Call Accounting Featured Article

Mitel: Call Accounting Can Mean Big Savings

  By Steve Anderson, Contributing Writer

It's been Dilbert fodder for decades: the notion of the unproductive meeting that's called for reasons virtually no one understands but absolutely must be attended on pain of job loss. The unproductive meeting, however, isn't the only potential drain on time. A new report from Mitel (News - Alert) looked at collaborations and communications, and found that there were some major losses afoot, which call accounting and other tools may be able to help with.

Despite the fact that employees were actively engaged in communications and collaboration processes—better than two hours in three were spent on such activities—there were substantial losses in time associated with this process. Employees were losing about 15 percent of total work time on inefficient communications, stemming from what amounts to too many options.

Essentially, the report noted, since some users were using one breed of collaboration tool and others were using another—and so on down the line—compatibility issues between all these tools cropped up and raised havoc. The kind of havoc, in fact, that cost a lot of lost time and counterproductive behavior. Inefficient communications hurt productivity, hurt teamwork, and create knowledge silos.

Moreover, Mitel's report put a number on these losses, suggesting that about $11,000 per employee per year could be lost. For a company with 500 employees, that's clearing half a million annually, and that's the kind of money that could do big things for most any firm. Here, some are likely starting to consider some call accounting tools to help.

As for tools used, email is still the big winner in terms of what employees turn to; despite a flood of new applications designed to make communications smoother and more powerful, email is still the weapon of choice, and in many cases, is being used far beyond what anyone ever expected it to be used for.

There's likely good reason for that; employees are often strapped for time in a day, and don't have much of it to start learning whole new communications applications. Training programs can be a help here, but can only go so far. Practice is required for the development of any new skill, and employees won't want to divert a lot of time from getting work done to learning new systems. Incentivizing employees to learn may help here; if the company saves $11,000 per year per employee, it's hardly out of line to offer a $2,000 bonus annually per employee for learning new skills. Using call accounting systems can also help determine what calls are being made when and to where.

Everyone wants more productivity, and the tools to make it happen are out there. Knowing how much can be saved from these tools means a terrific new opportunity for everyone to get ahead.