A Historical Overview of Telephone Management

In the early days of PBX there were no call control features, no barring or limitations on where a telephone user could call, neither had a Telephone Management system been invented.

Since the invention of the PBX, when for the first time in history the average employee was provided with a telephone on the desk, Telephone Management has been a necessary tool.

Exposure to this new high level of financial risk lead PBX companies to develop call control features like call barring and entrepreneurial forces lead the birth and introduction of Telephone Management systems.

In the 60′s and early 1970′s PBX systems were electro-mechanical. There was no easy way of creating a call record that would track the use of an individual telephone. The telephone management service provider would physically connect wires to each extension (at the Main Distribution Frame or MDF) and record events with a Scanner. The resultant information was stored on a tape drive.

Periodically the Telephone Management maintenance technician would visit the site, collect the tapes and transport them to a processing center where the telephone call events were compiled into individual call records and a set of paper reports where created, bound and sent to the customer.

As computer technology developed so did the PBX. A milestone in the development of the PBX was the move away from mechanical switches to electronic switches. This enabled a wave of new features, one of which was the Call Detail Record. (known as the CDR). The PBX now produced a call record detailing the date, time, duration and extension number making the call, scanner technology became redundant.

The entrepreneurial vigor of the telephone management industry ensured full employment of new computer technology. very soon a full telephone management software package could run on a computer. Data collection, call tariffs and creating reports, all at the customers premises.

The next milestone was the development of the Personal Computer. With this development Telephone Management System software became the standard offering. The customer would provide a computer and buy a software package.

Now, with the adoption of the Internet into standard business operations, Telephone Management systems have again morphed into new offering. Today the most modern and powerful Telephone Management solutions are offered as Software as a Service (SaaS) or a Hosted Web Application. Where a simple data collection device, or call buffer is placed at the PBX and collects and ships call records (CDR) to a host application. The user simply logs on through security and views reports over the Internet. Telephone Management is now offered as a managed service at very low cost.

The high reliability, computing power and service levels attained by this business model make a compelling argument for change. Source