n Europe Centrex is emerging as a result of liberalisation, with tion against obsolescence, reliability and flexibility to meet change the first European digital Centrex service launched in the UK by positively. In addition, it greatly strengthens the position of the Mercury Communications in 1987. Mercury regards Centrex as a telephone company as a one-stop service provider. The basic tele- technique for adding Value to its public network services, while phone network is unique in its ubiquity and vast resources. Centrex simultaneously delivering competitive advantage to customers. enables numerous services to be added, or deleted according to The market's initial perception of Centrex as expensive led to business volume and type of activity. Given this range of service some customer resistance. However, in 1989 Peat Marwick, the flexibility, the traditional understanding of the term Centrex is accounting and management consultants, compared the total costs limiting. The DMS allows telephone companies to deliver Network of Centrex with PBXs and concluded that in four UK company Based Services thereby positioning themselves as a responsive models calling for between 100 and 1500 extension lines, over business supplier rather than a commodity service provider. seven years Centrex turned out to be the economic choice, with the greatest savings made through operating efficiency. Call Management Jean R Oliphant Rockwell International Contents 36.1 Introduction 36/3 Why call management? 36/3 36.3 Special needs 36/3 36.4 Call accounting 36/5 36.5 System interfaces 36/6 36.6 Call management trends 36/7 36.7 References 36/7 This page intentionally left blank Introduction 36/3 36.1 Introduction 36.3 Special needs Call management began as the recording of basic call information Under the general call management sphere exist individual environ- by sampling signalling activity on voice trunk circuits carrying calls ments which are generally defined by the type of call application. into and from a call centre. The information