Educational Institutions Benefit from Call Accounting Best Practices
July 28, 2015
By Susan J. Campbell
TMCnet Contributing Editor
The budget necessary to support telecommunications costs can get exorbitant for organizations large in size and frequent in their customer interactions. For educational institutions, the need to stay connected is significant, which means the costs to do so fit the same description. As such, the demand for call accounting is great so departments are effectively responsible for the costs they incur and abuse is kept at a minimum.
In addition to a robust call accounting solution, there are other measures educational institutions can take to keep communications spend at a minimum. A recent Calero blog post highlighted its recommended best practices for telecom expense management in the educational environment. The first recommendation made is to ensure bills are reviewed and reconciled every month. While automated payments may streamline practices, it can also lead to errors and overpayments simply because no one is paying attention.
It’s also important that those responsible for the telecommunications management, negotiations and billing are willing to bargain. It’s never a good idea to accept the blanket plan a provider offers as every organization is different and therefore, has different needs. Negotiations focused on price, service levels, payment terms, equipment replacement and more all need to be part of the game plan. That same plan should also include an exit and extension option to ensure the best pricing and support over time.
After the negotiations are over and the contract is signed, it’s important to ensure the solution selected is properly designed for the environment. That means it’s necessary to identify the types of data that will be transmitted, the volume of that data on a given day, week or month and the potential delays in the transmission of that data. From there, a risk level as a result of these delays needs to be set. All of these details need to be captured in the call accounting solution so an accurate analysis can be completed every month.
Inventory management is definitely a critical element within call accounting so as to avoid the burden of paying for devices no longer in use or even in existence. Along with properly managing inventory, it’s also important to build support policies to ensure employees are utilizing assets in accordance with expectations. This does require effective communication and reinforcement of policies, but effectively doing so helps keep spending in check, minimize risk of cyber-attacks and ensure data usage remains at reasonable levels.
The challenge for any educational institution in trying to implement these and other best practices is of course the time and money needed for proper focus. Activities that require time that exceeds the anticipated benefit isn’t good for the bottom line, which puts a greater demand on proven call accounting solutions.
Infortel Select from ISI (News - Alert) Tele management Solutions eliminates the time drain caused by manual activities. Telecom managers can use Carrier Bill Reconciliation to eliminate the need for additional staff and quality control, verifying costs in minutes and producing reports to verify proper call charges.
Telecom providers typically aren’t looking to cheat customers when providing services. For large and segmented organizations, such as educational institutions, the billing can get messy and mistakes may be made. With the right call accounting solution in place, the mistakes are caught and corrected instead of paid.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi