Customers cannot resell lost billable time. Capture it with Navantis CallTracker and Microsoft Lync Server 2010.
Professional services organizations need a way to effectively and accurately track and bill the time spent by their employees on phone calls with clients. Time is what these firms sell, and time is the one thing that cannot be resold. Navantis CallTracker provides an intuitive and easy-to-use extension to Microsoft Lync that makes it easy for users to not only track time spent on calls with clients, but also to add relevant context for each call.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published October 2010
Business Needs
“In the restaurant business,” says Andy Papadopoulos, a Partner at Navantis, “if you don’t sell a steak one night, you can sell it the next night. In retail, if you don’t sell the box on the shelf one day, you can sell it the next day. But professional services firms can’t resell lost time, so there is a clear need for a tool to help these companies capture time accurately and bill for the value they deliver to their clients.”
Traditional methods for tracking time use a feature of Private Branch Exchange (PBX) systems that registers account codes that employees enter from their phones just before dialing a phone number. This method has its flaws: it works only for outgoing calls, and it requires users to either memorize the codes for their clients or pause to look them up.
Also, users sometimes skip entering the account codes to save time and then forget to note the calls later. If employees don’t remember to bill clients for such calls before the accounts are closed, the organization must write off the time as lost revenue.
Lost billable time is a big concern for professional services firms because missed hours hurt not only their bottom line but also their reputation for precision and accuracy. No one wants to overlook even a single phone conversation.
Solution
To meet these challenges, Navantis developed CallTracker. The company used the software development kit for Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API (UCMA) 3.0 to create the solution. UCMA 3.0 is a managed-code platform that is used to build applications that provide access to and control over Microsoft enhanced presence information, instant messaging, telephone and video calls, and audio/video conferencing.
With CallTracker, which integrates with Microsoft Lync Server 2010, users are alerted to incoming calls by a pop-up message that appears on the bottom right corner of the screen.
Users are able to either begin tracking the call or to reject tracking if it is not a call that is to be billed. An option to set a flag to never bill the client is also readily accessible, which ensures there will not be a pop-up message for future calls.
Calls that are being tracked can be easily assigned to customer accounts by using a pull-down menu, even after the call has begun. When the call is to or from a stored contact, CallTracker suggests the account number that was most recently used for that contact.
The call-tracking tool also includes a field for entering notes about the call, which employees’ assistants can access later to expand or edit.
The solution can then automatically send the time-tracking information to the firm’s accounting software for billing.
Benefits
The simple, intuitive CallTracker interface makes it easier for employees to capture and bill the time that they spend on client calls. As a result, customer bills are more accurate and firms can reduce the number of missed billable hours.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published October 2010