A call center is an umbrella term that refers to reservations centers, help desks, information lines or customer service centers, regardless of how they are organized or what types of transactions they handle. In its most sophisticated form, the term refers to a voice operations environment that provides a full range of high-volume, inbound or outbound call-handling services, including customer support, operator services, directory assistance, multilingual customer support, credit services, card services, inbound and outbound telemarketing, interactive voice response and web-based services.

The term call center can be misleading, as the transactions may be more involved than simple 'calls,' and a 'center' may not accurately represent the potentially complex, multi-site environment.


Related terms: inbound call center, outbound call center, telemarketing, contact center, predictive dialers, call center outsourcing

Business Process Management systems provide the capability to design, deploy, execute, analyze and optimize end-to-end business processes. They coordinate the flow of tasks, access to resources and the exchange of information among employees, customers and partners. Importantly, BPM systems are intelligent in that they capture information about the execution of each process to enable continuous process improvement.


Related terms: BPM systems, workflow, BPM outsourcing, business process management

Business Intelligence (BI) describes the process of turning data into information and then into knowledge. The intelligence becomes more useful to the user as it passes through each step. By sifting through mountains of data and delivering the condensed information in an organized fashion, business intelligence systems offer management insight into business environments and guidance in setting and achieving organizational goals.


Related terms: BI, Business Intelligence Systems, Enterprise Business Intelligence

Bug Tracking Software is used by developers to record defects and changes in software products. Bug-tracking solutions are designed so that any member of the development team can access the bug database to log bugs and make changes. A record of all changes is kept, including time of original bug identification, bug description, changes / fixes applied, as well as the developer who made the entry or change. Bugs can be categorized based on criteria such as urgency or location, and hence can be quickly sorted according to query.


Related terms: bug tracking software, configuration management

Budgeting Software is powerful management software to create flexible and sophisticated budgets, specific to your needs. Budgeting solutions typically offer the ability to model budgets to fit your business, align budgets with strategic plans and forecasts, increase collaboration while streamlining the budget process, and offer incorporation with general ledger, payroll, and other critical applications.


Related terms: budgeting software, forecasting software

Short for web browser, the software application you are most likely using to view this web page. Web browsers are used to locate and display web pages on the internet. Standard capabilities include displaying graphics and text, while plug-ins allow for audio, video, web conferencing and other multimedia features. Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla Firefox and Netscape Navigator are examples of web browsers.


Related terms: IE, webcast, web conference, internet conferencing, video conferencing, web conference service providers

While including the usual PDA applications (address book, calendar, to-do lists, etc.) as well as telephone capabilities on newer models, the BlackBerry is primarily known for its ability to send and receive e-mail anywhere it has access to an appropriate wireless network, as well as for its built-in keyboard optimized for "thumbing", or using only your thumbs to type.