Voiceflex and Telavox have partnered to release a managed UCaaS platform which utilises Voiceflex’s carrier capabilities and the telephony application of Flow.
The new platform, ‘Voiceflex Flow’, has a number of features, including voice services, an embedded application in Microsoft Teams, connectivity enhancements, and IP-based telephony.
Voiceflex partnered with Televox, a Swedish company with roughly three-quarters of a million extensions but a small UK footprint. The product was initially released for Voiceflex customers in March, and its general release was in June of this year.
Paul Taylor, Chief Commercial Officer at Voiceflex, compared its solution to others in the industry: “In telecommunications, you go through a process of change.
“We have gone from an internal telephone system on our desks with a separate phone to having a multi-tenant, multi-application PABX. Next, we went from a PABX on-site to hosted and finally moved from hosted to UC.
“There will be people further behind us, but we can sell a full UC offering instead of just the telephone system that sits on your desk.”
Taylor also provided a specific comparison between Voiceflex Flow and Microsoft Teams, stating that while Teams was excellent in many areas, its voice capabilities are underwhelming. Voiceflex Flow essentially takes the best bits of Teams and utilises its own voice component.
While Microsoft Teams can provide a point of comparison, it is also an essential feature for potential customers, Taylor says. Fortunately, the Flow application can be embedded into Microsoft Teams using middleware, so it is fully integrated natively into Teams at no extra cost.
One practical advantage of embedding Flow into Teams is that anyone in your organisation using the Flow app will see your status automatically updates when you are in a meeting. The application can also be linked to your calendar to reflect when you are busy, away, available, etc.
Voiceflex Flow also enables customisable APIs so sellers can take a portion of the solution and sell it separately. They may only ever sell SIP products, for example, which allows significant flexibility for Voiceflex Flow resellers and end customers.
In terms of pricing, Taylor says it has come to market very aggressively as it is looking to take a significant market share quickly. It is, therefore, looking to undercut the competition on pricing with its wholesale price marked at less than £8.00 for the full UC license.
Looking to the future, Taylor said: “There is a road map for the product, and there’s a road map for Voiceflex.
“Voiceflex is a multi-tenanted solution which has different product sets that go to market. We have SIP, and we have a very low-end hosted product. We have data connectivity, and then we also have fully hosted applications.
“What we have done as an organisation is made this year all about automation. We’re looking to automate everything that we do.
“We’ve just launched internally version three of our portal, which we first developed about 15 years ago. Everything is automated for the customers from an engineering ordering point of view.”
Voiceflex recently launched a Q&A webinar for its customers and the wider community to speak to its company lawyer about Ofcom’s regulation changes.
The key takeaway is that businesses with fewer than ten employees are only allowed to be sold contracts for 24 months maximum. 36-month contracts are the norm in the UC sales sector, so smaller businesses may have to pay a higher tariff.
Taylor, who was also involved in the webinar, pointed to this as an example of the company’s openness, transparency and desire to help its customers.
If you are interested in finding out more about Voiceflex Flow, please visit the Voiceflex website.
