CTI Group
CTI Group Software Applications

Monday, November 30, 2009

Operational Benefits of Call Management Systems

Service Billing and Provisioning
Call management systems take the call details from a company’s telephone system and use those detail records to create reports and analyses of the call activity. Records can be pulled from selective extensions, or all extensions, depending on the needs of the company.
For example, many professional services firms use call management systems to tally up client calls for client billing. Most professional services firms bill for their time, so a quick report of time spent speaking to a number can make bill-back far easier and more accurate. Law firms are a prime example of how these firms use call management systems to track their billable hours.
As another example, hotels use call management systems to provide phone services to their guests and to effectively charge back for the guests’ services. This call activity is then billed back to the guest on their final bill. The call management system makes keeping track of this call activity easy for the hotel so they don’t have to dig through the call records manually and instead can depend on the reports sent to them by the call management system.

Departmental and Employee Chargeback
Originally, call management systems were created to be used within a corporation to allocate costs from department to department. Call accounting systems are used to allocate costs back to division, departments and even individual employees. Companies used call management systems to monitor the number of long distance calls placed from a given extension and to charge those departments or employees for those long distance calls. Such systems can also provide data directly to accounting and human resource systems.

Staff Productivity
Call management systems provide visibility of the calling patterns and activities of employees and can be used to improve productivity. By identifying call patterns that might be decreasing productivity or identifying personal calls made during business hours, companies are able to improve productivity and reduce costs at the same time. The reports provided by a call management system can also be used to evaluate the productivity of help desk and customer service staff.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Proteus®: More Than Just a Call Management System

Proteus® Enterprise/Trader is a call accounting solution which is widely used by major financial institutions, local authorities (governments), health authorities (hospitals) and academic institutions.
Communications management software is the nucleus of effective communications management; collecting call records from communications devices (traditional PBXs, financial trading systems and VoIP switches) to provide management reports that ensure equipment and networks are being used effectively and efficiently.
Key benefits include the following:· Communications cost savings· Increased employee productivity· Improved customer service· Increased network efficiency· Tackling fraud.
· Monitoring VoIP traffic and quality.(Available for Cisco)
Understanding the traffic patterns and the routing of calls through a telephone network allows the customer to maximize their investment, by eliminating congestion and simultaneously checking for excess and unnecessary capacity. Our customers continue to reap savings that have given dramatic returns on their investment, by using the information supplied in Proteus’® reports to optimize their networks.
How many calls terminated and were launched in a network? Where were they from? Which routes did they take? How many used overflow routes? Which network elements/switches are actually being used? Where is congestion and blocking occurring? What are the traffic patterns on a daily basis? Which hours/days of the week/year are busiest?With the move towards newer technologies, networks can be designed using the customer’s actual data and not statistical guesses? How are these questions being answered and how difficult was it to arrive at the answers? Most importantly, is the data accurate? Proteus® provides an easy-to-use and cost-effective solution.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

How can SmartRecord® help you to comply with TSR?

What is the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR)?

TSR covers telemarketing - any plan, program, or campaign to sell goods or services through interstate telephone calls. The rule requires telemarketers to make certain disclosures and prohibits lies. It gives state law enforcement officers the authority to prosecute fraudulent telemarketers who operate across state lines. And it gives consumers instructions on how to stop unwanted calls. Just say, "Put me on your DO-NOT-CALL list." Companies use call recording to prove their compliance with the TSR.

Failure to comply:

“Failure to provide any of the required information in a "clear and conspicuous" manner, before the consumer pays for the goods or services offered, is a deceptive telemarketing act or practice that violates the rule, and subjects a seller or telemarketer to a $10,000 fine for each violation.”

How can call recording help your business stay compliant?

By easily keeping precise records of all call communication! A call recording does not lie. You will have picture perfect proof of activities such sales calls, orders and conversations that took place over the phone.

SmartRecord® is the logical choice for call centers everywhere. Our scalable solution is both easy to install, competitively priced, and provides the following benefits:
• Reliable call recording that assists in complying with TSR regulations
• Multiple product permission settings to ensure call recording security
• Powerful encryption functionality to protect confidential information
• Intuitive user interface that helps users find recorded information quickly and easily
• Efficient playback features that can be activated based on different search parameters
•Flexible recording options that enable program administrators to specify unique program configurations

Monday, November 23, 2009

Proteus® integrates with call recording software, SmartRecord®

Now Proteus® has integrated with Smartrecord®. This cost-effective, user-friendly, any time, anywhere call recording solution ensures that you have the flexibility, scalability, and compliance coverage you need – with no capital investment in hardware or software for our web based solution.

The integration of Proteus® and SmartRecord® allows the customers to generate reports in Proteus® and are able to listen to the voice part of the calls in the reports. Using Proteus’® sophisticated report builder, customers can easily find the calls and listen. These calls may be malicious, emergency, customer dispute, staff training, expensive, long duration or longest response calls.

It has added an extra dimension to the call accounting system reports. Not only Proteus® reports provide valuable management information, now the customers can listen to the calls in the reports.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Insurance Companies Retrieve Calls Using Computerized Records Management Tool

Within the insurance industry, recording phone calls is now considered standard industry practice. Companies record customer interactions for a variety of reasons. For insurance companies the reasons are many. Most insurance companies are required by law to maintain standards of operation, call recording can help to prove compliance with these regulations. Also, insurance companies record calls to keep a record of witness statements to assist in the claims process. Finally, many insurance companies use call recording to help in training their staff to ensure that clients are being assisted properly and situations are being dealt with effectively.

Computerized records management is a key application for every insurance company and CTI Group revolutionizes the use of call recording by integrating software systems used to manage customer, policy and claim records. Call Records and MP3, phone conversation related to the client’s record are easy to find and attach to a claim file. It is much easier than it is to locate a related fax or email message.

Larger companies must also address security concerns. To prevent loss of data due to hardware problems, redundant hard disks as well as backup for databases, recorded calls and configuration settings are needed. Ability to connect to a UPS offers high reliability and shuts down a system smoothly to prevent corruption of data during power failures.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Call Recording for Mortgage Companies

As a mortgage professional, your business depends on unique selling positions to differentiate your company from the rest. Competition is intense and the ability to see and monitor calls in real time can be the key to increasing your transaction yield.
Recording phone calls can help to ensure that all contract details are correct. The broker can refer back to the recorded call to verify that he/she has all details correct.
By Integrating Call Recording Software into your system, you can be sure the call is connected to the correct person and handled appropriately. Calls can be monitored in real-time or chosen at random to review the call-flow process and to ensure superior customer care.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Why choose Proteus Enterprise?

There are a variety of telemanagement systems available on the market. So, why should you use Proteus Enterprise?

Proteus Enterprise captures, records, and reports on various telephone usage events to give organizations a clear picture of their telephony activity. Proteus Enterprise detects outbound and inbound calls, call ring outs, call routings, abandoned calls, and other activities to give companies the best call data in real-time. Our application is designed for organizations looking to save on costs, rapidly respond to business drivers, and gain the optimum efficiency from their voice platforms.

Proteus Enterprise Software Highlights:- Sophisticated Web browser- Highly scalable - International- Compatible with all traditional PBX's and VoIP solutions- Real-time statistics on exact user activity and contact with keyclients- Cost allocation and charge back of true costs- Notification of unusual trends in activity- On-demand and pre-scheduled reporting capability

Friday, November 13, 2009

How to set up calls to be recorded with BroadSoft BroadWorks

1. Notify your carrier that you want to subscribe to SmartRecord for your IP call recording needs. Your carrier will ask you what phone numbers you want to record.
2. Use your phone
- iPhone – sync your call recording with Sugar CRM directly from the phone.
- Deskphone – sync your call recording with Sugar CRM using the browser-based recording application.
- Use the browser-based SmartRecord recording application to view your recorded calls in a dashboard, categorize calls, annotate calls, place comments in calls, set-up call alerts.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Installing Call Recording on VMware

Finally, Install Call Recording on a virtual server. (http://www.ctigroup.com/us/Call-Recording-System)

Reasons To Install On VMware
- VMware has established, and continues to grow, a large customer base including 100% of the Fortune 100 and 92% of the Fortune 1000.
- Virtualization has proven to lower data center costs through efficient use of hardware and operating expense as well as aid in disaster recovery,
- VMware installations of SmartRecord reduce install time in customer implementations by standardizing installation and reducing manual installation steps.

What versions of VMware are required?
VMware ESXI—
- free version of VMware virtualization software
- supports multiple operating systems on a single server
- ESXi 4(64bit machine)/ESXi 3.5 (32 bit machine)

VMware vSphere
- Paid version of VMware virtualization software
- Offers centralized management of multiple machines and ESXi hosts
- Integrated backup and restore
- Dynamic load balancing of virtual machines
- vSphere VMotion support for instantaneous movement of data between servers
SmartRecord is not supported under VMware Server or VMware Workstation

Minimum Hardware Specifications
Processor: 2 2.8 GHz Virtual Processors
RAM: 4 GB of RAM
Storage: 80 GB of Storage, 15,000 RPM Storage Recommended, Shared Storage Supported
Network Connectivity (Gigabit)

How to install SmartRecord on VMware:
1. Install VMware ESXi on minimum hardware.
2. Copy SmartRecord image file using VMware instructions.
3. Configure SmartRecord.
4. Configure phones to point to the recording server.

What is Proteus Enterprise?

Proteus Enterprise enables central telemanagement of a company's entire telecommunications network. Unlike other call management products, Proteus Enterprise is technologically agnostic. It integrates seamlessly with analog, digital and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems. Companies with worldwide locations use one Proteus Enterprise installation to manage all sites.

How does Proteus Enterprise work?
Proteus Enterprise collects data for all Private Branch Exchanges (PBX) and Internet Protocol (IP) telephony systems, from one or multiple sites through RS232 connection, direct IP logging, IP buffer technology, or call log files.

How our customers use Proteus:
Our customers use Proteus Enterprise to
- Allocate costs to people, departments, and cost centers
- Alert when 911 is called
- Alert when there are network or PBX problems (no calls within a time period)
- Provide view of employee productivity, particularly activity of sales people

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

What is so special about Proteus?

Robust and targeted reporting
Proteus Enterprise includes advanced filtering that enables telecom managers to easily design and update any number of customized reports. Reporting enables telecom managers to provide costing, traffic analysis, and trending reports. The telecom manager can format the reports as Adobe PDF, Microsoft Excel and other common formats. Additionally, data can be exported from Proteus as a comma separated values (csv) file.

Alarms to detect problems, save money
Proteus Enterprise is equipped with a versatile alarm system that alerts key personnel of actions within the call accounting system. Proteus includes a default set of ten alarm templates and can be customized and sent to an individual or group, typically via e-mail or flagged on screen. Alarms provide instant information once a call is terminated.

Monday, November 9, 2009

What are the key business drivers for Proteus Call Management?

Proteus is a call management system that automatically tracks all events and calculate cost and provides automated reports on these events.
Key Business Drivers for Proteus Applications
Save Communication Costs
· Compare different carriers and choose the most cost effective provider
· Identify excessive personal telephone calls
Increase Employee Productivity
· Highlight busy times when resources need re-allocation
· Identify needless long duration calls
Improve Customer Service
· Set targets for key performance indicators, like time to answer and length of call
· Track Incoming, outgoing and missed calls

Key Features - Proteus Trader - Manage Complexity

Proteus Trader is ideal for financial institutions which have complex voice networks. It is the preferred solution in trading environments to manage mixed voice architectures consisting of Trading Systems, PABX, and mobile phones worldwide.

Proteus is the only telemanagement product which can log up to 512 sites on a single platform, with up to 70,000 extensions and 5,000 dealer positions.

Proteus’ web based delivery allows voice managers to view and manage telephony costs, usage and response times across any number of sites, while providing local personnel access to view information that is important to them – be it a single department, single site or group of sites.

The alarms package can be configured to provide proactive alarms on premium rate calls, calls to emergency numbers, unanswered calls, high cost calls and many other call types you might wish to specify.

• Private Wire Utilization: up to the minute statistics on the usage and user per private wire

• Carrier Cost Validation: allocates costs to a user and department (or cost center) while taking into account least cost routing (LCR)

• Routed Call Analyzer: cost mapping utility allocates the calls made by the Trader via PABX back to his/her unique identification and/or trading group.

• Traffic Analysis: provides the usage of trunks across multiple sites to ensure that there is 100% availability, while reducing wasteful overcapacity.• Productivity Analysis: provides a database of customers called and analysis of the productivity in contacting those customers.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Geckotech –SmartRecord Call Recording & ACD Reporting CTI Group provides a feature rich bundle for Contact Centers

Summary

In response to demand from their customers for a call center solution, Gekotech set out to develop a solution of their own. However, they soon found that is was not as feature rich or intuitive as CTI Group’s call recording and ACD reporting solutions: SmartRecord and emPulse. Bundled together, they were the answer to their customer’s needs for a robust call center solution.

“CTI Group’s applications offer user’s a highly intuitive call center solution. Their call recording and ACD applications are not only feature rich, but as a bundled solution, offer our customers a total package for call centers,” said Josh Robbins, Managing Partner of Geckotech.

The Customer

Since 2003, Geckotech has been delivering a flexible and feature-rich Cisco Hosted VoIP service for businesses nationwide over a private MPLS network; designed to solve the complete communication needs of business clients. Geckotech’s service allows companies to avoid capitalizing the high cost of purchasing a phone system, only to watch the technology become obsolete. Geckotech provides clients with voice and data service, phones, hardware, network management and maintenance, on-going end user support, and technology upgrades.

The Requirements

A large segment of Geckotech’s customers are call centers for non-profits, professional services, and healthcare verticals. They made requests to Geckoteck for a call center solution that solution that included both call recording and ACD reporting. While regulatory standards are important and required by their customers, the ability to continuously record multiple extensions, monitor and whisper into live calls, and extensive ACD reporting were the most important requirements that stood out. Geckotech’s customer’s also required to ability to not only monitor, but measure their employees’ work and phone usage.

The Solution

Geckotech’s first instinct was to develop a call center solution in house that they could offer their customers. However, Geckotech soon found that their in house solution lacked the extensive functionality that is offered by the CTI Group’s solution. By bundling CTI Group’s call recording system, SmartRecord, with their ACD reporting product, emPulse, Geckotech is able to offer their customers a call center solution that meets their needs. Geckotech launched the solution externally mid year in 2009and now 20% of their customers are using the call center solution to monitor and measure the employee’s work and usage. The partnership will add value to Geckotech’s core offering by allowing the company to provide a complete call center solution, while at the same time focusing on providing customers with Geckotech’s core service; superior, individualized support, the highest level of network uptime and reliable Hosted VoIP service.

Not only were we able to give our customers exactly what they wanted by bundling CTI Group’s call recording and ACD reporting products, but the ease of doing so can only be directly attributed to CTI Group’s support throughout the process and quality products.

The Benefits

It was not hard for Geckotech to realize that CTI Group’s products offered a complete call center solution. It was very important to Geckotech customers with call centers to have a keen awareness of their business by being able to record and report on all calls from the call center. By bundling CTI Group’s call recording product, SmartRecord, with their ACD Reporting product, emPulse, customers benefit from the following:

· Monitor – customers are able to monitor their employees’ phone calls and usage via recording and call center reports.
· Record – customers can choose to record specific extensions all the time or during certain operating hours, days, etc.
· Report – schedule reports to run at night so that you don’t tie up precious network resources, apply filters so that you see only the information necessary to do your job, or create custom reports that are more meaningful to a particular task.
· Manage – customers can manage their employees and their business from the recordings and reports that are captured and stored in the call center solution.

Our customers report that their businesses have benefited from the use of the call center solution. More specifically, they find the offering to be intuitive and easy to use. They like the pre-packaged reports and having the ability to apply filters to them or to create their own reports when necessary. The most well received features by far have been the ability to Whisper and Barge.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Who needs Call Recording? Insurance adjuster on the road.

John is a claims adjuster for workers compensation claims. He needs to record a victims account of the incident that caused the workers compensation claim. It is required that he record this interview for his file, but he will be working remotely for the week, so he will be unable to use
the company's in-house call recording software. Thanks to his Recording Card, he is able to complete his interview and move forward with the claim without delay. The ability to record his calls at any time and from any location allowed him the flexibility to conduct this interview and meet his deadline.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Blanket Recording in a Hosted PBX environment at Work:

Medical Clinic ensuring quality of care Renee works for a non-for-profit clinic at a local hospital. They have a 24 hour call line for emergencies or to answer questions after hours.

Most frequently, parents call in with questions about their children. If a child has a fever or won't stop crying, the parent can call the help line for advice as to what medicine they should give the child or if the child needs to go to the hospital.

To monitor the service provided by the nurses that answer the calls, the clinic requires that all calls be recorded for quality purposes. Since the clinic is privately funded and non-for-profit, large capital investments present a real obstacle. Luckily for this clinic, they can switch to Hosted PBX, save money, and be able to record as well. They get a new full feature Hosted PBX and call recording for less than the cost of a dedicated call recording system. Hosted PBX with Blanket Recording is the perfect solution for them.

Monday, November 2, 2009

The cost and inconvenience of having to create and deliver multiple copies of invoices tobe sent to different offices.

A WELL KNOWN FINANCIAL INSTITUTION came to CTI Group because they had numerous offices spreadthroughout North America and globally. It was management's objective for each office to receive theirown billing detail, yet headquarters needed a copy to review and pay the invoice. Security and privacystandards dictated that regional managers should not be able to view other managers' invoice information.It was necessary for the long distance carrier to implement several bill invoice levels for theregional offices and to send a complete copy of the bill to headquarters.

Issues: The cost and inconvenience of having to create and deliver multiple copies of invoices tobe sent to different offices.

The Goal: Allocate invoice detail to regional offices, maintain autonomy for each regional officeand provide one master invoice to headquarters for complete review and control

THE RESULT: CTI Group's eBilling Software
Combination Billing: CTI Group's platform allowed the service provider to combine invoices thatroll-up to a master invoice level while still maintaining the unique account structures within eachinvoice. As invoices are received throughout the monthly billing cycles, they are matched backto the master invoice level and combined for presentment. All reports and totals can be run andreviewed at this new master level. This eliminates the need to create multiple invoices for thesame corporate customers.Web Access: Corporate customers are able to view their invoices using their Web browsereliminating the need for paper bills, CDs, or installation f client billing software.
Billing & OSS World 2009 ebilling CTI Group Customer Spotlight - Call Recording Call Recording at Metaswitch 2009