What to Watch: Call Accounting in 2016
February 04, 2016
By Susan J. Campbell
TMCnet Contributing Editor
In the everyday activities involved in running a business, connectivity is still an important one. We need to connect and collaborate with clients, colleagues and others in the quest to continue to succeed. For many, that means the adoption of mobile apps to support new ways of doing business. For others, it’s the adoption of VoIP and the support of mobile to create the seamless experience.
The individuals responsible for call accounting within the organization have an interesting challenge. It’s no longer juts about monitoring expenses through the corporate phone system and allocating charges back to the appropriate departments. Today, this process also has to include mobile activity, trying to capture the costs and habits of a landscape that is in continuous flux. As developments continue and new opportunities arise, companies will either experience greater challenge, greater benefits or both.
A Red Hat (News - Alert) Mobile Maturity Security Survey highlighted in this Enterprise Project piece captured some of what we can expect to see in 2016. Expect to see large enterprise technology vendors start to dominate the market, pushing out smaller standalone mobile solution providers. At the same time, cloud vendors are expected to come out in force.
The opportunity exists for 2016 to be the year of the Internet of Things (IoT), especially for those companies already mature in their use of mobile. Finally, the voice of lines of business in mobile decision making will get louder as the decision shouldn’t be simply IT-based.
Even as 2016 gets more exciting in terms of opportunities in mobile and streamlining the complexities of call accounting, the shift in telecom management must be observed. In the third generation, lifecycle management principles were introduced to incorporate work streams associated with expense and invoice management – ensuring that call accounting captured the activities taking place with call accounting.
As highlighted in this Tri-Solve article, we’re now in the fourth generation of telecom management, which aims to quantify the business value of the telecom estate. It’s critical that all technical, financial and operational aspects of the telecom environment are not only understood, but also controlled and optimized to ensure the business and its users are experiencing the most value. This not only makes sense for call accounting, it makes sense to ensure the organization enjoys the most benefit from adopting new technologies.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi