Are You Maximizing the Value of Your Microsoft Teams Investment?

To survive the new normal, organizations of all sizes and in all markets need resources that let them adapt how they do business without sacrificing productivity. Agility is not just a marketing buzzword, but a requisite and a proven loss deterrent.

There are no paint-by-numbers books on managing a remote workforce – much less optimizing remote workflows. Different enterprises have different needs and different pain points.

As a trusted partner, we know that our customers have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with generic technologies and products. The current state of global affairs demands solutions that solve real problems, enhance productivity and add quantifiable value.

CFOs, who often have the final say in strategic purchase decisions, focus on saving money by increasing efficiency across the enterprise. Smart CFOs know that sustainable value is not derived from drastic cost-cutting.

Having said that, it would be naïve to think that finance professionals are not interested in lowering expenses – especially during times in which uncertainty is the only constant. But it is important to acknowledge that saving money is not the same as cutting costs.

Businesses worldwide save money with Microsoft Teams.

During its October 2020 earnings call with investors, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, revealed that Microsoft Teams now has 115 million daily active users. That’s an increase of more than 50 percent from the 75 million that Microsoft reported six months ago.

That growth reflects more than Microsoft ingenuity and the evolution of today’s workforce. It shows that enterprises are embracing comprehensive business communications and collaborations that simplify workflows for users and IT departments – and the common sense of leveraging tools for which they’re already paying as part of their Microsoft Office subscriptions.

You guessed it – I’m talking about Microsoft Teams! Microsoft Teams is more than a video meetings platform or a tool for chats. It’s an end-to-end unified communications and collaboration service that your employees are comfortable using and with which they’re already familiar.

Thanks to our partnership with SIPPIO, your employees can also now use Microsoft Teams as their primary business phone service.

SIPPIO is the only 100 percent, Azure-native calling service for Microsoft Teams. With SIPPIO, you don’t have to go through the arduous process of building Direct Routing services in-house.

Of note, is that the native implementation of managed SBCs provides additional capabilities that would otherwise not be available with standalone appliances such as VoIP mediation, PSTN access survivability, and third-party value-added services applications.

Remember my comment about the difference between cutting costs and saving money?

With Microsoft Teams, which is included in your Microsoft 365 subscription, employee productivity improves because now when they want to follow up with a customer, partner or colleague, they can place the call directly from Teams instead of toggling back and forth to a third-party PBX or VoIP service.

Teams become a centralized hub for communications, collaboration and workflows.

Following Microsoft’s earnings call, the company’s Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365, Jared Spataro, addressed this subject in an article, noting that, “The key to productivity is to move beyond transactional meetings and focus on the flow of work. People don’t just open Teams to join a meeting and then close it when the meeting is over; they work in Teams all day.  It’s a place to exchange ideas, share information, and create human connections. It’s where people work before, during, and after a meeting, and it supports all the different ways people engage and collaborate together.

“Teams brings together meetings, chat, calls, collaboration, third-party apps, and business processes into a single experience, and we are seeing increased usage intensity in Teams as people communicate, collaborate, and co-author content across work, life, and learning.”

Your IT department will like it because eliminating a third-party phone system means less to worry about, monitor and support.

Most importantly, your CFO will love it because the value is self-evident; across-the-board savings coupled with agility for hybrid workforces.