What is Microsoft Teams Voice?

Microsoft Teams Voice is the next step in remote working. The solution offers a rich feature set of business telephony to employees, while providing businesses with reduced operation costs, lower cost of ownership, and greater productivity. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, Timico are proud to offer four distinct packages, each tailored to suit the needs of any business.

What problems does Microsoft Teams Voice Solve?

If there’s one positive outcome of the 2020 pandemic, it was to highlight the possible in terms of business collaboration and resiliency. By adding business-level voice functionality to Microsoft’s fastest-growing application in history, the Teams application has been taken to new levels. Doors have opened for businesses to operate as usual, for telephony costs to be driven down, and for productivity to soar.

When the pandemic hit and the country was placed into lockdown, businesses soon found themselves shifting to SaaS platforms to enable remote working. However, those businesses that had already begun their digital transformation were able to go one step further. They could provide their teams with business telephone lines and a centralised communication suite they can access anywhere. In short, agile businesses were well-positioned to utilise cloud offerings such as Microsoft Teams Voice, and more businesses continue to do so.

The result is significant. We are seeing a paradigm shift. The triggers for adopting the tool have evolved from the luxury nice-to-haves, to the necessary for business continuity. Now businesses are seeing the UC&C tools are part of a greater resiliency plan. A new normal is here, and enabling remote working is a huge part of that paradigm.

Business Benefits

For such a change in attitude, the benefits must be significant. The benefits to the employee are great and we cover this in a recent blog. But, the advantages to the organisation are just as huge.

Reduced operational costs and reduced cost of ownership

Historically, enterprise-level telephony solutions have eaten a large amount of IT budgets. This is due to the ongoing running costs, licensing costs and hardware replacements, not to mention the cost of the required connectivity and associated devices. Then there’s the ongoing training for internal IT staff to maintain and administer the system. Telephony costs can soon escalate.

However, with a cloud telephony solution such as Microsoft Teams Voice, telephony costs can be reduced and controlled. Users no longer need desk phones. Numbers can be assigned to an individual with a Microsoft Teams license and a Microsoft Phone System license. Employees can function as usual with their laptop, desktop, or mobile. The organisation no longer needs a dedicated PBX to handle calls, as the functionality for Microsoft Phone System to handle call routing and advanced telephony features are already in place.

With regards to training, Microsoft has retained the familiar and intuitive interface of the Microsoft Office 365 suite, meaning administrators can navigate with relative ease. For organisations with limited IT staff, Timico offer a managed service to provide a full solution from design and implementation to ongoing support.

Improved Business Resiliency

When IT resiliency is discussed, much of the focus centres around Disaster Recovery. For example, how fast can an organisation become operational after a power outage, or how fast will failover take place in the event of a network outage.

However, following the COVID-19 lockdown, many businesses are incorporating collaboration tools, such as Microsoft Teams Voice into their business resiliency plans to keep teams talking and working. A crucial element of a modern business continuity plan is the ability to operate with a remote workforce.

Enabling teams to operate, collaborate, and communicate effectively from anywhere is a major step in maintaining your business uptime.

Microsoft Teams Voice, alongside the rest of the Microsoft Office 365 package, saves organisations time and money through greater efficiencies and solution simplicity. The flexible nature of the platform also adds a layer of resilience due to the nature of being able to hand-off between mobile and desktop; but the connectivity that the application runs on also demonstrates its own resilience.

Greater Employee Productivity

Due to the integration with Outlook and Contacts, Microsoft Teams Voice enables employees to have direct access to their customers at the click of a button, meaning businesses can continue to operate regardless of where their employees are.

Microsoft Teams also natively integrates with Active Directory, giving an employee a seamless view of colleague contact numbers, business card, job tile/department, presence status.
With a single mobile app and a desktop suite, Microsoft Teams Voice makes the all-in-one solution that kept businesses operational during the 2020 lockdown, the tool that enables employees to stay connected, productive, and secure.

Business Outcomes

For many businesses, the outcomes of implementing UCaaS, such as Teams Voice, encompass resilience, improved business continuity plans, reduced costs of ownership and operations, and enable the organisations to move one step closer to the freedom that digital transformation brings.

However, the potential outcomes surpass the tangible needs and venture into the intangible world of organisational culture. The unified system offers employees the freedom to work remotely and autonomously, it offers them the tools they need to reach out to colleagues and customers alike from wherever they are. Providing employees with the tools and the freedom that they need demonstrates trust without sacrificing productivity or leaving a dent in the budget. You can’t really put a price on that.

Why Timico

If you’re looking for scalable, enterprise-level telephony functionality, with reduced overheads, familiarity, that improves your team’s efficiency, then Microsoft Teams Voice could be the solution you need. With a team of Microsoft specialists ready to design, implement and manage your solution, Timico are the partner of choice.

The good news is that our sales team is ready to talk you through the solution in as much detail as you need, so you can make the right decision for your business.

Our aim is to keep our customers connected, productive, and secure, which is why any of our Teams Voice offerings can be tailored to meet your collaboration needs and much more.

Book in your free consultation today to discuss how Timico can bring the freedom and assurance of Microsoft Teams Voice to your organisation and beyond.