Microsoft Teams: How to Integrate to Accelerate

It’s one thing having all the transformative tech to drive growth and efficiency. 

However, it’s quite another to ensure the various bits make up the whole. 

The buzzword is ‘integration’ – and if you or your customers’ customers aren’t fully across it, a big trick is being missed. 

It started – as many of today’s most-progressive communicative innovations seem to have done – with the onset of the pandemic. 

Enter: Microsoft Teams. 

Plucked by (almost) everyone from the deep, un-used recesses of O365, it stepped forward to (virtually) save the world. 

Now the focus is on ensuring it and organisations’ myriad other mission-critical phones, phone systems, apps, solutions and platforms work together to leverage the post-pandemic bounce-back. 

“For many organisations, Teams was the solution which got them through the various Covid lockdowns, but now is the moment to take stock and properly integrate it with their existing, older telephony systems and hardware in a way which really changes the game,” says Dave Clemmit, Head of Product Portfolio at leading UK telecoms infrastructure provider Neos Networks.  

“Enabling organisations to affordably merge voice calling with Teams’ wider functionality will deliver a productivity step-change. With a strong integrated UCaaS product like ours you really can make a big difference.  

“It’s about equipping an organisation with a better suite of tools without it necessarily having to throw out all of its existing systems, software and hardware and start again from scratch.  

“In short, legacy systems don’t have to be a blocker to unified communications investment. Organisations can integrate and re-use some elements of their existing technology. That means the initial cost of a cloud-based solution need not be so off-putting for the cost-conscious. 

“A new, more fit-for-purpose state is absolutely achievable by all businesses large and small; choosing the right partner can help them get there.” 

Of course, that new ‘state’ demands effective internal workforce collaboration; uninterrupted BAU functionality AND external customer service – all delivered remotely, securely and cost-effectively. 

No mean feat when, for some businesses, capital investment may be tricky to justify and a continued reliance on legacy technology remains mission-critical. 

“Pace of transition and flexibility will be the key factors for most,” says Neos Networks UCaaS Product Manager Daniel Kitchen. 

“Some workforces will return to the office more than others and some organisations will want more cloud-based, remote working solutions than others.  

“What’s for sure, Teams does have tremendous capacity to help a business digitally transform but operationalising Teams to be your core telephony system needs more. That’s why you need to integrate with a platform like ours that has analytics and call recording” 

Neos Networks’ ‘Cloud Calling’ solution IS that affordable way of merging existing telephony systems and CRMs with Teams’ wider functionality; accessible via laptop or smartphone anytime, anywhere. 

When deployed by an expert third party MSP, it has the capability to virtually reinvent an organisation’s comms approach. 

Add some of Neos Networks’ additional and innovative UCaaS solutions into the mix and an organisation can really start to power that post-pandemic response. 

“It’s about making an organisation’s existing kit deliver more,” says Kitchen. 

“Turning those old phones on desks into something fit for the post-pandemic era and unifying everything so that whatever an organisation’s new working model turns out to be, all of the technology just works for the user, business and customer in whatever post-Covid set-up they have. 

“We can easily do all of that. We can reduce waste AND we can also offer better functionality than Microsoft Teams for certain Cloud Calling functions.” 

Not that it’s just about the hardware or software, of course. 

Many organisations will be nervous. 

“It is so important for trust and confidence to be a part of any provider, partner and end user relationship,” says Clemmit. 

“In our case, our heritage of being part of SSE Group AND being responsible for the support of large sections of critical national infrastructure means we can instil that trust and confidence. 

“We place huge importance on the speed and quality of our execution, and the team that begins working with an organisation at the start is the same team which remains in place to provide that all-important support going forward. 

“Organisations of all kinds are at a critical crossroads now business is waking back up.  

“The opportunities are significant for all parties and we’re excited by the future.” 

To learn more about how Neos Networks and how their solutions can help you, your customers, and your customers’ customers leverage the transformational power of cloud-based communications, visit https://neosnetworks.com/products-services/unified-comms/