Telecom expenses cost corporations vast sums of money, accounting for 3.6% of revenues or more in most companies, according to The Aberdeen Group. Telecom Expense Management (TEM) can help reduce these costs to a minimum, but there is another aspect of TEM that is not as well known, yet worthy of attention.
In these days of great uncertainties, security concerns are playing an ever greater role. The Web publication, security.itworld.com reports that the FBI and FCC estimate an annual loss of more than $4 billion due to toll call fraud. Incidents costing companies upwards of $30,000 in fraudulent calls are not uncommon, according to the same source.
Industrial espionage is another security problem that has taken on major proportions. The American Society for Industrial Security estimates that losses due to industrial espionage may amount to as much as $63 billion annually. Surprisingly, about 85% of industrial espionage crimes are committed by the company's employees.
Hackers have been known to compromise corporate telephone systems by placing obscene messages on the telephone system to greet all callers. Not exactly a reputation enhancing act for a company.
To make matters worse, some telecom fraud is now under investigation by the FBI as potential national security threats.
Fortunately, something can be done about these threats. As part of a Telecom Expense Management system, some call accounting software has features to detect anomalies. Call Data Records (CDRs) reveal important data about all incoming and outgoing calls. The software looks for unusual call patterns, such as calls that are too long or too short for their type, unusual destinations, calls made at an unusual time of day, etc. These systems may be set up to alert personnel to unusual activity by paging them, or by printing or faxing exception reports. As an added bonus, once employees are aware that their calls are being monitored, this will become a limiting factor on private calls they would otherwise make.