Call Accounting in a Changing Landscape
March 13, 2015
By Michelle Amodio
TMCnet Contributor
In this day and age, communications costs go far beyond voice minutes. Budget-minded professionals now have to consider Internet, voice and mobile devices, all of which eat up a large portion of a budget. Call accounting isn’t something that has gone legacy with old equipment. In fact, call accounting has grown with the changing telecommunications landscape. With call accounting, officials are getting a better grip on this large expenditure and making it easier for themselves and their employees to use communication more effectively without the hassle of bill scrutiny.
Call accounting takes into account invoice validation, contract management and performance management, usually in one solution. When used effectively, call accounting can decrease costs by improving efficiency and automating many telecom management functions.
According to ISI Telemanagement Solutions (News - Alert), it’s about selecting a solution that takes advantage of the new telecom landscape. Instead of just looking at traditional telephone calls, newer solutions should be able to account for non-traditional ones as well. Without this kind of function, decision makers are only getting a partial view of the real data.
But what about the cloud? With so many businesses flocking towards a hosted model, forgetting to take into consideration how to monitor calls with newer bells and whistles means instability. ISI suggests that a call accounting vendor should understand the industry in its entirety, and that includes newer, updated models.
Without proper management, telecom expenses can quickly spiral out of control. While telecom rates are steadily decreasing across the industry, many organizations fail to see such savings in their own invoices, as they are not managing their telecom expenses as efficiently as they could. Without proper attention, telecom costs will only increase, so it’s imperative to keep this in mind while using the most up-to-date telephony solutions.
Call accounting can reduce telecom expenses by highlighting misuse and abuse, discovering supplier billing errors and increasing productivity through greater network and workforce efficiency, even with newer systems in place.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi