A Live-PA Ltd White Paper Call recording: making unified communications compliant

Transcription

1 A Live-PA Ltd White Paper Call recording: making unified communications compliant

2 Software such as Microsoft Lync, Microsoft Office Communications and Broadsoft BroadWorks is bringing together a wide range of desktop applications into unified communications suites. Call recording solutions are designed to enable organisations to meet FSA and other regulations while benefiting from the efficiency, productivity and savings that unified communications can bring. This paper investigates the benefits of unified communications, highlights the regulations that make call recording mandatory and suggests the key features to look for in call recording software.

3 Introduction Between 2010 and 2014, the EMEA market for unified communications (UC) equipment and services is expected to double to nearly $16.6bn (over 10bn). That s the conclusion of market analyst IDC. Although described by IDC as only a modest growth, the rise nevertheless highlights the growing maturity both of the unified communications market and of UC as a business tool. 1 True, the term unified communications is often hijacked to add spurious value to what one Gartner analyst is reported to have called the bundle of things a vendor wants to sell you. 2 But don t let this misuse of the term deter you from looking beneath the hype and flannel in order to view the real business benefits that can accrue from the technologies. On its website, Gartner itself says Unified communications offers the ability to improve how individuals, groups and companies interact and perform tasks. 3 Assuming then that unified communications does exist, it can be taken to refer to an integrated suite of desktop applications such as telephony, video conferencing, instant messaging, desktop sharing and collaboration, and presence (realtime information showing if someone s available, busy, away from their desk etc). Although separate applications, and even separate products, these business enablers are integrated into a consistent interface as a complementary set of tools. They can be integrated in-house but can also be hosted by a managed service provider to reduce costs, add extra security and free up in-house IT resources. In its December 2010 Magic Quadrant for UCaaS Gartner said that Businesses should view UCaaS [Unified Communications as a Service] as an emerging alternative to premises based UC platforms for improving productivity, processes and workflow. 4 Benefits of unification Improving productivity is of course a perpetual business objective. Organisations are constantly trying to find ways to become more efficient, speed up decisionmaking and reduce the latency inherent in the communications process. Think of the events surrounding your last business meeting how long did it take to do the rounds of pre- and post-meeting s and phone calls? How many Let me check with Colin, I ll get back to you on that, I can t answer that yet because I m still waiting for Phil to reply to my etc? THE thing about unified communications is that you have access to all the information and communication capability on your desktop at the same time all the people you need, all the calendars, s, phone numbers, all the documents and files. So the decision-making process is infinitely reduced. Administration is simplified, costs are reduced, meeting and travel expenses are lowered; all good, but all secondary to the ability of unified communications to let you cut to the chase. The UC market There are many providers of unified communications components. The leading provider in terms of bringing much of it together in one business-oriented package is Microsoft with its Office Communications Server (OCS) and its latest incarnation, Lync Server 2010, released in November OCS is widely used either hosted inhouse or as a SaaS (software as a service) application and there is a lot of excitement around Lync because of its promise of increased productivity. Unified communications answer the call to reduce communications latency by giving you instant desktop access to everything you need.

4 Many companies are including Lync in their business strategy. If you re one of them, you should look into the wider issue of unified communications and the benefits it can bring. Tied up with these benefits, however, is the growing issue of compliance and how you ensure you don t fall foul of the law. It s in this context that call recording is becoming more and more important. Compliance through call recording Government and industry regulations are continuously evolving to take into account the latest business practices and organisations face a growing requirement for calls to be recorded. In addition to the often-heard message Your call may be recorded for training and quality purposes you can increasingly assume the unvoiced and because we have to. Regulations set by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in particular (and equally by the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act, with which UK companies have to comply if they re doing business in the US) require secure auditable records to be kept. This applies as much to transactions and conversations conducted within a unified communications environment as it does to an old-fashioned letterheaded communication or an correspondence. These regulations have put pressure on companies to record and store conversations efficiently and call recording has become mandatory in many business sectors as well as being used to ensure belt-and-braces best practice in many others. According to FSA regulations, some financial institutes may have to keep some information for up to six years (in this case overriding the Data Protection Act s stipulation that personal data processed for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes). An important addition to the FSA s rules was that from March 2009:... firms will have to record all telephone conversations and electronic communications relating to client orders and the conclusion of transactions in the equity, bond, and derivatives markets. 5 The problem is that if you have staff who are perhaps conducting conversations with customers mobile to mobile, or for some reason are using a hotmail or gmail account to communicate with clients, you have no record. As the Employee 2.0 generation, used to a much more open way of working, freely uses chat, instant messaging, internet and to communicate, less formal agreements and misconstrued verbal contracts can leave your business open to legal disputes. If there are no records, who s to say what really was agreed in that IM conversation or on that phone call? Technology bytes Unified communications An integrated suite of desktop applications such as telephony, video conferencing, instant messaging, desktop sharing and collaboration, and presence, under a consistent interface. Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Voice over IP, conferencing (audio, video and web), instant messaging and presence. Microsoft Lync The latest release of Office Communications Server, launched November Broadsoft BroadWorks Integrated Voice over IP, video, fax, voice and . Microsoft Sharepoint Collaboration software designed to help simplify business intelligence, content management, search, and sharing for intranet and internet sites. Microsoft Outlook and calendar software.

5 In a Policy Statement issued way back in March 2008, Telephone Recording: recording of voice conversations and electronic communications, the FSA had already noted that: Taped evidence is an extra source of material for piecing together the facts of a matter and for building an enforcement case. Crucially, the evidence that might be obtained from tape recordings may not be available by other means, i.e. through documentary evidence or oral testimony. The advantage of telephone evidence over documentary evidence/ oral testimony is that telephone evidence more often helps to show knowledge and intent matters that are critical in terms of enforcement action but which are not always easily established. 6 Business-focused applications such as OCS and Lync already address much of the recording issue. Instant message conversations are stored alongside in Outlook and you can record calls, including conference calls, but this is very much a client-based solution and the user has to initiate every recording. You can include external customers, suppliers, contractors, partners etc, in your Outlook and Lync/OCS contact lists, giving you the records you need for regulatory compliance. It s worth pointing out here that this is as much about education and best practice as it is about technology: the bottom line is that no-one in your organisation should be communicating with clients in any way other than the company phone system, company , company IM: the notion of call recording is not something to be thought of in isolation; it s part of a bigger picture of compliance. If you ve got all your contacts on your recordable UC platform, you ve got a much better chance of maintaining regulatory compliance. In April 2010, the FSA fined Hythe Securities 200,000. In the ruling, the FSA said: Hythe failed to arrange for adequate records to be kept of advice given to Retail Group customers by telephone. Although Hythe had a call recording system, it was not reliable, as evidenced by Hythe being able to locate only approximately 50% of the calls required by the FSA. In failing to adequately store all telephone calls, Hythe had to rely on contemporaneous notes of advice given to Retail Group customers. However, Retail Group advisers failed to properly record their recommendations to ensure that an adequate record of advice was kept. This was despite Hythe being aware of failings in its call recording system. 7 Key features of a call recording solution As we ve seen, the purpose of a call recording solution is to enable you to capture, archive and retrieve everyday conversations quickly for compliance and efficiency. There are many different call recording solutions available. They range from off-the-shelf, standalone, plug-and-play solutions to sophisticated, enterprise-grade applications that will let you maximise your existing OCS/Lync infrastructure investment, integrating telephony, administrative and management functions and call recording. They will also provide Outlook and even Sharepoint integration. These corporate call recording solutions provide the rigid security required for compliance. With all recordings stored on and created from a secure server, which may be in-house or hosted, recordings cannot be tampered with, edited or deleted by end users as can easily happen with call recording software run on the local computer. Any changes that are made by privileged users can be documented so there is a comprehensive audit trail.

6 Other features that might be included are: Sorting giving you the ability to sort calls according to date, time, phone number and context-relevant text. Tagging so that your end users can add useful reminders or notes to help with retrieval. Bookmarking letting you add keywords to create searchable actions and comments during or after a call. Some solutions might also have a mechanism that allows you to pause the recording while personal information such as credit card details is being given. This may be a requirement for meeting some compliance regulations. What if I m not a Lync or OCS user? Even if it s not being run on Lync or OCS, you can integrate an enterprise-grade call recording solution with an IP telephony platform, such as Broadsoft s BroadWorks VoIP communications application server. This will give you the call recording you need for compliance and set you on the road to the greater productivity advantages of full unified communications if you want to travel that route later on. Summary Unified communications provide end users with a wide range of consistently presented tools giving them the interface and rapid-access features needed to increase productivity and speed up decisionmaking. However, these new tools have opened up loopholes which call recording software can help close. By embedding call recording in your Lync/OCS or IP telephony infrastructure you not only maximise your wider investment but also avoid potential legal repercussions or financial penalties by ensuring full compliance with FSA and other regulations. References pulse.alacra.com/analyst-comments/unified_communications-c

7 About Live-PA Live-PA Ltd develops and sells its Live-PA call recording software worldwide. It is the first call recording software to provide core server-side recording for Microsoft OCS 2007 R2 and Lync Server 2010 and for BroadSoft s BroadWorks. It is sold for on-premise use and as a hosted solution for service providers to resell. Call Recording Solution. Live-PA Ltd Telephone: +44 (0) enquiries@live-pa.com Web: