and support issues when one force management system is shared by multiple ACD can be eliminated as a result. sites; however, this can be impractical as the size of the work force Strong competition among switch, software and service bureau and number of ACD systems grow. vendors continues to result in new products and services. With the Depending on the ACD, multiple choices for interfaces to call advent of the PC, the call management systems markets have been detail information may be available. Examples are a V.24 port with opened wide to many small entrepreneurial companies presenting one-way or two-way direction, with one or more protocol choices. new approaches. Requirements from call managers for more infor- Magnetic medium may also be available. mation presented more ways, even more quickly, and at lower cost Call management information from an ACD can be extensive. are also contributing to the trends in call management. The conti- Performance reports may be produced every 15, 30 or 60 minutes nuing trend is to provide better and more cost effective call manage- all day, every day. On very large ACD systems, the information can ment systems and services to help people manage their call centres be for a thousand servers and proportionate number of trunk circuits, better. with call detail information for every inbound and outbound call produced at call rates up to 9 calls per second. 36.7 References 36.6 Call management trends (1990) Advanced Traffic Control Methods for Circuit Switched Telecommunications Networks, IEEE Communications, 28 (10) A clear trend is to merge call centre systems. Individual specialised (October). systems which have addressed separate functions in the call centre (1990) Counting Call Costs, Communications, (October). are being merged into the same processing equipment providing call (1989) Making Sense of Call Statistics, Communications Manage- management reports. Modularity in the software, multi-tasking ment, (November). operating systems, and better adherence to OSI standards mak