Call Accounting Solutions Help Control Communications Spending
November 21, 2011
By Susan J. Campbell
TMCnet Contributing Editor
Telecommunications rely on call accounting to report or log data occurring in telephone usage. This data includes time of call, outbound or inbound, length of call, routing, and more. Considered an important part of a business’s infrastructure, call accounting helps provide the information needed to run an efficient system.
According to this Call Accounting
blog, one important aspect of
call accounting is that it helps track costs that could be occurring through misuse. Without call accounting, managers don’t have the visibility necessary to pin down where the abuses originate in order to take action. Using modern call accounting, fraud and odd activity can be detected, as well as employee misuse.
Apart from hemorrhaging money through misuse, call accounting can also help you better divert traffic and lessen the occurrence of bottlenecking. By some accounts, up to 30 percent savings can be achieved by implementing affective call accounting, which through proper monitoring, helps
improve productivity by reducing the amount of non-business activity. Some companies call this practice the “watchdog” effect.
Surveys of
telecommunications companies find that most aren’t aware of how inefficient their practices are, or how critical the need is for software solutions such as call accounting systems that can hand over the data needed to shore up the inefficiencies and develop an effective plan.With fewer companies running
private branch exchange (PBX (News - Alert)) systems, which prevented roadblocks in gathering some metrics, many are going in the direction of IP-based systems.
The IP-based systems give call accounting many more possibilities. At the same time, session initiation protocol (SIP) communications, an open protocol, has given users the ability to connect from anywhere in the world, which allows contact centers to crop up in any locality without worry of hefty long-distance costs.
Given these complexities in the corporate environment, including calls being routed over a variety of channels, and calls that include data such as voice and multimedia communications, call accounting has become far more complex as well.Call accounting mediums include SaaS (News
- Alert), where the software can be acquired online through a hosted vendor, which is an easier option for companies that prefer not to operate a stand-alone server software.
This also eases the load on staff as the need to manage and maintain hardware of software applications has been removed.Those who do take on a server for call accounting often find its features more comprehensive, but costly. Centralized enterprise software can be a match for those that need to support a larger amount of users. A growing trend in call accounting, however, is the integrated system, which is a subscription service that basically contracts out the data mining and analysis to an off-site vendor.To more effectively support the call accounting needs of your organization, take a closer look at the options available before deciding on your deployment strategy. Align your selection with your current goals and you’ll be better poised for success.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Juliana Kenny