Will You be Competitive When eBilling Becomes the Normal Business Practice?

Forrester recently released a survey indicating that by 2012 online bill payment will surpass direct billing for the first time. From this we can deduce that the online billing market is growing rapidly. Are you growing with it or are you being left in the dust? (http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=20141)

In another recent study by Aspen Analytics, it was found that customers that pay their bills online were 76% less likely to leave their bank. It only makes sense that those customers are also less likely to leave their service providers and utility companies that offer eBilling solutions.

What does this mean to the average utility company or service provider? It means that your online billing solution choice is going to become even more of a differentiator as eBilling becomes the normal business practice for bill payment. In other words, simply having an eBilling solution will no longer be enough to differentiate your company. If you choose a cheap, difficult to use eBilling solution, you are likely to be left in the wake of your competition. It is time to start looking for a quality solution that fully meets your customers’ needs; before your competition does.

In the study by Aspen Analytics, they found that companies that pay their bills online are over 15% more profitable than those who pay using traditional direct billing. How does bill payment affect overall profitability? Online bill payment adds efficiency to bill payment and companies are far more likely to pay their bills on time or early, therefore, avoiding fees, if they pay online. So, by simply providing an eBilling option to your customers, you are promoting their long term success and their ability to be a long term customer.

Today’s top of the line solutions provide both eBilling and analysis functionality. By providing one of the more robust eBilling solutions that offer both eBilling and analytics, that percentage of increased profitability is more than likely going to rise to a much higher number. Bill analysis solutions allow customers to easily and efficiently allocate expenses and review trending reports that can lead to higher efficiency in business processes; allowing companies to identify areas for improvement.

Many businesses are utilizing the bill management systems offered by their service providers to enhance efficiency and improve resource management. Businesses are also using the automated analytics tools offered by many service providers to do their allocation management and trend reporting for them – rather than having an internal resource dedicated to that activity. Long gone are the days of 200 page paper bills and spreadsheet analysis. More robust tools are now available.

Many of these programs provide feature rich functionality that empowers business customers from large SMEs to multi-national businesses to produce the reports they need to conduct business, increasing customer satisfaction. Some of these programs even provide sophisticated levels of functionality that allow users to design customized reports that can be stored and run on demand. Reports are quickly generated and can be easily exported for distribution or use in other packages. Structures, reflecting that of the organization, enable users to allocate costs easily to account codes. The ability to allow the individual user to identify their personal and business costs is also available in many of the top of the line eBilling solutions.

In the process of providing your customers with a solution that can help them to be more efficient in analyzing and allocating their bills, you will also be helping them to become more profitable overall. Considering the added customer loyalty that comes with providing eBilling and now the increased profitability that your advanced eBilling system will afford them, they are likely to be your customers for a very long time.

Paper Checks: Where did they go?

Twenty years ago, every business and individual consumer paid their bills by pulling out a checkbook, writing a check, attaching the bill stub and putting it in the mail with an envelope and stamp. This six step process was common practice because there was really no other way to securely pay bills without going to the service provider’s location and paying in person. Checks were the only convenient means of bill payment.

Since then, the check industry has experienced quite a downturn in demand due to the many new bill payment options available to businesses and consumers. Service providers are working tirelessly to find new and more convenient ways for people to pay their bills. This does not bode well for the check printing industry, but certainly does make life a lot easier for the rest of us.

So, now that most Americans are no longer using checks and “snailmail” to pay our bills, what are we using? Over the last decade, there has been an onslaught of new bill payment options made available online. These range from payment by credit card online to automated bank transfers. They can include robust bill management systems or simply bill payment online. The differences are vast but they all lead to the same end result, easier bill processing and payment for everyone involved.

However, these vast differences do make a substantial impact. Many businesses are utilizing the bill management systems offered by their service providers to enhance efficiency and improve resource management. Business are also using the automated analytics tools offered by many service providers to do their allocation management and trend reporting for them – rather than having an internal resource dedicated to that activity. Long gone are the days of 200 page paper bills and excel spreadsheet analysis. More robust tools are now available.

Many of these programs provide feature rich functionality that empowers business customers from large SMEs to multi-national businesses to produce the reports they need to conduct business, increasing customer satisfaction. Some of these programs even provide sophisticated levels of functionality that allow users to design customized reports that can be stored and run on demand. Reports are quickly generated and can be easily exported for distribution or use in other packages. Structures, reflecting that of the organization, enable users to allocate costs easily to account codes. The ability to allow the individual user to identify their personal and business costs is also available in many of the top of the line eBilling solutions.

The bill payment options available today are endless. Some people are only concerned about making a simple online payment, while others are looking for more. Regardless of your needs, the solution is out there for you. Luckily, you no longer have to turn to the checkbook and postal service to fill your bill payment needs. The potential cost savings available by using a robust eBilling system are endless: improving efficiency, maximizing accuracy, timely reporting and allocation. Talk to your service providers today to discuss how they can provide you with the bill payment options that best suit your needs.

Telemanagement System Used to Avoid Costly Legal Action

With today’s financial challenges, it’s pretty difficult to find a company not working to find ways to plug the holes in their organization. Employees are working harder and faster. Often times, one employee is doing the work of two. It is crucial for companies to pinpoint all of the areas they can successfully cut back without affecting their quality of service.

To that end, many companies are installing software solutions that can track and monitor employee activity and investment usage. Telemanagement systems are just one solution that companies are utilizing to improve their return on investment in telecom and in their employees. Telemanagement systems vary greatly. Some provide a brief summary of usage while others provide customizable scheduled reports and alerts to unusual activity.

No industry has been hit harder in the past couple of years than the trading industry. Not unlike other businesses, they are working to weather this storm by cutting inefficiencies and improving their processes. In so doing, a small trading firm, active on the NYSE, added a telemanagement system to their turret system to track telecommunications activity. This is becoming more and more common practice among trading companies in the wake of the financial downturn.

In the first month or two, they noticed small changes here and there that they could make to improve their telecom usage and day to day efficiency. But, after about 4 months of using their telemanagement system they noticed something in the trending report. There was one trader that was making significantly less phone calls from the turret system than the other two traders they had on the floor. They found this curious because there was no difference in job function or reported trades. How could that trader have the same number of trades with only half the calls?

After further investigation, they found that the trader in question was not making all of the trades he was reporting. This presented two issues to the trading company. First, there was clearly a human resources issue to be confronted regarding the trader that was not making the trades he was being paid to make. But, second, and almost more importantly, they were faced with a legal liability issue. They were under the impression that these trades were being made and were charging their customers for these fraudulent trades. After taking a closer look, they were able to reconcile the situation with their customers before legal action was taken. But, this could have been a potentially costly and embarrassing situation that was avoided due to the installation of a telemanagement system.

This is just one vital example of how a telemanagement system can help a company to improve efficiency while possibly uncovering more than they expected. More times than not, companies find that there is one way or another that telecommunications systems are being used in a fraudulent manner. They are not always as serious as this example, but they are always costly. By alleviating these costs, companies are able to save money and improve business processes.

How does SmartRecord IP differ from competitors?

We can barge, whisper, and monitor into the call, because the recorder actually participates in the call. This is essential call center functionality. Competitive call recording solutions can only playback the call as it is in progress. And it enables playback only off the web, where as with CTI Group's solution, monitoring and whispering will actually initiate a phone call to the supervisor... far more usable, convenient, and what the call center manager expects. For example, if Andrea wanted to listen in on Liz's calls, and she's on the beach, all she has to do is put her cell phone number in and she can participate/whisper/or just monitor the phone call.
Competitive call recording solutions require modifications to the network architecture to record phone calls.
Competitive VoIP call recording solutions also won't work if the media/voice (RTP) pathway is different than the signalling (SIP) pathway. Competitive VoIP call recording solutions are sold on a seat based license model (annual cost). This pricing model means that the provider has a harder hurdle to sell over. They've got to sell more in order to make a margin.

High Definition IP Call Recording Captures Communications with Superior Voice Quality; Becomes Interoperable with the Next Generation of VoIP Telephon

Recently, VoIP call recording and VoIP high definition phone service announced that they were joining forces to provide high definition IP call recording. This new high definition VoIP telephony offers end users their final proof that VoIP telephony is able to support their needs not only in convenience and price, but also in higher quality voice communication. By adding the ability to record these higher quality communications, the complete package is now available.

Since the release of VoIP phone service, the number one user complaint has been surrounding the voice quality. A few industry leading VoIP hardware vendors have found a way to solve this issue by incorporating the G.722 codec into their VoIP telephones. If the voice quality is improved with G.722 codec, so then will be the voice that is recorded with any given IP call recording solution, or so many would assume. Well, the fact is that most IP call recording solutions do not support the G.722 codec yet and therefore these calls are simply not recordable on those solutions. Recently it was announced that one call recording does support the G.722 codec and is now able to provide high definition call recording, offering many benefits to the provider and to the end user.

By successfully achieving interoperability with the G.722 codec, this unique IP call recording solution is able to provide high definition call recording with the new audio standard for internal PBX communication. This means that only the IP call recording solutions that are compatible with the G.722 codec can work effectively with the new Cisco Unified Communications Manager, the next generation of Cisco phones, and the new Polycom phones. If the call recording solution is not compatible with G.722, the calls will be listed as “empty” meaning that the solution is unable to record the call. As the next generation VoIP phones become the standard, more and more calls are going to be listed as “empty” and user’s satisfaction with their service is going to drastically decline. UNLESS, your call recording solution is able to foresee this change and act now to become interoperable with the G.722 codec.

Another obvious perk of high definition call recording is that it enables a higher fidelity of audio recording, enabling other third party applications which perform word-spotting, compliance checking, and call center quality assurance to work better without requiring a larger MP3 because these calls are recordable in the same compression quality as earlier IP call recordings. In other words, you get the quality enhancement of high definition call recording without adding any additional storage nightmares.

And finally, it has been proven that the G.722 codec enables VoIP conversations to be clearer than traditional digital line/PSTN calls. This provides another level of differentiation against digital line (PBX) solutions or traditional POTS conversations. Since the number one criticism of VoIP has been the voice quality, this is a huge victory for the VoIP industry. Not only are they now able to provide higher quality voice communication than previously available in the VoIP market, they are now able to provide even higher quality than traditional phone systems, removing that last and final obstacle to converting to VoIP telephony.

Choosing an eBilling Solution: Making the Right Choice

While the adoption of eBilling systems is becoming more and more popular in the telecom industry, it is important that we not underestimate the importance of differentiating between solutions. eBilling solutions range from a simple internet accessible bill, through the providers web portal, to sophisticated bill analysis software that delivers reports directly to your email box. So, it is very important that you know what you want and understand the advantages and disadvantages of each end of that spectrum.

Does your company simply need a simple electronic bill presentment solution to make bills available online? These solutions are a dime a dozen. In fact, if you don’t at least have this bare bones solution at this time, your billing system is grossly outdated and in need of some serious review. But, some companies find that this is all that they need. Or BELIEVE that this is all that they need. But, is providing the same service as your competitors your goal or is providing superior service your goal? This is obviously a question you have to ask yourself and not one that I can answer for you…but, certainly should be considered.

In understanding which eBilling solution you should offer, you must first consider the needs of your customers. A simple survey should do the trick. How many man hours do your customers spend on reviewing, analyzing and allocating their bills? How much does that really cost them in operational expense and therefore how much would they be willing to pay to alleviate that expense? This is really the first step on your journey to find the perfect eBilling solution. You must first understand the needs of your customer base. By making assumptions about their needs, you may be missing a large piece of the puzzle.

Second, you must understand how different eBilling solutions work and what services they provide. If you think you want a plug-and-play web portal solution, you have to ask yourself a few questions. Will your customers be able to pay their bills via the web portal? Studies have shown that consumers that can are more likely to pay their bills BEFORE they are due rather than paying them on the due date or late. Will your customers be able to drill down into their bill to answer detailed questions about extensions, departments, expense allocation, etc.? Studies have shown that by allowing the individual consumer to research their own billing statements, telecom companies are able to reduce churn (customer service expense) by 10% annually. Do you have customers that receive bills that are 100+ pages each month? If so, have you calculated the expense in printing and mailing these lengthy bills? Not only can you save on paper and postage expense, but you can also save on operational expense – someone has to compile, print and mail these bills.

The real question that you have to address when searching for eBilling solution is what are your needs and the needs of your customers. It is simple, really. You can opt for a solution that provides the bare bones of eBilling and stay competitive with your competition OR you can differentiate yourself from your competition and provide a more robust, analytical tool that can save both you and your customer time and money in bill analysis and bill payment.

Proteus VoIP QMS Provide Call Management for VoIP Telephony

Proteus VoIP Quality Management System (QMS) is a monitoring and reporting tool that aids voice and network managers to troubleshoot Voice over IP (VoIP) calls for failures and quality of service deterioration
Proteus VoIP QMS is an add-on module for the Proteus family of call accounting systems designed for businesses demanding a better performance from their VoIP network. It is differentiated by its ability to reliably monitor large volumes of VoIP traffic across many sites, helping managers to effectively understand the traffic characteristics of their networks.
So that high quality service levels are ensured:
· IP telephony servers must be available
· Data networks must continue to operate at maximum performance
· Call quality must meet end-users' expectations
· VoIP security must be monitored to ensure availability and integrity

Proteus VoIP QMS is a call accounting system that offers high-quality, real time, graphical monitoring of QoS and call information such as jitter, latency, packet-loss, MOS, call count, average call duration and bandwidth utilization.

Key Business Drivers
VoIP solutions can give businesses significant advantages over traditional voice technologies, but maintaining the performance and availability of VoIP applications can be daunting for voice managers because of their complexity and the critical role they play.
Monitoring VoIP networks is particularly vital as even the slightest changes in performance can have a dramatic impact on the quality of service end-users experience, especially when compared with other network applications, such as Web and e-mail services, which are not real time applications. Users are much more likely to complain about delays on their phone conversations than about momentary delays in receiving emails.
Simplifies VoIP Management
Proteus VoIP QMS is a call accounting system that reduces the skills required for VoIP troubleshooting by automating each step during troubleshooting, identifying problems and prioritising them.
Application Benefits
· Sophisticated web browser based, dashboard-style interface
· Highly granular access policies, defined and limited by the system administrator, allowing secure access
· ITU standard E-Model based MOS calculation
· Monitors multiple systems
· Powerful reporting and filtering features
· Auto scheduling of reports
· Export reports to Word, Excel, CSV, PDF, etc.
· Immediate, proactive warning of call quality issues
· End point identification and reporting based on MAC or IO address
· Identifies gateways that are handling the largest amount of bandwidth or call volumes
· Identify the specific E1/T1 trunks used on the gateway
· Confirm that switches are functioning correctly

Proteus VoIP QMS collects and reports on the call records produced by VoIP telephony systems. These records contain information such as call origination, destination, duration and termination status. Usefully, they can also contain user ID (extension mobility), IP address and MAC address information for users and devices on VoIP networks. Most VoIP systems also provide information about the quality of the calls they process, including metrics such as jitter and latency, as well as the number of packets that were sent, received and lost.

The Challenges of Promiscuous Packet Capture Methods for Recording Hosted VoIP Conversations

The need to record and monitor phone conversations has been a key requirement of telephony, whether for law enforcement or monitoring the effectiveness of a call center agent. In the days of traditional TDM telephony, this process was quite easy: to perform surveillance or recording, the physical wire was actually spliced and joined. The conversation could then be intercepted and recorded, hence the terminology “wiretap.” In the year 2000 alone, over 2.1 million conversations were tapped in the United States. Over 50% of call centers intend on recording phone conversations for quality assurance purposes. As society becomes increasingly litigious, the demand for keeping an active record of phone conversations has risen.

When H.323 became a de-facto standard for enterprise VoIP communications, a niche market arose for recording VoIP conversations within the enterprise space. In a VoIP environment, unlike a TDM environment, the voice traffic shares the same modicum of transport as traditional computer data. This makes recording the phone conversation more sophisticated than simply splicing a cable. This sophistication was inherently linked to value, and as a result, organizations paid significant monies to record voice conversations across an IP network.

The technology premise behind intercepting enterprise VoIP conversations is simple. The voice, when it gets transformed into digital data, will pass through a single gateway or network “choke-point.” When it passes through this central point, it can be detected by an always monitoring interception device that will detect the presence of voice data, copy the data, and make it available for future retrieval, monitoring, or playback. This technology is simple and usually quite effective under normal PBX type load conditions, although not compliant with many surveillance standards.

As VoIP conversations become increasingly distributed, with softphones on PCs or PDAs and peer-to-peer within an enterprise, the voice data does not pass through a single chokepoint, making it virtually impossible or totally uneconomic to record extension-to-extension phone conversations.

As an added twist to the complexity of recording conversations, organizations have started to embrace the concept of outsourcing their communications platform and infrastructure to third parties for management and maintenance, including the ability to record phone conversations. The primary driver for an organization to embrace the service is to limit and reduce capital and operational expenditures. This traction has launched the IP Centrex market which is projected to grow ten-fold within the next 3 years, by being offered by providers as varied as traditional bell operating companies to Best Buy, a large North American consumer electronics retailer.

This economic trend has a new implication for recording VoIP conversations: the network has become infinitely more complex. This could ultimately have the same effect on the PBX market that peer to peer PC networks had on the mini-computer.

IP Centrex providers have several key business requirements that make recording phone conversations through legacy packet capturing mechanisms either very difficult or inordinately expensive:
(a) Distributed Architectures: IP Centrex providers completely differentiate the technology of controlling and routing calls from the actual path the digital voice data will take. For example, in the United States, many IP Centrex providers never even see the audio for telephone calls – the audio is directly routed to backbone carriers for origination and termination, making it impossible to record. Extension to extension calls occur within an organization’s intranet – giving the provider no access to the audio. As a result, organizations who leverage legacy recording technologies cannot record internal helpdesk conversations. Resolving this requires significant and costly changes to the service provider’s network architecture.
(b) Redundancy: IP Centrex providers are required to provide enterprise services at carrier-grade reliability and service levels. As a result, they are often geographically distributed to deliver five-nines redundancy and failover facilities. This means that voice data traffic can be routed to multiple nodes in multiple locations, making it extremely difficult to correlate and combine for recording and surveillance purposes using packet sniffing technology.
(c) Scalability and Privacy: IP Centrex providers leverage a single capital hosting asset to provide services to many organizations. This is what makes it profitable to deliver low-cost, capital-light service to end-customers. This means that the same platform is shared by tens of thousands of end-users in a multi-tenanted environment, who may or may not want to have their phone conversations recorded. By leveraging legacy methods, all packets must be inspected, regardless of whether the conversation is to be recorded or not. This introduces numerous privacy and legal considerations. Finally, the scalability of legacy technologies fail due to the sheer volume of traffic.
Consider the following: most IP Centrex providers have backbone connectivity approaching 50 megabits. In order to maintain profitability, over 40% of that pipe has to be full of voice traffic, while typically only 10% of voice traffic may need to be recorded. For legacy technologies this means that 90% of traffic has to be inspected and discarded, creating significant waste and inefficiencies.
The next generation of recording technology cannot rely upon promiscuous packet capturing as legacy technologies did. Instead, it relies on being a value adding component of the IP Centrex provider’s distributed network architecture.

How does this next generation technology architecture achieve this?
• Become a Routing Endpoint for Recorded Calls:
Rather than capture all traffic, text generation IP call recording acts as a standards interoperable endpoint within the network architecture. Selective calls are routed to this endpoint for interception and recording – not all calls. In the world of SIP, the recording endpoint is nothing more than a back-to-back user agent (B2BUA). By doing this, calls, including their voice data, are routed to a highly redundant and secure endpoint that captures the call (voice or video) in its entirety, whether they are internal, to an end-customer or not. Further, the provider can rest easy knowing that only the conversations that need to be recorded are being recorded.
• Make it Easy to Turn on the Features:
Using next generation routing technology standards such as CPL (call processing language), selectively route calls to this endpoint – without making a single modification to the end-customer or provider’s environments.
• Central Recording Platform:
Providers can create a central recording environment that accepts incoming conversations that can originate from any of the provider’s redundant network facilities, eliminating the need to have separate devices in multiple-locations and attempting to correlate the entire conversation. This offers a huge cost saving when providing facilities for large distributed campus networks.

When searching for recording, monitoring, and surveillance technologies, legacy packet capture methods are proven solutions in the traditional PBX and IPBX installations, where all calls and calling information pass through a single node. However, they are a poor choice for a distributed IP or IP Centrex environment. As with all applications the technology must be weighed against the key business requirements. With the next generation of IP call recording, customers are no longer required to choose the next best thing, they can now choose the very best call recording application for their needs.

Bill Analysis Tools – Benefits to User and to Service Provider

Bill analysis tools provide a vital service to business customers while saving time on account management and billing print fulfillment costs for the service provider. The customer can understand and manage their expenditures by creating their own reports and allocating costs with the option to access their bill. Reports are available instantly at every level of analysis – from trend summaries to individual line items.

What’s new in bill analysis tools?
Some cutting edge companies now offer multi-level integration and deployment options for service providers of all sizes. Complying with the “JSR168 standard portlets” helps electronic bill presentment companies deploy into existing portal technologies such as BEA Weblogic, IBM Websphere or open source portals like Liferay. These bill analysis tools can be supplied with an API & SDK, making deployment quick and cost effective while creating a truly unique offering to your customers. Some of the best bill analysis tools mirror the user’s own business structure, so that phone usage can be easily managed. They provide a range of reports that are presented as charts, making them easier for users to read and understand.

Why would a service provider decide to provide bill analytics?
For one thing, bill analytics allows the service provider to cut customer service costs by providing tools for customers to resolve their own billing queries. They also allow service providers to maintain proactive customer relationships; by encouraging online activity, service providers can develop a better understanding of consumer behavior. With these fast, powerful cost analysis tools, clients can set up watchpoints to view succinct, customized summaries of the reports that matter to them. And allow them the ability to access the exact level of analysis to fit their needs.

Self-service – Electronic bill presentment tools empower customers to answer their own billing queries, therefore, you will benefit from savings in time and money. Win new customers – as the variety of telecom services grow and billing becomes more complex, bill analysis tools are becoming more and more necessary.
Differentiate from the competition – Bill analysis tools provide a nonprice related service that adds value to users.
Complements existing systems – Bill analysis tools can be delivered online as a stand alone solution or as a part of your portal or third party hosting.
Hosting – Some of the most cutting edge bill analysis tools now offer flexible deployment, meaning it can be applications provider hosted, hosted by your company, or hosted by a third party.
Scalable – Bill analysis tools are available in all shapes and sizes and are made to meet the needs of any business size…it’s just a matter of finding the right solution.


Why would the end user opt to use a bill analysis tool?
Makes information more accessible – with reports, graphs and data concisely summing up expense and usage trends.
Saves time & cost – standard reports are instantly available, and even customized reports can be run within seconds – so the user gets just what they need, when they need it. Compare this to competitor solutions that can take hours or even days to download!
Customizable reports – standard reports with wizard features are generally available with the best bill analysis solutions.
Cost allocation – the best electronic bill presentment tools enable administrators to allocate usage to hierarchy or cost centre structures that reflect their business.
Greater transparency – The recipient benefits from transparent bill information, allowing them to examine usage at department, team and individual levels.

Bill analysis tools make allocation and reporting a snap. Making these tools available to the end user improves the end user experience while reducing their need for customer service support. It makes real business sense to integrate a tool like this into your business processes. It can help you to cut costs, while providing a non-cost related differentiator to your customers. If you make their life easier, they are more likely to stick with you.