How to Manage Large Call Recording Platforms

Business Systems discuss how the Head of IT in the contact centre can manage large call recording platforms.

Most organisations are dealing with rapidly evolving and growing technology landscapes, and voice architecture plays a big part in this.

Call recording solutions have been around for years, so it’s an established technology and many organisations are now on their second, third, fourth or even fifth generation voice recording solution – and therein lies the problem.

Call Recording Management: Challenges of a Large Call Recording Infrastructure

When it comes to managing a large call recording estate, the waters have become muddied. Heads of IT are having to deal with call recording systems that span multiple product versions with multiple capture protocols, from multiple vendors (e.g. NICE call recording, Verint or Redbox Recorders) and often in multiple regions – too many multiples to run an efficient operation!

Complicated by years of M&A and ‘upgrades’, these are often outmoded and incompatible, which is creating a real dilemma in terms of management, regulatory compliance, costs and operational efficiencies.

It’s a problem that worsens over time, as databases quickly build up to millions, if not billions of recorded calls. And now organisations are left with multiple repositories of siloed data making data coherence impossible unless steps are taken to achieve ‘unification’.

Unification of data becomes the essential factor in achieving compliance and operational efficiency – and with most organisations being duty bound to store, manage and audit their voice recordings, regulatory and compliance bodies are expecting more extensive and comprehensive controls to safeguard against misconduct.

Managing the output from just one recording system is hard enough considering the vast number of recordings produced, and throw in challenging environments such as end-of-life product cycles, technology upgrades and product replacements from a different vendor – and the situation is exacerbated.

Unless remedial action is taken, the problem escalates, and the disparate silos of data means operational management is substandard, hugely inefficient and extremely costly – all to be avoided in a sane world.

Businesses need to be able to generate more value from their voice recording data as well as reduce costs and respond to efficiency demands, so the conundrum keeps on magnifying.

Call Recording Management: How to Manage a Large Call Recording Infrastructure

So how can the Head of IT ensure they provide resilient, reliable solutions and manage upgrades, legacy and EOL systems whilst lowering their server footprint and reducing risk?

Driven by market needs and the complex customer challenges they create, Business Systems developed Wordwatch to manage the simplification of call recording management. We used our years of experience and heritage in call recording to develop disruptive technology to:

Streamline architecture complicated by years of M&A and upgrades
Manage business complexity risk and regulation scrutiny
Use voice to complete and monetise a single customer view

So how do we do this? Put simply, Wordwatch sits over any voice capture system, storing data where you want it, unifying your compliance front end for replay and management.

By providing open APIs, businesses can choose the best fit solution for Surveillance, Transcription, Trade Reconstruction or Analytics, ensuring their landscape is future proofed. Wordwatch will simply feed any of those applications with the necessary voice data they require.

Think of it as a portal to the important data your business is demanding as and when they need it. It brings together a much-welcomed uniformity of data, management control and auditable access across the entire call recording estate – this is a real boon to those responsible for compliance and even provides a self-service option, relieving IT from constantly having to respond to timely demands.

The Challenges of Call Recording Management

To summarise, Heads of IT have been dealing with their pains, frustrations and challenges around call recording management for some time now, and many have been fighting a losing battle around:

Gaining a holistic view of live and legacy voice data
Carrying a risk of having legacy systems
Ensuring the integrity of voice data is not diminished
Managing the multiple systems from multiple vendors with multiple versions
Needing to decommission legacy and EOL systems
Being unable to perform bulk extracts quickly and efficiently
Being unable to manage new evolving channels such as IM, Skype and compliance recording within Microsoft Teams

With Wordwatch, Heads of IT can now enjoy quantifiable benefits and results such as:

Reduction in risk
Quick access to data from multiple systems and evolving channels (e.g. Microsoft Teams for call recording compliance) from one single point
Data integrity (as the files are kept in their original format)
Ability to decommission legacy systems therefore reducing risk
Costs are streamlined and the server footprint reduced
Other departments can now self-serve
Organisations can easily swap out capture engines and applications to future proof their technology landscape
Significant time savings with bulk extracts of data in a timely fashion