With today's financial challenger, it's pretty difficult to find a company not working to find ways to plug the holes in their organization. Employees are working harder and faster. Often times, one employee is doing the work of two. It is crucial for companies to pinpoint all of the areas they can successfully cut back without affecting their quality of service.



To that end, many companies are installing software solutions that can track and monitor employee activity and investment usage. Telemanagement systems are just one solution that companies are utilizing to improve their return on investment in telecom and in their employees. Telemanagement systems vary greatly. Some provide a brief summary of usage while others provide customizable scheduled reports and alerts to unusual activity.

No industry has been hit harder in the past couple of years than the trading industry. Not unlike other businesses, they are working to weather this storm by cutting inefficiencies and improving their processes. In so doing, a small trading firm, active on the NYSE, added a telemanagement system to their turret system to track telecommunications activity. This is becoming more and more common practice among trading companies in the wake of the financial downturn.

In the first month or two, they noticed small changes here and there that they could make to improve their telecom usage and day to day efficiency. But, after about 4 months of using their telemanagement system they noticed something in the trending report. There was one trader that was making significantly less phone calls from the turret system than the other two traders they had on the floor. They found this curious because there was no difference in job function or reported trades. How could that trader have the same number of trades with only half the calls?

After further investigation, they found that the trader in question was not making all of the trades he was reporting. This presented two issues to the trading company. First, there was clearly a human resources issue to be confronted regarding the trader that was not making the trades he was being paid to make. But, second, and almost more importantly, they were faced with a legal liability issue. They were under the impression that these trades were being made and were charging their customers for these fraudulent trades. After taking a closer look, they were able to reconcile the situation with their customers before legal action was taken. But, this could have been a potentially costly and embarrassing situation that was avoided due to the installation of a telemanagement system.

This is just one vital example of how a telemanagement system can help a company to improve efficiency while possibly uncovering more than they expected. More times than not, companies find that there is one way or another that telecommunications systems are being used in a fraudulent manner. They are not always as serious as this example, but they are always costly. By alleviating these costs, companies are able to save money and improve business processes.