OfficeWatch Helps Grand Prairie School District Keep Students Safe with Advanced Reporting, Call Tracking, and 911 Alerts

Fort Lauderdale, Florida (March 8, 2012) – Grand Prairie Independent School District is not a stranger to call accounting and telemanagement solutions.  After several years with an existing provider, Troy Duval, Voice Network Administrator for the district was ready for a change.  He contacted a previous colleague of his, Christi Crumpton with TKO Telesystems, for advice on a system that would meet his needs and work seamlessly with his 4,000 extension Cisco IP phone system.

“Their existing [telemanagement] solution was unstable and had become costly to maintain due to the support issues,” explained Crumpton.  “They needed an application that was reliable, easy to use, and that could run as an active directory on a virtual machine; I suggested OfficeWatch.”

Safety for their students, faculty and staff is always a top concern for school districts and in-room phone systems enable teachers to reach help if it is ever needed.  OfficeWatch Telemanagement works with these phone systems to provide users with dynamic call tracking and reporting features, as well as offers 911 alerts, toll fraud notifications, VoIP hacker detection, and trunk analysis tools.  The centralized reporting features allow Duval to trace suspicious calls, research frequently dialed numbers, and create a documented paper trail in the event the district has any issues or concerns.

After participating in a demonstration with Metropolis and TKO Telesystems, Duval was ready to move forward.  “He was very happy with how the stats [in OfficeWatch] update in real time,” elaborates Crumpton.  “The threshold in his prior software was too long and took several minutes to update.”

Upon receiving the appropriate key codes and user manual to the software, Duval chose to self-install the application into his 40 campus sites.  “I have installed a lot of this type of software; this was by far the easiest to install and use,” he praised.

Grand Prairie has already had success with the 911 alert feature, as students are notorious for pulling practical jokes. OfficeWatch allows users to quickly determine where calls originate from with detailed location data that is sent immediately to users via email, text and screen pop-up when an emergency call is placed.

“We’ve had 911 calls that turned out to be pranks,” notes Duval, explaining how he was able to cancel emergency services after discovering the calls were not a true emergency. “We were able to call the extension back and inform the teacher that her students were using [the classroom phone] so she could better monitor them.”

About TKO Telesystems

TKO Telesystems offers a wide array of phone system products and services catered to the small, medium, and enterprise business customers.  Their company mission is to provide turn-key telecommunications solutions provide their customers with increased productivity, profitability and ease of use.  Headquartered in Dallas, TX, TKO serves clients across the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, as well as nationally.  For more information about TKO Telesystems, contact Christi Crumpton, Account Executive at 972.484.4900 x 302 or visit http://www.tkotelesystems.com.

About Metropolis Technologies, Inc.

Metropolis Technologies, Inc. is a progressive telemanagement solutions provider that has designed, developed and produced cutting-edge software applications for all types of businesses since 1993.  Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Metropolis provides solutions to businesses throughout North America as well as on a global scale.  For more information, please visit www.metropolis.com.

Metropolis Chosen to Speak at International Avaya Users Conference

Fort Lauderdale, Florida (February 28, 2012) –  Metropolis Technologies is pleased to announce that they have been chosen to speak at the IAUG Global Education Conference, to be held May 20 – 24, 2012 in Boston.

The annual conference draws Avaya customers from across the globe to network and share best practices as well as provide comprehensive learning opportunities.

The Metropolis team will participate in two sessions:

• The Avaya Dashboard: Using Real Time Telecom Analytics in Today’s Business
  This session offers a broad look at the usage of CDR reporting analytics and how the utilization of this data can impact a business. Case studies and real-life examples will be offered throughout the session.
• Is Your PBX A Money Pit? Knowing the Risks and Liabilities
  This interactive session is an opportunity for audience members to learn about the legal and financial liabilities of their existing PBX system and ways to self fund other projects through PBX ROI.  Topics to be discussed will be best practices for utilization and cost analytics around productivity and trunking.

“We are honored to participate in this year’s conference,” said DJ Fairley, dynamic presenter and representative for Metropolis.  “This event presents a great opportunity to share our expertise and learn from our peers.”

For more information on Metropolis’ sessions, contact them directly at 954.414.2900 or register online at http://www.iaug.org.

About Metropolis Technologies, Inc.

Metropolis Technologies, Inc. is a leading telemanagement solution provider for telecom management and call accounting.  The company’s distinctive product offerings, OfficeWatch, ProfitWatch, and AgentWatch provide visibility through call tracking, robust reporting modules, expense management, and trunk analysis. Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Metropolis has provided solutions to businesses throughout North America as well as on a global scale since 1993.  For more information, please visit http://www.metropolis.com.

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Carlo’s Bakery, Home of “Cake Boss” Chooses OfficeWatch Telemanagement

 

Metropolis Technologies is proud to announce that OfficeWatch Telemanagement has been selected as the official call accounting solution for Carlo’s Bakery, the home of “Cake Boss”.

Located in Hoboken, New Jersey, the family owned Carlo’s Bakery is known for creating the best tasting, highest quality wedding and specialty cakes and treats.  In 2009, the bakery became a household name across the nation due to the launch of their own reality series, “Cake Boss” on TLC.  With their newfound fame came rapid growth, necessitating the opening of an additional 35,000 sq/ft baking facility to meet demand.  Running two locations proved a new challenge for the shop, as key personnel were no longer in one central location and they relied heavily on their phone systems to ensure they were able to communicate easily with their staff and customers.

“They were still operating on a 20+ year old legacy Nortel phone system,” explains Jeff Bloom, Channel Account Manager for Avaya.   After upgrading the bakery to new dual PRI lines tied to an Avaya IP Office communications system, there was still the problem of understanding their call volume.   “Buddy” Valastro approached Bloom regarding his concerns.  “He had no idea what his bakery customers were experiencing,” Bloom described.  “He needed to be able to understand their call traffic volume, to look at staffing, and to ensure the calls were being routed correctly so I contacted Metropolis.  Within an hour, Carlo’s Bakery had signed off on implementing OfficeWatch.”

OfficeWatch Telemanagement is a call tracking and logging application that allows users to pull dynamic reports on call volume, receive alerts with location details of emergency calls, and analyze trunk capacity.  TrafficWatch, a unique graphic interface feature of OfficeWatch, easily monitors each trunk line and shows users when these lines have reached their maximum load.  This f

 

eature will be of particular benefit to Carlo’s Bakery to ensure their customers are able to connect with them, and not receiving a busy signal.

“My experience with Metropolis Technologies and in using their AgentWatch and OfficeWatch Solutions, is that they provide not only the most cost effective solutions in the industry, but also the most robust and easy to use.  They are perfect for business partners as well as end users,” states Bloom.

The implementation of the IP Office Platform and OfficeWatch installation is scheduled for completion by the end of February.

About Metropolis Technologies, Inc.

Metropolis Technologies, Inc. is a leading telemanagement solution provider for telecom management and call accounting.  The company’s distinctive product offerings, OfficeWatch, ProfitWatch, and AgentWatch provide visibility through call tracking, robust reporting modules, expense management, and trunk analysis.  Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Metropolis has provided solutions to businesses throughout North America as well as on a global scale since 1993.  For more information, please visit http://www.metropolis.com.

Medical Practice Solves Employee Productivity Issues and Creates a Paper-Trail with OfficeWatch Telemanagement

Fort Lauderdale, Florida (February 7, 2012) –  For over six years, Advanced Micro Services located in Miami, Florida, has helped Sunset Cardiology grow their medical practice by supporting their data network systems, hardware, and office equipment, as well as navigated their increasing data storage needs for their paperless electronic record management.  When the practice began seeing issues with employee productivity and phone abuse, they turned to Advanced for help.

“They called us needing a call accounting software and we recommended OfficeWatch,” stated Ele Vargas, Account Manager at Advanced, who has worked with the company since 2006.  Advanced Micro Services became a Partner Reseller of Metropolis Technologies products in 2009, and chose to distribute OfficeWatch because of its ease of installation and user friendly interface.  Vargas explains, “Support has been great.  I used [Metropolis’ Technical] Support to troubleshoot a challenge with the user’s caller ID.  It took them two seconds to resolve the issue.”

The first sign that Sunset Cardiology was having an employee problem was when their phone bill arrived and showed numerous 411 and long distance charges.  “We had some personal issues and some challenges with employees taking advantage of the workplace and the unemployment system,” explained Mariala Diaz, Office Manager for Sunset. One of her staff members was repeatedly calling the Florida Keys each day on the company phone, causing hundreds of dollars of unauthorized long distance charges.  Diaz elaborated, “I had no idea who was doing it.  I had to interview eighteen girls to find out who had a boyfriend in the Keys.  I shouldn’t have had to do that.”

One troublesome employee used hours of her time on personal phone calls a day, which made other employees work harder to take up the slack, subsequently decreasing morale. “I want the workload to be balanced.  If one employee is answering ten calls, and another is answering fifty, you know you have a problem.” When Diaz counseled the employee regarding her performance, the employee quit and filed for unemployment.  Though Sunset contested the claim on account that the employee’s discharge was connected with misconduct, they were unable to demonstrate this with documentation, therefore the Unemployment Office proceeded with the claim.  With OfficeWatch, Diaz now can quickly identify any productivity issues by easily pulling records showing how many calls each extension received, as well as track down any unauthorized phone calls that were made and their duration.

OfficeWatch Telemanagement logs all phone data directly from the Sunset Cardiology’s Toshiba IP PBX.  Features of the application include frequently dialed number searches, activity by extension, call volume data, and tracking for inbound, outbound, and extension-to-extension calls.  Through automated reporting, managers can set-up scheduled delivery of productivity reports monthly, weekly, even daily for automatic delivery to their email.  OfficeWatch also provides Sunset valuable liability protection and ensures her patients always receive superior service from her staff.  Diaz remarks, “If I have a patient complaining that they called yesterday due to an allergic reaction and they never received a call back, I can search the phone number and see what extension picked up the call, and whether or not a call back was made.”

When asked of her opinion of Advanced Micro Services, Diaz exclaims, “They are excellent! My office is complex and problematic; We use a massive amount of data, and I can’t just trust anyone with that data since our records are fully electronic.” After the OfficeWatch installation, Sunset Cardiology has seen a decrease in productivity issues.  Knowing that they are being monitored, employees have ceased making any personal phone calls and have become more diligent regarding their job duties.  In the event another incident does arise, Diaz is comforted knowing that OfficeWatch will help her to quickly identify the problem so that it may be addressed, and create a paper-trail of documentation.

“I would love to help other practices with challenging work environments like ours,” states Diaz. “If any office is experiencing phone abuse and productivity problems like we had, I would recommend OfficeWatch as a solution.”

For more information about Advanced Micro Services, please visit their website at: http://www.amscorp.biz.

About Metropolis Technologies, Inc.

Metropolis Technologies, Inc. is a leading telemanagement solution provider for telecom management and call accounting.  The company’s distinctive product offerings, OfficeWatch, ProfitWatch, and AgentWatch provide visibility through call tracking, robust reporting modules, expense management, and trunk analysis.  Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Metropolis has provided solutions to businesses throughout North America as well as on a global scale since 1993.  For more information, please visit http://www.metropolis.com.

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Retirement Community Chooses ProfitWatch to Improve the Security and Expense Management for Residents

Fort Lauderdale, Florida (January 24, 2012) – Metropolis Technologies, Inc., a leading telemanagement solution provider, is pleased to announce Cypress Glen Retirement Community’s decision to use ProfitWatch Call Accounting due to its ability to accurately track and bill back phone call expenses, as well as provide increased security with emergency notifications via email, text, and screen pop-up.

Cypress Glen Retirement Community is a continuing care retirement center situated in the heart of Greenville, NC which provides a home and services to approximately 300 residents.  They offer residents a continuum of care from Residential Living to Health Care, which is comprised of a 30 bed assisted living healthcare center and a 30 bed skilled nursing center, as well as a free standing 12 bed Alzheimer’s and dementia care cottage. Concern for the welfare and on-going safety of the residents is Cypress Glen’s greatest priority.  After implementing a campus-wide life line system in their Residential Living, which relies on the phone system to immediately summon help should a resident need assistance, it became necessary for Cypress Glen to obtain better control of their telephone lines by moving to PRI lines instead of the Centrex system they had in place. The community needed a solution that was reliable and stable.   Cypress Glen chose to install a new Mitel Platform and ProfitWatch Call Accounting to implement the capacity and control needed.

As an addition to their lifeline system, Cypress Glen uses the emergency alert feature offered by ProfitWatch.  Whenever 911 is dialed, ProfitWatch sends out immediate notifications to staff including location details of who placed the call.  “One goes to the front desk, to the Director of Nursing, Security, our Social Worker, and myself; Our campus is quite large.  With ProfitWatch, we get a heads up, even if the call didn’t go through the resident’s life line system. It is a very nice feature,” describes Anna Williams, Director of Communications for the community.

The process of billing their residents for long-distance phone usage under multiple carriers had become quite overwhelming for the business office.  “We became our own mini-phone company,” explains Williams. “We used to receive over 200 phone bills then would have to sort and copy them. Now our Accounting Director is able to do all of that through ProfitWatch.”  ProfitWatch has over 200 on-demand and scheduled report templates built-in to the system that can be delivered on the screen, routed to a printer, saved to file, or emailed.

Another benefit of ProfitWatch, according to Williams, is protecting her residents from harassing and unwanted calls.    “It is frustrating for anyone to receive an unwanted call, but imagine how it is for those with mobility limitations.”  One resident received over twenty calls from a local non-profit within a short time period.  “By the time the resident got out of the chair, the phone would stop ringing.  We had to be able to stop those calls.”  Williams used ProfitWatch to track down the organization and request they no longer call the resident.  As added customer support, this benefit is now available from the community to all tenants, many of whom have used it to eliminate unwanted spam callers.

For more information about Cypress Glen Retirement Community, please visit their website at: www.cypressglen.org.

About Metropolis Technologies, Inc.

Metropolis Technologies, Inc. is a leading telemanagement solution provider for telecom management and call accounting.  The company’s distinctive product offerings, OfficeWatch, ProfitWatch, and AgentWatch provide visibility through call tracking, robust reporting modules, expense management, and trunk analysis.  Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Metropolis has provided solutions to businesses throughout North America as well as on a global scale since 1993.  For more information, please visit www.metropolis.com.

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Metropolis Technologies Unveils a New Logo!

Fort Lauderdale, Florida (December 29, 2011) – Metropolis Technologies has unveiled a new company logo and released their new Marketing Kit for 2012, which provides additional training and resources to their reseller partners.  The new kit will become available to partners on January 16th, 2012.

The new logo will provide renewed brand consistency and reflect Metropolis’ continued leadership in the telemanagement realm.  The new look is a modernized version of the company’s first logo that was used from 1993-2011. It features a sleeker-looking font and updated graphic representing the diversity of businesses served by Metropolis’ telemanagement product solutions throughout the globe. 

Along with the rollout of the new logo and marketing kit, the company has announced plans for a major website revision.  The company states its goal is to increase the usability of the site to better direct visitors to the information they seek.

The website rollout is expected to be complete by summer 2012, by which time the existing legacy Metropolis brand will be removed from the market.  For additional information about Metropolis Technologies, telemanagement software, or to order a copy of the marketing kit, contact the company directly at (954) 414-2900.

 

About Metropolis Technologies, Inc.

Metropolis Technologies, Inc. is a progressive telemanagement software solutions provider that has designed, developed and produced cutting-edge software applications for all types of businesses since 1993.  Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Metropolis provides solutions to businesses throughout North America as well as on a global scale.  For more information, please visit http://www.metropolis.com.

 

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OfficeWatch Immediately Notifies Security of Bank Robbery

Tuesday, November 29^th was an unsettling day for clerks at a bank just outside of Washington, DC as an armed robber threatened the staff and demanded money.  Once the incident was over, luckily with no one harmed, 911 was dialed and police, security staff, and bank managers were immediately notified of the event with a single call thanks to OfficeWatch Telemanagment.

The Challenge:      

Between April and June of 2011 over 1,000 robberies took place in the United States with over $7.8 million stolen, according to the FBI’s Bank Crime Reports.  Metropolitan areas are 30% more likely to be robbed due to a higher density of bank locations and easier transportation access for escape.  Though banks and authorities have implemented many security tactics to thwart criminals, all methods rely on immediate response and a prompt investigation.

Unfortunately, prompt was something this bank location previously lacked when it came to their phone records.  As a routine part of the investigative process, police detectives look for a series of suspicious calls taking place prior to a robbery, since thieves often call multiple branches to gather facts before the heist.  The bank CEO had to make several requests and eventual subpoena the phone service provider before they delivered the phone data almost two months later.

The Solution:

After choosing a new Avaya phone system to be installed in all of their branch locations, the CEO requested a call accounting program to be installed to allow bank officials to immediately pull their own phone records whenever they needed.  The call accounting system was the last phase of their phone upgrade project, and was installed only days prior to the theft.  After the robbery, the bank directly pulled the phone records using OfficeWatch’s on-demand reporting, and handed them over to investigators.

Additionally, response time for managers and security staff was improved, since OfficeWatch’s triple alert system notifies users when an emergency call has been placed through screen pop-ups, SMS text messages, and email.  When the teller called to alert authorities of the incident, her bank’s security staff and managers were instantly notified so they too were able to immediately take action.