From our perspective, there are three elements of telecommunications management, or as we like to call it, “telemanagement”.

1. Telecommunications Expense Management (TEM) – A system or service focused on the management of various telecom vendors and their associated contracts and payments
2. Call Accounting – A system or service which provides for the internal charge-back to various groups within the organization and also network, human resource, and systems performance analysis
3. Communications Facilities Management – Tracking of equipment, virtual and wired network circuitry, and work orders to improve the efficiency of the telecommunications  or IT departments

Matsch is focused on providing web-based, hosted call accounting services that are economical and easy to manage.  Our primary goal is to provide users the benefits of call accounting without the burdens typically associated with such a system.

Virtually all institutions have had a call accounting system at one time or another.  Over time, the cost of providing telecommunications services has come down significantly, thereby reducing the need to charge back for these services (think long-distance rates).  Many would argue that it is a poor business decision to purchase software or subscribe to a service in order to ‘properly’ distribute these costs.  In many cases businesses make the decision to abandon their call accounting in order to save the real money associated with managing the system or service.  While there is no point disputing the direct savings from such a move, many neglect to fully realize the long-term implications.  Situations arise where having ready access to telecom data can have an impact on safety and legal concerns, such as harassment claims.  Another situation might be related to customer service complaints.  Isn’t it a good thing to know if in fact the customer who complains about poor service was called fifteen times in the past two weeks, but failed to return YOUR calls?  Many of our customers use our software to help them manage the most significant expense in their enterprise – People!  Reporting can enable management to promote good behavior, and similarly address those who may be misusing company resources.

Matsch has been refining its solution to the call accounting problem with a SaaS (Software as a Service) based service offering.  Our solution enables you to have as much or as little interaction as you choose with your call detail, in a cost-effective manner.  Those organizations with 2000 extensions or less pay only $600 for setup and $300/month service fee for our NET-Phacs SaaS Call Accounting.  This service provides basic call accounting with daily and monthly reporting, query access to a full year of call detail (incoming, outbound, and internal), chargeback reporting, and general ledger export file creation in a format you define.  NET-Phacs works with both serial and IP CDR, and includes importing or entering your directory database at setup.

In an attempt to make the transition to the new NET-Phacs, NET-Phacs Plus, and NET-Bill as smooth for our customers as possible, we have been testing our new software exhaustively! It’s now time to ‘take the leap’ and put the new software into production. This is scheduled for the week of October 12th.

Prior to that week, we will be testing communications to/from all our customers, including resolving any firewall issues and the like. Likely this will be unnoticeable to our customers, however if anything seems out of place or unusual, feel free to call us anytime.

What you will notice once the transition is complete:

• Updated look!  This will be immediately obvious, and we welcome your feedback!
• Increased ‘Uptime’
• Faster response times

As with all of our efforts at Matsch, we strive to keep the best interests of our customers in mind.  We are always looking for ways to improve and add to our existing products, so if you have an idea, we’d be glad to hear from you!

Sincerely,

The Matsch Team