For a multi-site enterprise, telecommunications is essential infrastructure. Connectivity, voice, data, wireless services and related technologies keep locations operating and businesses connected. Yet despite the scale and importance of that spend, many organizations still manage telecom as a collection of monthly bills rather than a strategic financial category.
Inside Telecom speaks with Kivanç “Kiki” Dikmen about why telecom and utility expenses deserve a place in the enterprise risk conversation, and how technology can transform fragmented spending into actionable financial intelligence.
Kivanç “Kiki” Dikmen, Co-Founder and CEO of GETCHOICE!, sees an opportunity to fundamentally change that approach.
GETCHOICE! has developed a proprietary technology platform designed to centralize and optimize enterprise utility management across telecommunications, electricity, natural gas, water, waste and other recurring services. For Dikmen, the objective is bigger than finding savings. It is about giving companies the data and intelligence to actively manage expenses that have traditionally been accepted as unavoidable costs of doing business.
1-Companies have managed telecom expenses for decades. What do you think they’re still getting wrong?
Telecom is mission-critical, but financially it is often treated as overhead. The bill comes in, somebody verifies it at some level, and it gets paid. That model becomes problematic when you’re operating 50, 500 or 5,000 locations.
At that scale, you have different providers, contracts, services, rates and billing structures. Locations open and close. Services change. Contracts renew. Charges get added. The complexity compounds very quickly.
The question shouldn’t simply be, “Did we pay our telecom bill?” It should be, “Are we paying what we should be paying, for the services we actually need, under the right contract structure?” That’s a very different management philosophy.
2-You’ve argued that businesses should think about telecom and utilities as financial risk rather than simply operating costs. Why?
Because an expense you don’t actively understand or control represents exposure.
Companies manage interest rates, commodities, insurance and foreign exchange with sophisticated financial strategies. But they can have millions of dollars flowing through telecommunications and utilities every year without comparable visibility.
For multi-site organizations, small inefficiencies become very large numbers when multiplied across hundreds of locations and thousands of invoices. Financial risk isn’t only about dramatic market events. It can also be the accumulation of recurring costs that nobody is systematically questioning.
Our goal is to give management the intelligence to see that exposure and do something about it.
3-How does GETCHOICE! change that?
We built the platform around one fundamental idea: give the enterprise one source of truth for its utility spend.
Instead of telecom information sitting in one system, electricity somewhere else, water bills in another process and contracts scattered across departments, we bring the data together.
Our technology connects utility accounts, invoices, contracts and enterprise systems into a centralized platform. AI helps capture and validate invoice information, identify anomalies and automate workflows. Analytics then allow users to look across the entire portfolio or drill down to a specific location, account, provider or cost center.
That visibility changes the conversation from processing bills to managing financial performance.
4-Why is this particularly valuable for multi-site companies?
Scale creates complexity, and complexity hides inefficiency.
Think about a retailer, restaurant group, healthcare system, hotel company or logistics business with hundreds of facilities. Each location may have multiple telecom and utility relationships. Now multiply those accounts by 12 months, multiple providers and years of historical information.
No finance team can realistically analyze every data point manually.
Technology can.
The platform gives leadership portfolio-wide visibility while still maintaining site-level granularity. That means you can identify an unusual charge at one location while simultaneously analyzing spending trends across the entire enterprise.
That’s where AI and automation become incredibly powerful.
5- There’s obviously a major AI component. Where do you believe AI actually creates value versus simply being a technology buzzword?
AI matters when it removes complexity or finds something a human couldn’t reasonably find at scale.
If you’re processing thousands of invoices, AI can capture and structure that information, compare charges against historical patterns, identify anomalies and surface issues requiring attention.
But I don’t believe the objective should be removing humans from the equation. The real opportunity is giving people better intelligence.
AI does what machines are exceptionally good at: processing enormous amounts of information. Our experts and our clients then use that intelligence to make better financial and operational decisions.
6-Does the value proposition ultimately come down to cost savings?
Savings are important, but I think that’s too narrow.
The bigger opportunity is control.
Can the CFO see telecom and utility spend across the enterprise? Can finance forecast it accurately? Can accounts payable automate repetitive work? Can procurement understand contract performance? Can operations compare locations? Can management identify unusual spending before it becomes a larger problem?
When all of those capabilities exist in one environment, utility management stops being an administrative function and starts becoming business intelligence.
7-GETCHOICE! manages more than telecommunications. Why put all of these utilities on one platform?
Because the enterprise doesn’t experience these expenses in isolation.
Telecom, electricity, natural gas, water and waste may have different providers, but from a financial and operational standpoint they share many of the same challenges: fragmented data, recurring invoices, complex contracts, multiple locations and limited visibility.
We saw an opportunity to create an operating layer across all of them.
One platform. Every location. Every account. Every utility.
That’s ultimately the vision.
8-Where do you see GETCHOICE! going next?
I believe utility intelligence will become a standard enterprise capability.
The same way companies expect real-time visibility into sales, cash flow or supply chains, they should expect real-time intelligence around their utility exposure.
Our priority is to keep making the platform more intelligent, more predictive and more valuable to decision-makers.
The end goal isn’t better bill management. It’s helping enterprises understand what they’re spending, why they’re spending it, where the risks and opportunities exist, and what they should do next.
That’s the transformation we’re building toward.
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