Call Accounting Systems - the business case

There's a school of thought that there's no longer a business case for call accounting systems. The argument is based on the observation that there's a global trend toward cheaper business phone services resulting from increased levels of competition between carriers and the impact on the cost of a phone call from technologies including VoIP phone systems.

Despite the evidence of cheaper phone services, there remains a compelling business case for call accounting systems. The requirement for telephone expense management has not gone away.

Business continues to report that telephone related outgoings are their third or fourth biggest expense. While some services have become cheaper the carriers have introduced new products and services that have off set these cost reductions. The carriers must maintain revenue growth despite the need to make phone calls appear cheaper.

In order to effectively manage how the resulting smorgasbord of products and services are used, business must employ call accounting systems to track the cost of all business phone services.

To keep pace with these developments modern telephone call accounting systems have undergone significant re-development. Current generation call accounting software has little resemblance to the blunt business phone tools of just a few years ago. Today's tools are required to comprehensively report on the use of both new and old technologies: PSTN, IP, VoIP, WiFi SIP phones and mobile, as well managing breakouts across multi-location global IP networks ... They are also required to be web based call accounting solutions.

Over and above cost control the business case for call accounting systems rests on the fact that arguably there is no more important business communication channel than the business phone. No phone no business!

As always the effectiveness of management depends on the quality of information available and the ability to measure performance. Businesses that attempt to operate without call management software are flying blind.

How else can a business hope to measure whether or not:

• calls are being answered?
• employees are overloaded with inbound calls?
• employees are answering too few calls?
• sales people are calling high value customers?
• sales people are calling customers who rarely buy anything?
• phones are answered within 3-4 rings?
• employees are calling customers and clients?
• employees are busy arranging their social life?
• there are enough lines and trunks to handle call volumes?
• there are too many lines and trunks to handle call volumes?
• telephone expenses are being correctly allocated?
• IP call quality is adequate?
• employees are involved in telephone fraud.
• the phone system is being hacked.

Call accounting solutions are the authoritative source of this information. It can be readily extracted from current generation call accounting software and imported by a CRM to create an enriched view of employee and customer activity. The return on investment then comes not just from cost savings, but also from increased productivity resulting from more effective management of how business phone systems are used. This information cannot be extracted from reading a phone bill or observing employees.

In the financial services industry we have seen cases where an investment in call management software was returned in days. The payback was achieved from increased productivity resulting from focusing outbound calls on high value clients.

In another example, PBX call accounting enabled a business to identify an unacceptably high percentage of private calls and an equally unacceptable volume of in-bound calls that were not answered before they dropped out. By fixing the first problem the second problem disappeared and sales improved.

Another argument against call accounting systems is that phone companies commonly provide some form of bill analysis to their larger corporate customers at little or no cost and hence there is no requirement to invest in telephone call accounting. The other side of the story is that the carriers use their "free" bill analysis and reporting tools to lock customers in. They are used by the carriers to increase customer entanglement and make it more difficult for them switch to competitors. The phone companies are keen to encourage this dependence and send out technical staff at little or no charge to help valued corporate customers increase the pace of entanglement.

In addition to being caught in a sticky web the business customer also misses out on some other useful features that a modern call accounting system should provide:

• The ability to verify and reconcile phone bills, and the resulting cost savings.
• The ability to obtain a complete picture of all telephone expenses and usage across all carriers servicing the business: fixed, mobile, Internet ...
• The ability to compare the costs of different carriers.

In the case of hospitality call accounting systems there is no debate. Not only is call management a means of recovering costs, but also a revenue center.

The arguments for using call accounting systems are in fact becoming stronger all the time. They're indispensable business tools. For a small investment they can produce a very significant impact on the bottom line. Far from eliminating the need for call accounting the advent of VoIP phone systems has resulted in strong demand for VoIP call accounting as a management tool.

See also: Free Call Accounting Software and Hotel Call Accounting

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