Call accounting packages are perpetually evolving and clients continuously ask for a better platform from their resellers. In order to facilitate these growing expectations, the reseller needs to work extra hard to provide the best possible service available in the market.

Often, resellers deem call accounting systems as their sideline business while PBX is their primary business. This shows that a majority of dealers have no plans to be experts in this domain and therefore need to rely on another supplier for level 2 and level 3 (the secondary and tertiary level) support. Managing a call logging system is a tough task and there are numerous factors that need to be considered so as to run this job effectively and efficiently. However, some of these aspects are not in the dealer’s hands.

For example: There may be an instance in which the PBX software does not generate the needed call records. This can be due to several reasons such as when the PBX software or hardware is upgraded; additional applications are installed on the call accounting computer (even when the vendor assures you that it will have no affect the functionality of the system); the customer mishandles the software or hardware of the system; there is a power failure; or when the customer’s telephone bill does not match with the call accounting system records.

When a customer registers a complaint regarding the incorrect data due to either of the stated issues, and if the root cause is data loss, generally there is no way in which the lost data could be completely recovered. In fact, even a minute amount of data loss leads to incorrect figures for the whole month.

An end user who has an independent call logging platform is bound to experience the stated issues in the long run. For a reseller to safeguard himself from these factors, the only solution would be to sign a service agreement with the customer with a large number of exclusions.

An alternative answer to these issues would be to get help from an external service that notifies you when there is any complication in the call logging tool, Software as a Service (SaaS) comes to the rescue and is now reasonably affordable. SaaS programs provide a huge advantage to your business by providing additional levels of data monitoring, management, data analysis and expert assistance. For this reason, SaaS ensures an elevated level of value and consistency for your call accounting assistance, guaranteeing you, the reseller, a greater return on your investment and content customers.

GSM cellulars are the most popular in the earth. Reports suggest that the common consists some 80% of all cell phones in use throughout the planet. And while GSM cellphones are a huge feature of 1st world countries, it is their position in far less “civilized” places that best demonstrates the reach and influence of modern day communications.

Imagine Somalia: a large, desert country on the eastern horn of Africa which over the past 20 years has been wracked simply by civil war along with famine. Bombed out bullet riddled cities dot the barren landscape where for thousands of years, nomads have roamed the desert herding goats along with camels across hundreds of miles from pastures in the wet season to sell in the dry period. Even practical measures of distance here do not adhere to the metric or imperial conditions used by the rest of the world.

Nomad measure distance through units referred to as a Gedi: the distance a browsing herd animal could travel in a day, which changes every season depending on the physical strength of each herd. Even working automobiles are hard to find here, let alone something sophisticated as a GSM cellular phone. Yet the simple application of GSM cell phones, which we in the west have long taken for granted, has proven unbelievably practical to this nomadic way of life.

For generations, Somali herdsmen have followed an annual pattern. Towards the end of the year as soon as the dry season comes, they migrate from the more fertile grounds elsewhere in the country, across the desert, to coastal cities where they can market their stock in the markets to traders from the Middle East and in other places. Keeping their animals in pens in the cities while they set up a sale is incredibly costly, as they need to consistently feed and water their herd with stores provided for by local merchants at obscene costs. They have no option. However, GSM cell phones have permitted them to forego this process.

A Somali nomad, a man dressed in hand sewn clothes he has most likely worn for all of his life, carrying a staff in the traditional posture – horizontally over his shoulders, his arms resting atop – a person who sleeps using a mat of thatched grass beneath the stars, beside a fire he built on his own, can now simply make a phone call and organize the sale of his herd in advance. Rather than lingering in the city for several days, expending what meager wealth he has on preserving his herd there, hoping his sale can recover his losses and also turn a profit, he can now simply organize to have a buyer all set for him the instant he arrives. Such high technology might appear incredibly unnatural in Somalia, but it’s application is properly suited to the needs of a nomad.

Article by Paul Wise. When it comes to GSM cellphones, Paul recommends Mobilecustomsusa.com for great advice on GSM cellphones for you.

What do users actually want from “call accounting”?; Suppliers market the tool as a means of reducing costs and improving efficiency, but a software program on its own can’t meet these expectations, it can only provide information in support of a management team when taking actions associated with their telecoms services.

There are five key subjects where, by monitoring PBX activity, call accounting can offer meaningful information that can be used during the decision making process to enhance a purchaser’s telecommunications environment. Clients can benefit for low cost and minimum effort.

1. Managing workers personal phone usage.

Speaking plainly, it is simple to deduce that there are merely two categories of phone call, a business call and private calls. To define a business call; a telephone call made in the interests of the company’s business goals; other types of phone calls are personal calls.

Having said this, it is completely unrealistic to assume that workers should not make any personal phone calls during working hours. As an example, an employee makes a telephone call just once a month to her bank to conduct private business, the call duration is under five minutes. This is an event unworthy of supervisory attention and should only result in corrective processes in the most extreme environments.

Assuming some personal phone calls are allowed, then it is a matter of the amount and reasonableness. These dynamics require some measurement to harness personal use inside reasonable boundaries, a call accounting platform helps meet this need.

2. Fraud Detection

There are 2 main categories of fraud inside a telephone system, a. harassing telephone calls, for example a hoax bomb scare, and b. an unauthorized party tapping into the PBX in order to make phone calls on the victim’s account.

A call accounting service should pro-actively discourage this behavior and find misuse.

3. Finding potential cost savings by using alternative telecoms companies.

Telecommunications companies regularly make the offer, “I can reduce your costs if you give your call traffic to us”. A call accounting package should be used to verify these proposals prior to the contract being signed and you are bound by the fine print.

4. Deploy your company’s present PBX technology to its maximum extent.

Get answers to the difficult questions,

How many spare extensions do I have?, and how many voice channels to the telecoms service provider do I need to support my traffic usage?

A call accounting platform will give answers to these questions efficiently and accurately.

5. Add value to customer service management

Do you respond to incoming phone calls in reasonable time? Are your call center people spending too much or too little time talking to customers and resolving inquiries?

Call accounting tools will compare the performance of a single person with the characteristics of a group. For example , it can efficiently draw comparisons between the average phone call talk time of a department and the performance of a single worker.

Considering the relatively low price tag and high value call accounting can produce, every organization, large and small, will benefit from this technology.