Since its initial release in 2017, Microsoft Teams has proved its value as a communications and collaboration tool for enterprises worldwide. It really hit its stride during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many workers were told to move out of the office and work from home. Faced with a remote workforce, many businesses came to rely on Teams to enable widely dispersed groups and individuals to seamlessly interact and collaborate.
Although the pandemic has officially ended, the trend toward remote work and distributed workgroups has not. With 58% of American workers now working remotely at least part of the time, and 65% saying they'd like to work remotely all the time, the need to empower workers to efficiently collaborate online will only increase—remote work is here to stay. Microsoft Teams, with its sophisticated collaboration features, has become a key component for enabling companies to operate effectively in this new reality.
Yet enterprises that require robust voice communications services are discovering that with all its technological sophistication, Microsoft Teams alone can't fully meet their needs—it lacks the comprehensive enterprise voice services that are essential in today's distributed work environment. That's why many enterprises are adding an enterprise voice teams solution to provide the advanced features they need to fulfill their communications requirements.
Why Microsoft Teams Is So Valuable to Businesses
An important feature of Microsoft Teams is its consolidation of many essential collaboration tools into a single, integrated environment. Its close integration with Office 365 applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint allows users to work seamlessly together on shared documents, reports, and other information resources. It also provides a centralized communications hub with sophisticated chat, instant messaging, and video conferencing capabilities.
Furthermore, Teams incorporates powerful administrative, security, and compliance controls, and provides flexible scalability that allows it to meet the needs of both small businesses and large enterprises. And because it offers a comprehensive set of APIs, businesses can extend its functionality through integration with external tools and resources.
According to Forrester's study "The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Teams," a typical 5,000-user organization that uses Teams can realize benefits such as the following:
- Reduce weekly meetings by 18.9%
- Replace 150 trips with online meetings
- Reduce worker downtime by 14.6% because the resources they need are immediately available online
- Save information workers four hours per week through improved information sharing
- Reap an overall net benefit of $27.1 million over three years
While these are certainly valuable, adding an advanced enterprise voice-enabled teams solution to their Microsoft Teams installation allows enterprises to reap even greater benefits.
Limitations of Microsoft Teams
Despite its extensive communications and collaboration capabilities, when it comes to voice communications larger enterprises often find that Teams doesn't fully meet their needs. As one industry executive observes:
"Microsoft is not a telecom provider and it doesn't want to be a telecom provider – so it's no surprise that there are limitations to its voice services."
Limitations of Microsoft Teams as an enterprise communications platform include the following:
- It offers basic voice calling features but doesn't provide the same level of features and functionality as a dedicated UCaaS or SIP Trunk solution
- Its voice-calling plans can be costly, especially for enterprises with global communications needs
- Call quality is often less than a dedicated enterprise communications platform could provide
- It cannot fully replace nor integrate easily with legacy phone systems
- It's not designed for high-volume calling
Benefits of Adding an Enterprise Voice Teams Solution
Having sophisticated voice calling capabilities can be crucial for enabling smooth interactions between a business, its distributed workforce, and important external organizations such as suppliers and customers. Combining an enterprise voice teams solution with your Microsoft Teams implementation can provide you with a comprehensive collaboration and communications platform that meets the requirements of a modern, global business. That, in turn, yields substantial benefits by allowing you to:
- Incorporate enterprise voice capabilities into your Teams environment in a way that allows you to flexibly scale your communications network as your requirements grow
- Provide Teams users with all the capabilities of an advanced PBX phone system, including advanced call routing, queuing, hoteling, cloud calling, intercom, telephone paging, and call center
- Leverage your investment in your existing communications infrastructure by integrating Teams with your traditional or IP-enabled PBX or with your SIP Trunking, UCaaS, Hosted Voice, and Hybrid Option services
- Achieve lower calling costs by optimizing your global calling plan to fit your specific needs. The enhanced flexibility a good enterprise voice teams solution provides will empower your organization to leverage the most cost-effective routes, implement efficient call management strategies, and negotiate favorable pricing based on call volume and geographic requirements.
- Receive advanced analytics to track calling patterns as well as metrics such as the quality, duration, volume, and success rate of your voice communications. This information will allow you to make data-driven decisions to optimize your voice communications strategy.
- Improve collaboration between team members by providing advanced messaging, file sharing, task management, and business intelligence tools along with enhanced call routing capabilities such as customized call flows and call transfer options.
- Incorporate enhancements to other capabilities such as contact center, E911 management, and disaster recovery services.
Adding an enterprise voice teams solution to Microsoft Teams can give you a state-of-the-art collaboration and communications platform that optimizes interactions between members of your distributed workforce and with external partners as well.
Get Started with an Advanced Enterprise Voice Solution
Effectively integrating Microsoft Teams with an advanced enterprise voice solution requires a level of specialized expertise that even large enterprises seldom have in-house. That's why the best way to get started is by working with a third-party partner that has deep experience with both Teams and enterprise voice communications solutions.
BCM One is such an organization. We are a Microsoft Gold Partner (an affiliation granted only to organizations that offer best-in-class product expertise) with dedicated groups of Teams and voice communications experts. And our Enterprise Voice for Microsoft Teams offering is a state-of-the-art enterprise voice solution that integrates seamlessly with Teams to provide enterprise-level telecom and collaboration capabilities.
If you'd like to explore how combining Microsoft Teams with an advanced enterprise voice solution can benefit your company, BCM One can help. Contact us today to find out more about how we can support your business needs
