I just went through evaluations on some products and this is what I know (personal opinions):
Veramark: Call Master is the Cadillac of call accounting products. It is a very intuitive, robust and simple to use. The reporting is based on Crystal Reports, so the reporting potential is only limited to how well you learn Crystal. But it is quite cost prohibitive, so I can almost guarantee sticker shock. If you are dealing with a Veramark salesman, I believe that you can play hardball and get them to bring down the price, but you might have to sign a long term maintenance contract. eCas is their cost-effective version of Call Master and it is strictly Web based. What makes it different is that you cannot add on the different modules available for Call Master (i.e. Billing, Tie Line Rec., etc.). eCas comes as-is. It is a good looking program, but not as robust as Call Master. What I liked about eCas is that if you have CLANs in your PBXs there is no need for buffer boxes. The CDR information can be sent via FTP.
Telemate: I had demo their software and was quite impressed with it, but then all of the sudden the sales rep. I had been talking to was no longer available. I found out that another company had bought out Telemate, laid off most of the sales staff and was deciding on what to do with the product. Because of what I was hearing, we decided to not look at the product any further if the company decided to no longer support the product. I would probably take a look at it again since it looks like they are going to stick with it. BTW, the sales rep moved on to Veramark.
Microtel: Microcall didn’t impress me. I only looked at the demo CD and it just didn’t grab my attention.
SAI (Sierra Gold): They have an OK product, but here again it just did not grab my attention. I will say that it does have GREAT reporting capabilities. Also, you can buy the product to use in-house, or you can pay them to maintain all hardware and software at their site and all you do is get on the Web for reports. Might be worth a look.
TTI (TeleManagement Technologies, Inc.): WinCall was not a good program. This is a small company trying to make itself out as one of the big boys. During an online demo I kept asking questions and quite often the response was “..no, it’s currently not in the software, but we can add it in if you like..”. I threw the literature away after that demo.
IntegraTrak: Their new TABS.IT is quite good. It is a strong improvement over their previous product, WinTRAK, which I won’t take the time to list the flaws because there were so many. You ask, “..how can I then recommend a product from the same company..?”. Well, Integratrak did not make TABS, they bought it off another company. It is a strong product, with good reporting. Worth a look.
There are, of course, other products out there, but these are the ones that I had a chance to look at or demo.
