Least cost routing enables companies to make outgoing telephone calls using the most competitive carrier. As businesses become more and more global, it is common for employees to make international calls or even convene teleconferences across national boundaries. Even within a huge country such as USA, it is common for staff to make intra-country calls across state boundaries. As determined from an earlier section on call accounting, telephone charges constitute the highest overhead for an average company besides wages. Any savings in telephone bills significantly impacts the monthly operating costs of a business.

It is not possible for one carrier operator to offer the most economical plan for all calls. Some carrier companies specialize in certain international sectors and offer very competitive rates for calls made to countries within these sectors while others may offer special low rates for calls made to certain states/sectors within a country. These same companies charge a premium for calls to other sectors.
To obtain the most competitive carrier rates without least cost routing, one could manually list all the carriers and compare the rates amongst the carrier operators. Having done that, one could draw up tariff tables for all the international and national sectors/countries. Without least cost routing, all employees need to memorize or at least look up the best carrier plan before making each non-local call. This is very time consuming.

The least cost routing feature is part of the PowerX2011™ telecom server. Instead of confining the user to a predetermined number, the user dials any number he is accustomed to and the system is intelligent enough to automatically direct it to the most economical carrier.
This not only ensures that companies are paying for the best carrier plan for each outbound call, it also relieves employees of the frustration and time required to look up tariff rates tables before making each long distance call.

Automatic identification of most economical carrier for each destination: It is very rare for one carrier to offer the cheapest rates for all destinations. Carrier companies tend to focus their strengths on specific destinations and then offer very competitive rates for these destinations.

Automatic routing of long distance calls to most economical carrier: Users do not have to remember to special codes to invoke the least cost routing feature

Unlimited tariff carriers: Companies are not confined to storing tariff rates for only two or three carriers due to resource constraints.

Easy-to-use GUI (graphical user interface): Little or no training is required to use the graphical user interfaces provided for creation of new tariff carriers and updating of tariff rates.

Central copy of tariff rates: Users do not have to monitor the tariff rates and update them manually for individual departments

Fax transmissions: Least cost routing is extended to cover facsimile transmissions