The typical tools that a company makes available to the employee, namely, those that make up your job are usually:
- Desk phone + fixed voice connectivity (IP, PSTN or SIM is virtual fixed).
- Mobile phone + mobile voice connectivity (SIM).
- PC the laptop + data connectivity (Ethernet, WiFi, SIM).
- software: ERP, CRM, Word, Excel, Internet navigator, file storage, etc. + access to software (via Ethernet, via Internet, via VPN client, etc.)
Depending on these needs, Purchasing and IT departments of companies turn to vendors who provide these tools, and on the other hand, providers try, as far as possible, expand your catalog of technology products to expand your bottom line with customers.
Since many years, operators like Movistar, Vodafone or Orange have been selling the concept “unified communications” with the idea of being TotalCom suppliers, Or what is the same, to somehow integrate voice and data connectivity and sell joint services that add value to companies and generate higher revenues. In some cases they have created private label services (PBX services such as IP Centrex, Vodafone OneNet, etc.) and in many others they have had to resort to thirdparty services to complete its catalog both in devices, like iPhone, as in software such as the Office suite 365.
“Operators have rarely explored the area of software development beyond the technical frontier imposed by voice technology and now it turns out that, following the telework boom due to COVID-19, is software and, more specifically, Microsoft's Teams tool. , that in a few months has become the business benchmark of “unified communications” “
The vision that Microsoft had in its day when betting on this tool has come true and, in just a few months, has hit the table on the telecom board reminding operators that, the connect to the Internet (data) or talk on the phone (voice) has been, during years, a mere commodity. A product to which, if no value is added, is cannon fodder for the innovations that the competition can offer.
And the competition for voice has arrived, and he has done it with an approach from the world of software development, and therefore, the world of data. You can get more out of voice than traditional PBXs, if not, I asked for Alexa.
Therefore, the thing is voice, today more than ever, it must be observed from the point of view of software, from the point of view of information. Microsoft has been a smart competitor and has seen it, placing a candy (Teams) in the employees of the companies from which they will never be able to take off, or at least until another smarter competitor arrives who knows how to unseat them.
That is why the term “unified communications” sooner or later it will be forgotten, giving way to a new concept, coined by Microsoft, of “Modern workplace”. It's more, if we let our imaginations fly, I would have even opted for a more current concept such as “teleworker”, “virtual worker” O “digital worker”.
And what constitutes the modern workplace?
- That the employee can work in the collaborative documents with other members of your team or with users outside the company.
- That can plan and manage your tasks your own tasks or those of your team.
- That can chat individually or with the team.
- Can have videoconferences individuals, with your team or with users outside your company.
- What can have a calendar shared with your team.
Teams not only covers all these needs, but, being a open platform on which software can be developed you want (Teams apps), the employer who hires you could adapt it to the processes of their employees thanks to these applications.
For instance, reimagine, could create a Bot who is a member of one or more teams and who is able to answer typical employee questions from a company like how many vacation days do I have left? How do I request the payment of miles? What is the WiFi password of this office?
¿Guay, truth? I stop rambling and now return to the terrain to which the entrepreneur would lower me with his most current expectations. That businessman would surely tell me: “It's okay, this from Teams is great for chatting or video calling, but what about my voice switchboard? How do I answer calls from my company? How do I transfer them? What about my auto attendant?”
The answer is simple. Why Microsoft bought the Skype tool many years ago has had time to learn the ins and outs of IP voice, and how the Teams concept is here to stay, the result is none other than transferring the old switchboard services that it already had Business Skype within Teams with all the guarantees of quality and functionality.
In summary, by itself it has not been very clear, Microsoft Teams also has the typical services of a voice exchange:
- Automatic operator (office hours, menu by dial, custom voiceover, etc.).
If the employee is comfortable with Teams, less than adding traditional voice services to have the completed work.
All these mentioned services are already available in Spain under the Microsoft suite 365, and more specifically, with what is called Microsoft 365 Business Voice. Fixed numbers of a company that are in operators like Movistar, Vodafone in Orange they could even migrate to Microsoft.
The voice through Teams It is not only a bet for the present but for the future that is to come. For those entrepreneurs or directors of digital transformation eager to intuit where they should go, you just have to observe what Artificial intelligence. Therefore, Not surprisingly, Microsoft leads the magic quadrant in Gartner's latest report on “unified communications”.
It is not unreasonable to think, considering that the platform Microsoft Teams already allows it, creating business bots that can interact with customers by voice and that, depending on the targeted conversation the bot and client have, trigger a process or other business.
Nowadays, automated attendants are programmed with a fairly rigid decision tree whose end goal is usually to deliver a call to a specific department. With Teams not only would you have this functionality, but the possibility of embedding a chatbot in the middle of the process and harnessing the power of Artificial intelligence to download the administrative processes of a company.
In summary, Microsoft Teams and its voice services complete the picture of what Microsoft envisioned as a modern workplace and opens its platform to developers to create any application they can imagine..
