Telecommunications.

• Position: Technology Tools

Apogee Networks is offering businesses a way to monitor and charge back telecommunications expenses to the affected units or businesses. By more careful monitoring and subsequent cost controls, as well as elimination of unused capacity, users can conceivably gain pennies per share in their quarterly earnings, the company says.

Apogee, headquartered in Saddle Brook, N.J., uses probes placed at "strategic crossover points" in a telecom network -- anywhere from 9 to 30 probes in a typical arrangement -- and feeds information to a collection and billing engine, says Chief Marketing Officer Andrew Burroughs. He says that Apogee can routinely collect 95 to 100 percent of the billing information. Implementation generally takes two to three months, including an inventory of the company's network. Apogee has partnered in that process with companies like IBM Corp. -- with which it has an outsourced network relationship -- and Cisco Systems, as well as companies that produce the probes.

Pablo Tapia, then a networking manager at Goldman, Sachs & Co., started Apogee in 1997 when he...