Why Call Accounting Should Always Include Traffic Analysis
April 23, 2014
By Susan J. Campbell
TMCnet Contributing Editor
Do you ever wonder what is happening with the calls in your organization? This isn’t likely a popular topic with all professionals, but if you’re responsible for the call accounting practices in your organization, you probably do spend time looking at call activities. And if so, you’re likely interested in open accounts, minutes used on a mobile plan, usage on group plans and even employee activity. Do you also look at traffic analysis?
The purpose of call accounting platforms is to capture Call Detail Records (CDR) from telephony systems so as to easily report on telecom costs, usage and activities. Solutions such as Infortel Select, the call accounting and reporting application from ISI (News - Alert), is designed to support the collection and processes of CDR from all available telecom sources so you can easily consolidate reporting and analysis efforts.
The company’s secure Web user interface provides authorized users with the necessary access to a customizable dashboard and an extensive menu of pre-defined reports. It also offers a custom report designer and an on-demand traffic analysis tool so you can easily address reporting needs and make informed business decisions. Getting into greater detail, traffic analysis helps you determine if you are “over” or “under trunked.”
With a Traffic Analysis report, you can easily identify your busy hours on the phones and how many trunks were used during those busy hours. Using this metric information, you can easily establish the right number of trunks necessary to handle the busy hours at the grade of service you determine. This single tool is both platform and carrier agnostic, allowing you to gain an accurate picture of actual activity.
Infortel Select also offers on-demand report access so you don’t have to wait for a vendor or carrier to perform the traffic study. Support is available through conventional, VoIP and SIP, with access to busy hour Erlang B and peak concurrent calls methodologies available. Gateway (News - Alert) and CUBE based traffic metrics are H323 and user-defined report filters facilitate modeling of new configurations for network planning.
Access to such tools is critical if you hope to get the most of your call accounting platform. In fact, a solution without traffic analysis will only provide you with part of the picture, leaving too much information to chance. If you don’t know how much trunk you are using at any given time, how do you know for sure if you’re paying too much or too little for efficient communications? If you had to wait on your carriers to provide this information, you could find yourself in a bind when it doesn’t come or scrambling to put the data into a single platform for analysis.
Look to a solution that does this for you, providing the information you need to make quick decisions on the fly. As important as communications are to the overall success of your business, they also shouldn’t be a financial burden. A powerful call accounting solution will help you find that healthy balance.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi