When investing in telephone management, what benefits can a client hope to receive? The phrase is synonymous with cost reduction and improving employee productivity, but a piece of software on its own can't do this, it can however create information, reports etc to form the base on which good management decisions can be taken.

With this in mind, there are five important areas where telephone management can measure key performance indicators that may form the basis of decision making to dramatically improve a company's telecommunications environment for very little cost or effort.

Each of these subjects are covered in more depth in separate articles, an introduction to each follows:

1. Managing staff use of the telephone

Expressed simply, there are only two categories of telephone call, 'business' and 'private', to define a business call; a telephone call made in furtherance of company objectives. Private calls are those not meeting the business definition.

Having said this, it is not realistic to expect employees to make no any private calls. An example, a member of staff has a plumbing emergency at home, and makes a couple of calls to avoid personal disaster. Under these circumstances only the strictest employee could invoke disciplinary procedure.

If some private phone calls are permitted, then it is a matter of degree and circumstance. This dynamic requires measurement to ensure private use is within acceptable limits, a Telephone Management service meets this need.

2. Detect fraudulent use

Fraud within the telephone arena is confined to two main areas, hoax telephone calls like bomb scares, and an outside party connecting to your PBX to make or sell calls as a business at your expense.

Both these activities can easily be identified by a telephone management service.

3. Quantify offers from competing telecoms service providers.

Telcomms service providers continually make the offer, "we will save you money if you send your call traffic to us". A Telephone Management service can be used to check these claims before the contract is signed and you are committed to the fine print.

4. Optimize your existing telephone infrastructure.

Answers to the deep and dark questions, How many spare extensions do I have? And how many connections to Telecom service providers do I need to support my traffic volumes?

Answer these and more question easily with a good telephone management system.

5. Contribute to customer service management

Are your telephones answered efficiently? Are your staff spending too much or too little time talking to customers and resolving queries?

Telephone Management can measure the performance of individual employees easily by comparing the average duration of a telephone call within a group with the average duration of an individual.

Considering is relatively low cost and high return every company large or small should have the benefit of telephone management information.