SPECIAL REPORT Call management proves


While many companies have been sidetracked by cost cutting and streamlining, call management solutions seem to be an appropriate area for investment in an economy that has taken a downturn.


points – managing their overheads, retaining existing clients and attracting new customers. “Fortunately, call management addresses all three in various ways including measuring communications expenditure, showing how quickly calls from existing clients and new clients are being answered, and how many calls your sales team are making to create new sales,” commented Phillip Reynolds, Joint CEO & Co-Founder at Oak Telecom. “Having seen the last recession Oak is acutely aware of how recession proof call management can be.”


R


Reynolds also noted that call management is often bundled with new telephone system sales which are lower because people are dragging out more life from their existing switches. “Some resellers have seen this as an opportunity to attack their existing bases with call management and call recording opportunities,” added Reynolds.


Call management is maturing as a product and will become mainstream as it brings in department-wide reporting which includes such things


ecessional times have


seen businesses focus on three


as help and service desk performance, not just on communications but on related sales and marketing performance derived from integration with a businesses contact management system and business process. “Also, as communication migrates in part to social media, reporting of ‘communications’ will be enhanced with all manner of new statistics which will drive new sales for that business,” added Reynolds. “In 2012 we’ll see a move, albeit slowly, to cloud- based communications management. Oak is migrating its hosted applications into the cloud and 2012 will see the delivery of its new Cloud CSX platform completing the options of CPE, hosted and cloud from a single supplier.”


Significant growth Tri-Line has also seen business grow steadily during 2011 with particularly growth in deployments on the larger enterprise solutions. “We attribute this growth to two factors,” said Kay Tobin, Commercial Director, Tri-Line. “The ease with which users can deploy and maintain larger systems and the ease at which they can direct pertinent information to the relevant people. Nobody will download a trial if it’s going to take hours to install and


configure. Our directory sync objects allow systems to be downloaded and configured in seconds – even a 5,000- 10,000 user system.”


Management information is also a ‘huge’ growth area and call logging is an obvious subset of this, points out Tobin. “The ultimate goal of any call logging solution is to be efficient in processing data at the back end while providing information at the front end in the most concise way possible,” she said. “Our industry is lucky in that technology is improving so rapidly we’re getting a chance to enhance solutions and deliver results in ever- more interesting ways. Open standards-based solutions that offer integration with third party systems are clearly more attractive to end users, and this is one of the areas where we’re also seeing real growth which we expect to continue through 2012 and beyond.”


Tobin is ‘slightly bemused’ as to why so many traditional resellers still buy and sell on price alone. “Very few resellers will take the time to test the products on offer yet almost no customer would dream of purchasing without downloading and using,” she commented. “Because of this, many resellers are falling behind


Phil Reynolds


Oak is acutely aware of how recession proof call management can be


their own customers in terms of basic product knowledge and missing the larger opportunities. We’re finding that resellers who continue to lead on price without any understanding of the actual features of the products on offer are really struggling.”


As Reynolds pointed out, selling call management is becoming an increasingly higher priority for resellers to help offset the general slowdown in new system sales. Distributor Nimans says the growing influence of analytical information is helping dealers win more sales from their existing bases. “Mining your own base and identifying new customers are equally important as pressure in the market continues,”


he said. “The volume of system sales is not where it was a few years ago so resellers have to adapt and identify new revenue streams. Some businesses are keeping their systems for longer, which isn’t always a bad thing if resellers go back in and sell additional applications. This is where call management stands out as a valuable additional revenue generator.”


In the early days call management came under the banner of missed calls, but today it’s more about analysis, call flows, the time of day, managing staff and the number of channels required to handle peak demand. “There’s always opportunities to sell call management. It’s the same


the industry is evolving so are we. 52 COMMS DEALER DECEMBER 2011 www.comms-dealer.com


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