Specific to the communications environment, the practice of telecom expense management (TEM) encompasses the business processes conducted by IT and finance departments to acquire the provision (and support) of corporate telecommunications assets. Put another way, TEM is the build-out of services, or the acquisition of third-party services, to manage the supply chain for telecommunications. Gartner has identified the component services of TEM as: sourcing, ordering and provisioning, inventory management, invoice and contract management, use management, dispute management, and business intelligence.