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IP Centrex Billing: Do You Have The Call Accounting & IP Billing
System In Place? |
By:
Karen Ritz, Vice President, Business Development for TelSoft
Solutions |
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With all the hype about IP Centrex, you'd think that every
business in American had switched to IP telephony. Analyst firm
Ovum estimates that IP Centrex and hosted VoIP revenues will
amount to around US $6.6 billion worldwide by 2008, up from US
$255 million this year. Frost & Sullivan puts a US $7.9 billion
valuation on the market by 2009. It expects, conservatively,
that IP Centrex will account for at least 15 percent of all
business lines by the turn of the decade, double the size of the
current Centrex market.
Many end-users no longer want to have the headache of managing
the PBX and its services, and service providers can manage these
devices remotely on behalf of customers. This reduces the burden
on the IT function within the company and, with financing deals,
can even reduce capital expenditure.
How do you know if IP Centrex is right for your company? It's
not just about the money, but rather how the features,
functionality, and system control play a significant role in
making the right choice. It can be relatively risk free -
assuming the service provider can provide adequate service and
accurate billing along with all those IP benefits. And as
businesses view data as an equally essential method of
communications and see their workplaces becoming virtual
entities, stretched across multiple locations, IP Centrex
becomes more desirable than ever before. One of the issues with
IP Centrex is the IP
billing capability of the provider. Every outsourced telecom
provider should be able to offer: -- Bucket billing plans (like
cellular billing) -- Unlimited billing rates or plans -- Taxes
(up to 10 levels) -- Real-time or web based call reports for end
users -- Staggered billing -- QuickBooks Interface -- -- Cost &
Charge - Basic Cost Allocation/Billing Software Module -- --
Billing of one-time and recurring charges
If you are considering an IP Centrex system, make sure your
provider has all the call
accounting and IP Billing systems in place.
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Article Source: http://www.friendsofvista.org/articles/article36301.html |
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