QLD's Department of Transport releases RFI for telecom expense platform

The Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) has gone to market for information on telecommunications expense management (TEMS) solutions, as it looks to pull its telecom spend into a single platform.

The department says it will use the submissions to understand market capabilities and gather insights as part of early market engagement, and will draw on that information to develop business requirements and procurement strategies to guide the future direction of the initiative.

TMR currently manages telecommunications expenditure across fixed, mobile and data services - covering invoice validation, cost allocation, reporting and the management of service inventories - through a mix of tools and manual processes, including an existing telecommunications expense management platform and ServiceNow for service and asset tracking.

It receives invoices from multiple suppliers in varying formats and levels of structure, and is seeking a single platform that would improve visibility, control, analysis and reporting through a consistent process, with better billing validation, support for individual service-level cost recovery, and closer alignment between service, billing and inventory data.

The department notes it operates in a constrained environment where enterprise financial systems such as SAP and corporate expense-management platforms are run by other business areas, so the ability to integrate with those systems is highly desirable.

On specifications, TMR is asking suppliers to describe solutions that can ingest and normalise invoice data from multiple carriers - both Tier 1 and non-Tier 1 providers - across varying formats; validate invoices, assure billing and flag anomalies and discrepancies; and consolidate everything into one platform for analysis, reconciliation and reporting.

It also wants the ability to allocate costs to business units via cost centres and work-breakdown-structure elements and to support internal cost recovery, including adding internally determined charges such as support-service fees to individual services alongside vendor billing.

Role-based access control features heavily, with granular, configurable permissions spanning read-only individual service owners through to local administrators, finance teams, reporting users, telecommunications providers and platform administrators.

The solution must also manage and give visibility of telecom hardware inventories - mobile devices, desk and conference handsets - aligned to service and billing data, with integration to mobile device management platforms flagged as desirable..

The RFI closes at 2pm AEST on Friday 25 September 2026.

So far in 2026, TMR has issued an EOI to buy ongoing software development and support and ICT professional services as a managed service for its Road Safety Systems Program; issued an RFI for the supply of market information to inform its business strategy and potential future sourcing scope and approach relating to an IGA solution; and called for EOIs to procure cyber security awareness training.