TeleMate Case Study

U.S. Army National Guard Minnesota

• Headquarters: St. Paul, MN
• Industry: Department of Defense
• Applications: Telephone Management, Telephone Cost Allocation
• Phone System: 75 different systems from varying manufacturers

Company Background

For over 360 years the citizen soldiers of the Army National Guard have come to the aid of their neighbors during times of need. The Guard helps communities during natural disasters and civil emergencies. The Guard also plays a key role in defending America, working in concert with the nation's active forces. The Minnesota U.S. Army National Guard, headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota, supports the daily activities of over 2,000 individuals at over 70 physical locations.

Business Challenge

Bob Andree, Master Sergeant and Telecommunications Manager for the Minnesota U.S. Army National Guard, was challenged with integrating the telephone usage reporting for all of the Minnesota National Guard locations. To accomplish this task, the Guard needed a call accounting solution that communicates with a wide variety of phone systems and produces HTML reports. After reviewing several products, MSG Andree selected TeleMate“ software as the Minnesota U.S. Army National Guard call accounting product of choice.

TeleMate Call Accounting Simplifies Call Verification Process for the National Guard

The Federal Government requires the Guard to verify all phone calls to determine if they were made for official government business. For MSG Andree, verifying calls from 70 locations was time-consuming and challenging; that is, until he implemented TeleMate.

In the past, MSG Andree received information from the telephone company, which was 30 days or older, and generated reports for each location. He printed the reports and mailed them to each location for review and verification. Today, this cumbersome process has been eliminated by using TeleMate to record the telephone activity at each National Guard location and posts the call information on the Guard's intranet.

"Each National Guard location is responsible for call verification and any subsequent productivity issues that may arise. My challenge is to get the information to each location in a timely manner and in a format that facilitates the review process," said MSG Andree. "TeleMate's Extension Detail Report provides each manager with information such as call length, cost, and number dialed. It is easy for me to disseminate this data by furnishing the information in an HTML format, which I post on the Guard's intranet. The Telecomm Control Officer at each location is equipped with the information they need to analyze telephone usage."

"Additionally, TeleMate's exception reports help me to quickly pinpoint potential misuse problems by identifying exceptionally long or expensive calls -- a real time-saver when you're verifying calls made by over 2,000 individuals," added MSG Andree.

TeleMate's exception reports also identify other suspicious actions, such as PBX hacker activity, calls made to 911 and direct ISP connections that circumvent the network.

TeleMate Software Facilitates Budgeting Process

MSG Andree uses TeleMate's Company Call Analysis by Division report to summarize monthly telecom expenses for all locations. He also uses this information to project the next year's expenses by month and to build his budget.

TeleMate's ability to effectively manage massive amounts of data means you can easily analyze telecom trends for any time period -- a week, month or even years. Using standard CDR records, TeleMate tracks calls by trunk, identifies peak usage periods, monitors queue times and abandoned calls, and expenses.

TeleMate's Directory Simplifies Moves, Adds and Changes

"Personnel changes present a challenge for most organizations, and the Guard is no exception. Individuals frequently change extensions and locations, plus there are always new people to add into the system. TeleMate relates call activity to users, their extensions and then to their departments and divisions, making it easy for me to update personnel and extension information. With TeleMate, I spend less time doing moves, adds and changes," said MSG Andree.