Harmonizing communications within a business can be challenging, especially one that has been using multiple platforms and tools to collaborate.
Although this fragmented approach may work for a time, like when COVID came along, necessity, became more important than efficiency. However, as a company continues to expand and scale, new pressures get placed on it that highlight the flaws in its current UC setup.
That was the situation at Holafly, an international eSIM company operating in Dublin.
“We used Slack for chatting, Zoom for meetings, email for everything else, and it was a mess,”
David Giraldo, Software Developer and Technical Project Manager at Holafly, told UC Today.
Although adopting eSIM technology and setting the wheels in motion as early as 2019, the company could no longer efficiently execute its aims to meet the demand eSIM grew to.
Examining Holafly’s Journey to a Unified System
Being a medium-sized enterprise, the company was finding it difficult to enable communications within different departments due to the multitude of tools used.
“Our customer support team often needed input from developers, but they couldn’t track down the right person or information quickly. It slowed us down, especially as we expanded,” Giraldo explained.
But the problems extended beyond mere inconvenience. Important information was getting lost between platforms, causing delays and frustration.
“Conversations got lost, and nobody could find what they needed without wasting time,”
noted Giraldo.
For a company focused on providing seamless connectivity solutions to travelers, the internal disconnect was particularly ironic.
Recognizing the problem, however, and already using a number of UC solutions, Holafly was in the enviable place where they could choose between the solutions. Yet, what clinched it for them was a UC system they had not yet used.
“We went with Teams because we were already using Microsoft 365, and it made sense to bring everything into one place,”
Giraldo said.
“It wasn’t just about saving time; we needed a way to connect all of our teams and projects better.”
Teams offered a strategic alignment with their existing Microsoft suite and promised to streamline workflows and reduce complexity by bringing not only all communications under one banner but file access and sharing too.
However, the transition wasn’t without resistance: “Not everyone was happy about the change,” Giraldo said.
As with many new technologies, some of the greatest challenges can be change management. This is further exacerbated by the fact that Teams was not a system they had previously used.
“People were used to their old tools and didn’t see why we needed to switch,” Giraldo admitted.
Many employees viewed the platform change as an unnecessary disruption rather than a solution to their communication problems.
But as Giraldo highlighted, it was necessary, as “the old system wasn’t working.”
Therefore, the company began on the implementation process of switching its whole company-wide UC solution to Teams.
As many in the UC sphere can testify, migrations and implementations aren’t easy. Although Holafly was not trying to do something as complicated as an on-prem-to-cloud transition, the process still presented significant technical and logistical challenges.
“Setting it up wasn’t easy. We had to move a lot of files over and make sure people knew how to use the new system,”
said Giraldo.
The migration involved not just transferring data but also training staff on new workflows and features.
“Training took longer than we thought, and some people needed more help than others,” he added, highlighting the often-underestimated time investment required for successful technology adoption.
Despite these hurdles, the Holafly team persevered with the implementation: “There were moments when it felt like we bit off more than we could chew, but we kept going because we knew it would pay off,” Giraldo reflected.
This determination was driven by a clear understanding of the business problems they were trying to solve—particularly the bottlenecks in cross-departmental communication that were affecting customer service and product development.
Transformative Results and Lessons Learned
The migration to Microsoft Teams, Giraldo explained, has delivered tangible benefits for Holafly, fundamentally changing how teams collaborate across the organization.
“In the end, it worked. Teams helped us cut down on wasted time and made communication smoother across departments,”
Giraldo said.
The unified platform eliminated the fragmentation that had previously plagued their operations.
One of the most significant improvements came in accelerated issue resolution and product development cycles. “When we launched new features for our eSIM product, feedback from customers reached developers faster, and we could fix bugs in days instead of weeks,” explained Giraldo.
This enhanced responsiveness has direct implications for customer satisfaction and competitive advantage in the fast-moving eSIM market—which more than doubled for consumer use by 2023.
Despite successful implementation now, Giraldo explained how if he could do it again, he would adjust the approach.
“If I could redo anything, I’d roll it out more slowly. Trying to bring everyone on board all at once caused confusion,” he reflected.
Giraldo advocated instead focusing on one team at a time and building from there.
The Holafly experience demonstrates how unified communications platforms can transform business operations when implemented with clear objectives and organizational commitment. By bringing disparate tools under one umbrella, companies can break down silos, increase efficiency of communication and file access, and ultimately deliver better products and services to their customers.
As Giraldo concluded: “Change is hard, but it’s worth it when the tools start making your life easier.”
