There has been buzz around TEM since 2006. In an economic downturn (kind of like we are experiencing now), telecom expense management can play a real role. Hand-in-hand with auditing, TEM is a way to get the attention of the prospective buyer. Personally, I have a distaste for the "I'll save you money pitch", but its what resonates with most people. 

Today, businesses have to do more with less - including less people. So along comes something like Microcorp's INSITE (video demo here and podcast here), with its inventory control module and now companies can tell what they have, where, how much it costs, etc.  So when a firm lets 10% of its staff go, it should reduce its telecom spend as well. (It is not unusual to find companies with "ghost lines" or 40 lines with 25 employees).  Insite is very well suited for multi-location businesses.

Another form of inventory managemnt would be the Lojack for Laptops. According to the Fast Company article, "Companies lose billions of dollars a year in hardware and data".  Laptops and cell phones go amissing = lost dollars for the company.

"Absolute Software.. has developed software that lives in a notebook computer's motherboard and pings Absolute's headquarters with its online IP address. The daily pings let companies keep up-to-date lists of where their computers are around the world and notify them if a ping comes from an unexpected location. Customers can trigger a code to wipe a machine's hard drive from afar... The technology is called Computrace." [Fast Company]
 

There is the other side of TEM: low barrier to entry, almost Amway like - as Dave Rusin writes here. But TEM requires stories, referrals, testimonials, because quite simply, the person doing the TEM activities now doesn't want to be out of job if your magic potion actually works. So talk to those CFO's and utilize the leverage that can be TEM.