Today, many companies are increasingly embracing UC, moving away from traditional telephony. Many of those companies have been migrating to Teams, which alongside some remarkable benefits, has brought along new challenges. Companies switching to Teams demand the continuation of the Voice Analytics they were receiving on their traditional platforms in order to provide them with visibility regarding performance, costs, infrastructure and usage patterns.

Soft-ex offer 30+ years of experience delivering comprehensive billing and analytics solutions, and has plenty of  experience in helping companies navigate the new Teams environment. “A lot of our clients now have their entire workforce working from home, and most state that WFH will remain a large part of their continued employment. Many of these organisations decided to transition to Microsoft Teams, and they have all been experiencing similar pain points,“ shares Eamonn Farrell, Country Sales Manager at Soft-ex.  

“The main thing that those clients are looking for is the continuation of visibility,” explains Farrell. “This is proven by the inclusion of Voice Analytics in most of the RFPs our partners are receiving. Whether it’s in terms of call reporting, costing, inbound and outbound calls, or managing infrastructure – visibility is key for those clients. And knowing that Soft-ex have a proven track record in UC, they turn to us to fill those requirements.”  

Meeting UC Expectations and Providing Self-Serve Visibility

As most companies now have to manage employees remotely, many of them look for reports that center around performance. “This effectively means that stakeholders or department heads within the organisation require understanding and visibility of the customer experience,” says Farrell. “For instance, answered calls versus unanswered calls, call durations, calls to voice mail and hunt group management – these are all reports that the Soft-ex platform provides. Ultimately, companies want to be able to police customer experience better.“

There are also other common pain points among companies transitioning to Teams, all of which the Soft-ex solution caters to. “Our customers still need to understand where their calls are coming from and going to. Current compliance requirements have made it essential for them to understand internal versus external calls, and they need to be able to tariff those calls at the correct rate which leads to achieving cost-effectiveness.“

Another pain point that the Soft-ex solution can help with has to do with infrastructure management and how to make it more cost-effective.  “Our solution offers a unique set of analytics by integrating the Teams and SBC call detail records. This, in turn, allows the production of various reports regarding bandwidth management, channel utilisation, occupancy, peak thresholds and blocking. This information, when combined with the ability to identify devices that haven’t been used in any given timeframe, leads to optimal infrastructure management”  

Another plus of the Soft-ex solution is that it can cater for hybrid or mixed platforms, consolidating all the required data onto one platform. Reports can then be exported to PDF, Excel or CSV, and scheduled to be sent to key stakeholders on a timely basis.

Complementing the Teams Platform

“In a nutshell, we complement the Microsoft Teams platform by delivering granular Voice Analytics such as voice quality, answer and unanswered calls, zero usage, call billing and chargeback,” summarises Farrell. “The icing on the cake is that for enterprises who have been used to receiving Voice Analytics on older platforms, but still have a strong requirement for these self-serve analytics in their new Teams environment, Soft-ex can help with seamlessly providing that transition onto the new platform. This consistent visibility which we provide has proven to be critical for businesses migrating to Teams.”

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