Vendor Profile: Professional Teledata

History: Professional Teledata is the result of the merger of two highly innovative companies in the telemessaging and call center industry, Tele-Data Systems and Professional Inbound (PI). 

The Origin of Tele-Data Systems: Tele-Data Systems was founded by Alan Hartmann, one of the forefathers of the technological revolution of the TAS industry.  In 1981, Alan designed and installed his first TAS billing system.  The software required the use of a minicomputer costing a mere $50,000 (which was considered a bargain in those days).   In 1983, the billing program was re-designed to run on the earliest micro-computers and christened BCS-1.   With its revolutionary database structure, 64k of memory, and a hard disk of 10 megabytes, BCS-1 became the industry leader for billing software over the next few years.

In 1989 Tele-Data once again captured the attention of the industry, when it introduced the concept of an automated fax message delivery system, the FMDS.  Prior to the FMDS, TAS customers had to purchase a proprietary remote modem-printer in order to receive a daily hard copy of their messages. Within two years, hundreds of TAS offices nationwide were delivering messages via FMDS to their clients' fax machines, and the major TAS equipment vendors started selling the FMDS as an integral part of their systems.

More than 400 billing systems and  600 FMDS systems were sold in the years that followed to TAS operations on four continents.

The Early days of PI: Professional Inbound has its own unique story.  Its founder and president, Allen Kalik, purchased Executive Exchange Answering Service of Manchester, N.H., in 1984, with ten cord-boards. Over the next few years, he expanded to 24 paperless positions, launched a voice mail and IVR business, and began expanding into order entry. After struggling with the complexities of an order entry account in 1993, Allen saw the need for a system that would simplify order taking for his operators.  With the help of his IT manager Dale Schafer and an outside systems analyst, Jim Graham, the "three guys" designed the famous "blue screen" (as it is affectionately known by PI users) in a few months for inside testing.  One day, during that time, Allen was giving a tour of his facility to a friendly competitor.  The PI system caught the eye of his competition. They watched with awe as call agents moved flawlessly through complex calls on those "blue screens." Although Allen had originally developed PI strictly for his own company, his competition convinced him to share the product with the world.  The first PI was delivered to Protocol Communications one month later and Professional Inbound was born.  The product was displayed at the 1993 ATSI meeting in Chicago where it made an instant impact on the TAS industry. Shortly thereafter the "three guys", Allen Kalik, Dale Schafer, and Jim Graham became partners in PI, and have remained together ever since.

Within two years of the first showing of their product, more than 50 PI systems comprising more than 1,000 stations workstations could be found in North America.  Allen continued to expand Executive Call Centers, which grew to more than 100 workstations and more than 400 employees before he sold it in 1998.  Meanwhile, the PI-2000 system rapidly progressed to become the industry standard for order entry, with more than 150 installations consisting of more than 3,000 workstations.

The Merger of PI and Tele-Data: Alan and Allen (it has a ring to it) met in 1985 when Executive purchased one of the first BCS systems.  As a user of both BCS and one of the first testers of the FMDS system, the two found a lot to talk about, and the professional relationship became one of friendship over the years.  Professional Inbound and Tele-Data Systems, seeing the similarities in their two businesses and the benefits that could be realized with their combined support and development resources, merged in 1997 to form Professional Teledata. Soon after the merger, they relocated to their current location in the historic "7-20-4 Cigar" building in Manchester where their staff of approximately 30 employees work.

Today there are hundreds of users of BCS-3 as well more than 100 users of the TBS, our innovative Windows-based billing and contact management system.  FMDS-II continues to delivers millions of messages yearly via fax, alpha pager, and email.  The PI system, whose applications include Web integration, Web-based scheduling, outbound telemarketing, and broad scale inbound and order processing, is now installed in more than 100 offices with more than 3,000 seats.   They are continuing to provide innovative services: Click Agent online agent chat, Forget-Me-Not appointment reminder services, and new products such as POWER (Pi Online Web Exporting and Reporting), and Web Connector. The company's newest product under development is PInnacle, a digital switch with all of the features of PI order taking and a full complement of TAS features.

Professional Teledata Philosophy: While innovation and technical know-how play an important part in product design at Professional Teledata, creating products that are easy to use and meet the user's needs is viewed as equally important. This philosophy is more than just words.   Professional Inbound was co-located with Executive Exchange telephone answering service for five years.  During this time, every employee was required to train on both the answering service equipment and PI-2000, so as to better understand the businesses they were serving.  Programmers, technical support staff, administrators, and even partners thus got to know the TAS business from the front line, not just from the technical perspective.  In 1997 PI relocated with Executive Call Center, and once again the staff had the chance to work closely with a 100-seat call center in action.  On many occasions, supervisors would accost the programming team as they passed through the call center each morning.  They listened attentively to supervisors' suggestions, criticisms, and complements on PI-2000. It was like having a daily user group meeting, and the feedback was invaluable to the development team.

The Staff: The staff at Professional Teledata is extraordinary in numerous ways.  The nine-year-old company has been blessed with a situation where the average employee has been with the company six years.  The typical technical staff member has more than 10 years of software or hardware experience, and the range of technical in-house knowledge is vast, including networks, hardware, telephony, switch integration, Internet applications, IVR, and the company's own suite of TAS and call center products.  The reputation for technical support is second to no other company in the industry and users often call for and receive technical advice on issues that extend beyond their Professional Teledata products.

On the administrative side of the business, the theme is the same.  Technical triage and administration team have an average of 15 years' experience working in a TAS in various capacities, from call center manager to accounts receivable.   To these employees, words such as time billing, fax retry, overage, cap code, and personalized auto-announce are more than just vocabulary, they are TAS concepts which they have experienced for years.

PIN - The User Group: Six months after the first PI-2000 system was installed, the users banded together to form PIN (PI Network). The PIN user group grew quickly and the first semi-annual meeting drew more than 100 attendees, who networked on both technical and marketing ideas.  PIN remains active today. The next scheduled meeting will be in New Orleans on March 26, 2003.

The Future: At Professional Teledata, the future of TAS and call center business hinges on the challenge of handling clients with diverse and complex needs, but at the same time, simplifying the agent's task.  The success of PI-2000 was founded on this principle: "Do whatever the client wants, but make it easy for the operator."

Moving forward, Professional Teledata is currently expanding PI-2000 to include a fully featured TAS platform.  The new product, called PInnacle, is scheduled for delivery March 1, 2003.  Consistent with PI-2000, PInnacle uses powerful scripting and database tools and is able to handle the most complex applications with a minimum of operator training.  Automated and guided dispatch are among many features that will make it easier to hire and train successful TAS operators, as well as retain clients.  PInnacle will handle both order entry as well as TAS clients on a unified platform and is fully integrated with an Eon digital switch, IVR, voice logger, TBS billing, and FMDS-II for alpha, fax, and email, and two-way paging delivery.

Product History

1982   Tele-Data Systems creates a TAS billing system for mini-computers.

1983   Tele-Data Systems develops BCS, the first TAS billing system to run on a PC.

1989   Tele-Data Systems invents FMDS, the first system to automatically fax TAS messages.

1993   FMDS is expanded to include alpha-paging capability.

1995   FMDS is expanded to include automated email delivery.

1993   The first PI-2000 order entry system is installed in at Protocol Communications.

1994   PI develops switch interfaces to all major TAS equipment vendor.

1995   PI-2000 is upgrade to 2.0.

1997   Professional Inbound and Tele-data systems merge as Professional Teledata.

1998   TBS - Windows TAS billing and accounts receivable software begins shipments.

2000   PI-2000 version 5.0 migrates PI-2000 from a DOS to a Windows application.

2001   PI-2000 version 6.0 PI-2000 becomes a windows and Web integrated.

2000   Professional Teledata offers Click-Agent, a service that connects browsers on a website to a virtual chat agent at the click of an icon.

2001   POWER system, which allows clients Internet access to view their data and run customized reports.

2002   Forget-me Not Reminder Service, an ASP /IVR which interfaces with office scheduling software to automatically confirm appointments.

2002   TBS + expands TBS to full contact manager with centralized account management functions for customer service and new account administration.

2002   Development starts on PInnacle, a single platform TAS and order entry system that combines the capabilities of PI-2000 with a telemessaging system and an Eon digital switch. 

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