to mitigate contractual, regulatory, and legal risks that impact vendor performance and value.
- Maximizing IT Investment: Accenture delivers enterprise-wide technology financial management by overseeing software, hardware, telecom, and cloud investments to align IT spend with measurable business outcomes.
- AI-Driven Transparency & Insights: Through its proprietary Tech Value Insight Engine (TVIE), Accenture uses AI to accelerate project delivery, enhance data quality, and uncover continuous cost optimization opportunities.
- Comprehensive Optimization Strategies: Accenture applies stack-wide optimization strategies across cloud, software, data center, and telecom environments to reduce waste, reinvest savings, and drive innovation.
- Embedded Investment Governance: By embedding directly within client organizations, Accenture helps executives govern technology investments with accountability for planning, budgeting, and performance metrics.
- Integrated Global Managed Services: Accenture unifies ITAM, SAM, HAM, and TEM under one global delivery model, providing clients with full-spectrum visibility and control over non-labor technology costs while improving efficiency and ROI.
AOTMP® Industry Leadership Committee: Accenture is a founding member and is recognized among the most influential voices shaping the future of telecom, mobile, and technology management, collaborating to set best practices, influence industry standards, and drive innovation as part of an elite group of industry leaders.
- Integrated Automation: Sakon’s ServiceNow integration and automated workflows streamline enterprise mobility management, reducing manual tasks and enhancing efficiency.
- Unified Platform: By consolidating data from multiple sources, Sakon provides a single source of truth for device and telecom management, directly improving inventory accuracy and customer confidence.
- Cost & Process Optimization: Their platform automates technology management operations, controls costs, and proactively manages services, addressing the need for both innovation and operational flexibility.
- User-Centric Experience: Self-service capabilities and proactive communication empower users, while robust security features ensure compliance and data protection.
- Scalable, Modular Solutions: Sakon’s modular platform adapts to diverse organizational needs, supporting both large enterprises and complex environments.
AOTMP® Industry Leadership Committee: Sakon is a founding member and is recognized among the most influential voices shaping the future of telecom, mobile, and technology management, collaborating to set best practices, influence industry standards, and drive innovation as part of an elite group of industry leaders.
- Comprehensive Technology Expense Management: TDM offers end-to-end management of IT and telecom expenses, enabling organizations to optimize costs, improve visibility, and ensure compliance across all technology domains.
- Vendor-Agnostic Cloud & Communication Services: Their expertise spans UCaaS, CCaaS, and cloud connectivity, ensuring clients receive unbiased recommendations and solutions tailored to their unique needs.
- Strategic Technology Consulting: TDM provides expert guidance to help businesses align technology investments with strategic goals, supporting both transformation and operational excellence.
- AI-Driven Procurement Excellence: By leveraging artificial intelligence, TDM streamlines procurement processes, enhances decision-making, and uncovers new cost-saving opportunities.
- Mobility & Modern Infrastructure Solutions: Their extensive mobility offerings and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) solutions enable clients to scale efficiently and adapt to evolving business requirements.
- Lifecycle Management: vCom offers comprehensive management of the entire technology lifecycle, from procurement to end-of-life, ensuring continuous optimization and transparency.
- Customer Empowerment: Their platform provide clients with real-time visibility and control over assets, expenses, and service inventories, boosting confidence and trust.
- Process Flexibility: vCom’s solutions are designed to adapt to unique business requirements, addressing concerns about vendor inflexibility and supporting evolving enterprise needs.
- Focus on Innovation: By leveraging automation and analytics, vCom drives operational efficiency and delivers actionable insights for ongoing improvement.
- Expert Support & Rapid Issue Resolution: vCom provides dedicated, knowledgeable support teams that proactively manage vendor relationships and swiftly resolve issues, helping organizations minimize downtime and sustain productivity even during disruptions.
- Guaranteed Results: zLinq’s risk-sharing partner model and savings guarantees demonstrate a commitment to measurable value and customer trust.
- Comprehensive Visibility: Their dashboard offers real-time, single-source visibility into all telecom assets, directly addressing inventory confidence issues.
- Strategic Guidance: Dedicated client service managers and benchmarking services provide expert support and help clients navigate complex technology landscapes.
- Lifecycle & Vendor-Neutral Management: zLinq manages the full lifecycle of voice and data assets, acting as a neutral extension of the IT team and ensuring unbiased, optimal decisions.
- Proven Savings & Efficiency: Clients report significant cost reductions and reclaimed productivity, underscoring zLinq’s operational effectiveness and customer-centric approach.
- Ensures Contract Clarity & Accountability: Morgan Lewis drafts and negotiates precise, enforceable contracts that clearly define vendor obligations, service levels, and performance standards, reducing the risk of misunderstandings and unmet expectations.
- Mitigates Regulatory & Compliance Risk: By leveraging deep regulatory expertise, Morgan Lewis structures agreements to comply with ever-changing telecom and technology regulations, helping clients avoid costly penalties and legal exposure.
- Protects Against Hidden Liabilities & Disputes: Their thorough contract reviews and risk assessments uncover hidden liabilities, incorporating provisions for dispute resolution and crisis response, which safeguard organizations from unforeseen contractual pitfalls.
These vendors are setting the pace for the TEM industry by prioritizing innovation, transparency, and customer-centric service models. Their approaches directly address both persistent and emerging challenges, positioning them as leaders as the market evolves toward 2026 and beyond.
ABOUT AOTMP®
AOTMP® is a membership organization for technology management professionals backed by an industry-leading certification body that empowers its members to achieve operational excellence and strategic business success.
Contact us to learn how AOTMP® can help you and your team achieve and sustain technology management excellence.
MEET THE AUTHORS
Timothy C. Colwell, Executive Vice President
Tim Lybrook, Managing Partner
Tim Lybrook and Timothy C. Colwell have over 65 years of experience between them. They know what works and what doesn’t, and have seen hundreds of success stories and hundreds of failed relationships.
They literally wrote the book on gaining and maintaining technology management financial and operational efficiency. The Efficiency First® Framework Guidebook details best practices across 30 telecom, mobile, and cloud / IT workstreams that deliver proven results.
