Microsoft Teams for WFH in 2021: Expert Round Table Part 1

Amid a rapidly growing UC platform market in 2020, Microsoft Teams emerged as a top player. Despite being relatively young at a little over three years old, Teams has amassed over 115 million daily active users, offering stiff competition to once more-established platforms like Slack or Zoom. Teams’ popularity owes hugely to the large-scale work from home (WFH) adoption last year. In turn, Microsoft has consistently released features like wellbeing analytics, third-party integrations, better telephony, and more to serve its growing remote employee user base.

To explore how Microsoft Teams could reshape the WFH technology landscape in 2021, we caught up with some of the industry’s leading experts. In this edition of the UC Today Roundtable, you’ll find insights from cloud-based communications and managed services provider Maintel, video conferencing and collaboration company, StarLeaf, EMEA technology specialist provider, Nuvias, cloud communications analysts, Cavell, cloud services distributor, Giacom, and Teams-based telephony company, Qunifi, which is known for its flagship product, Call2Teams.

Let’s dive right in.

Teams as a Top WFH Solution

To start with, we asked our experts about the reasons behind Teams’ meteoric rise. In an admittedly crowded remote collaboration market, why is Microsoft Teams attracting so much attention as a WFH tool? The most common factor cited by experts was the ease of implementation, given that it was readily available in the Microsoft productivity suite.

But what made users stay on with Teams was its comprehensive nature and constant tweaks/upgrades that improved the productivity experience.

Rufus Grig, Chief Strategy Officer, Maintel

Rufus Grig

Maintel’s Rufus Grig pointed to the convenience quotient, helped by Microsoft’s keen focus to make the most of this unprecedented opportunity.

“Firstly, for many businesses, and to paraphrase the explorer George Malory, “Because it was there” – meaning that for business with Microsoft subscriptions, it was at hand – at least for internal calling and for meetings and document collaboration. While all the major vendors made huge strides with their conferencing / collab platforms (Zoom with their security enhancements, Avaya with “Spaces” and Webex looking very different from the way it looked a year ago) – the incumbency of Teams gave it a huge advantage,” he said, comparing Teams market position to some of its competing peers.

And Microsoft hasn’t taken this positive response for granted. Its updates, from performance improvements to seemingly cosmetic changes, have reimagined Teams over time.

“At the beginning of the pandemic, Teams could only show four video streams at a time – that has now massively scaled. Breakout rooms have even made it suitable for large scale events. While custom backgrounds may seem like a frippery to some, for many it gave them the confidence to turn their cameras on without exposing their personal space to their colleagues.”

Steve Raffe, Head of Teamline, StarLeaf

Steve Raffe

According to StarLeaf’s Steve Raffe, the convenience of Teams deployment made a big difference when IT teams were working on a tight deadline.

“When the first wave of lockdowns came into force in early 2020, businesses had to make a lightning-fast transition to enable home and remote-working on a huge scale. Teams was one of the most obvious candidates to support that change. Plus, there’s the fact that Teams is part of Office 365, so it was perceived to be available for free if your business already subscribed to Microsoft’s productivity suite,” Raffe said.

Microsoft was able to successfully intersect security and functionality with ease of deployment and use, making for a winning combination.

As Raffe put it:

“Teams is made by a well-known software brand, so businesses that had to act quickly in a crisis, without creating extra risk, felt it was a safe choice. From a functional point of view, Teams offers the essential capabilities home and remote workers want: video conferencing, chat, and so on”

Jeremy Keefe, CEO, Nuvias

Jeremy Keefe

Nuvias’ Jeremy Keefe pointed out that Microsoft’s keen focus on Teams penetration was a long time in the making. It was beginning to expand its cloud footprint even before 2020 and planning to retire Skype for Business.

“Most businesses already had Teams waiting to go as a replacement for Skype for Business as part of their O365 subscription. However, it was the pandemic that caused the acceleration of the adoption of the platform. This is because it is easy to use for team collaboration because you can set-up groups for instant messaging, utilise the whiteboard for brainstorming in team meetings, share your screen into group chats, and access file sharing from individuals or within groups,” said Keefe.

While most companies were tackling video conferencing or collaboration as isolated use cases, Microsoft was early to hop onto the UCaaS bandwagon. Its telephony capabilities have contributed to Teams adoption in a significant way.

“Scheduling calls is straightforward thanks to the calendar integration and you can quickly search your internal directory, should you want to launch an instant call. Overall, I think its ease-of-use and integration capabilities are the reason that Microsoft Teams is adopted by so many,” Keefe added.

Patrick Watson, Senior Analyst, Cavell Group

Patrick Watson

Like Rufus Grig from Maintel and Steve Raffe from StarLeaf, Watson too mentioned the existing market popularity of Microsoft 365 as a driver for Teams adoption.

“It’s undeniable that Microsoft Teams’ position within the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity applications makes it more attractive to enterprises than other competitive third-party collaboration solutions. Microsoft told us last year that there were nearly 260 million commercial monthly active users using the Microsoft 365 suite and this access to millions of end-users’ desktops gives Teams a real advantage when it comes to growing its own DAU base,” Watson told us.

As a result, businesses are able to adopt Teams without adding too much to their cost or effort overheads. As Watson explained, “Its position within the suite, offering businesses simple deployment alongside other familiar application staples like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, allows a business to reap the benefits of collaboration as part of their existing software OPEX.”

This also means that the learning curve for Teams would be dramatically smoother than other third-party platforms, as most of us have been using Microsoft products for decades.

“The Microsoft user interface is familiar to end-users and therefore the Teams application doesn’t require a huge amount of training for a team to be able to utilise the application’s basic features quickly”

Mike Wardell, CEO, Giacom

Mike Wardell

According to Giacom’s Mike Wardell, it was the comprehensive nature of Teams that attracted (and retained) so many WFH users. At a time when collaboration app clutter is a very real problem, Teams offers a unique value proposition – “Teams brings together all the tools required to be effective working from home into a single solution. Combining Video, voice, chat, teams, channels, and files into one platform gives you everything you need to manage teams big and small remotely.”

Of this, Wardell believes that video innovation has been the most instrumental in Microsoft Teams’ rise. In a remote working and social distancing scenario, video would naturally have a larger role to play than usual.

“We have all been on long boring voice-only conference calls which are not engaging or productive, whereas with the inclusion of video these calls are transformed, you can tell if people are engaged, interested, focused and it is easier to engage them,” Wardell noted, comparing the advantages of video vs. audio.

Microsoft recognised the role video would play during the pandemic, and constantly improved video capabilities on Teams.

“The improvements in video quality, connectivity and the ability to have video calls from the desk in both small and large groups have made a real difference, which when combined with the breadth of other functionality in Teams sets it apart and makes it the only viable solution for working from home,” added Wardell.

Mark Herbert, CEO, Call2Teams

Mark Herbert

For Mark Herbert from Call2Teams (Qunifi), Teams’ biggest USP during WFH was the reduction in efforts for IT. in addition to end-user ease of access, IT could easily deploy Teams if they were already in the Microsoft ecosystem without a lot of configuration or integration hassle.

“For the IT department, it is a dream, all they do is deploy Teams and everything is there for the user, they don’t have to put in a lot of other applications. It simplifies IT management, it is also secure,” Herbert said.

“You can spin it up on any machine through a browser or install a client, whether it is bring-your-own-device (BYOD), your home machine, or work supplied computer. It is easy to use. Then many completed the WFH set-up by using our Call2Teams 365 add-on to integrate their existing voice services. Microsoft Teams is an extension of what many already have, so deploying during the pandemic was an easy step”

The fact that employees could use Teams as a gateway for accessing other assets on Office or SharePoint was also crucial, said Herbert.

That’s not to say that Microsoft’s existing market leadership didn’t play a role, which – Herbert agrees – was a game-changing factor. “Microsoft owns nearly four-fifths of the business desktop market and they give Teams away with Microsoft365,” he added.

Next, we went on to discuss how the rise of platforms like Teams would drive growth for businesses operating a WFH workforce, particularly in a period of economic turmoil.

New Business Opportunities for Companies with Distributed Teams?

Teams isn’t just another platform, adding to the UC market chatter. It has mainstream-ised the platform approach, opening new pathways for business growth in a WFH world. To explore this further, we asked how have platform developments created more opportunities for businesses with remote workers?

Our experts shared their diverse perspectives, indicating a wealth of fresh opportunities by using Teams for WFH in nearly every sector.

Maintel’s Rufus Grig told us how what started as a crisis response is now morphing into long-term goals, aided by platform developments. He said:

“The prevalence, quality, and usability of the 2020 class of collaboration tools have made remote working for teams a reality. The first opportunity this created was an existential one – the ability to keep their businesses running. But as vaccines start to offer hopes of post-pandemic working life, they clearly offer further opportunities for productive hybrid working,”

There are three impacts that Grig expects – reduced overheads from lower rent, utility bills, etc., flexibility in hiring, and unfettered geographical expansion.

“There are potential property footprint implications. Also, I think the more exciting opportunity is in talent recruitment and retention – spreading the geographical net for employees wider, and retaining staff who are attracted by a greater work-life balance,” he said.

A WFH platform would also enable companies (especially service providers) to scale their business models to new areas. Grig highlighted a few examples: “There are other business opportunities being enabled by these platforms in the areas of remote learning, training, mentoring – even music tuition. In all cases, the geographical boundaries are reset and travel time reduced, offsetting the fact that the process is ultimately not quite as productive as face-to-face would be.”

For StarLeaf’s Steve Raffe, it isn’t all smooth sailing for business on the road ahead. While Teams’ initial promise opened new possibilities, they are likely to face challenges as the solution becomes more mature, and this needs addressing if users are to see real value.

“Like many video collaboration and conferencing providers, including StarLeaf, Microsoft acted altruistically to help businesses support their remote workers. They made premium Teams features available for free, and lifted the limit on the team members within their free version. Microsoft has updated Teams throughout 2020,” Raffe noted.

In his experience at StarLeaf, over-frequent updates could hinder businesses as much as they help them, adding complexity that users didn’t want or even need. “As a result, people can feel left out as they struggle to connect with their colleagues; obviously a bad thing for people who may already feel isolated by prolonged periods of remote working.”

Another fallout of Teams’ development is that if users perceive it as a “hassle,” they turn to consumer apps like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger instead. “This shadow IT gives businesses no SLA or control of data governance, which makes them a security and compliance liability,” Raffe said.

To unlock new business opportunities from Teams, companies will have to first overcome adoption issues, particularly as 58% of Teams users feel “forced” to use the platform, Raffe told us from StarLeaf’s extensive survey in the EU and the UK.

Nuvias’ Jeremy Keefe highlighted the incredible shift in working models that happened last year, and the mindset shift that it required.

“Previously, many businesses only allowed their employees to work from home due to unique circumstances – such as family requirements or issues with travel. A Gartner survey revealed that this year, nearly 50% of organisations reported that 81% or more of their employees are now working from home due to the pandemic. So, there was a worry of employees becoming disconnected and distracted while working from home”

The development of platforms like Teams helped alleviate these fears and keep businesses working as usual, as much as possible. Project management and presence technology, in particular, were helpful in keeping businesses on track.

“Platform features such as Microsoft Teams’ integration with Asana help users stay on track with project management. The user status on the platform also gives visibility on whether employees are at their desk and if they are on a call. This prevents their colleagues from wasting time trying to get hold of them while they are busy/on a break etc.,” he added.

And, like Maintel’s Rufus Grig, he pointed out recruitment flexibility as a major upside. Not only can businesses hire without borders to find the perfect candidate, but Teams can also help to streamline candidate communication.

“The ability to call externally means that businesses can use Microsoft Teams as their interview platform. This widens the opportunity of finding the perfect suitor to their company due to no geographic restrictions.”

Cavell’s Patrick Watson considered the business opportunities enabled by remote working of every kind, and not just WFH. Frontline workers would benefit from this, as platforms like Teams would help them stay connected, productive, and mobile while on the job.

“One area where Microsoft has focused Teams development, and really excelled against its competition, is in its mobile application and mobile experience. Microsoft acquired Talko Inc – mobile messaging experts in 2015 – and undoubtedly, they have utilised some of the IP and specialised knowledge gleaned to accelerate the development of Teams on mobile,” Watson said.

Indeed, this calls into focus the massive global workforce that is frequently excluded from WFH due to the onsite nature of their work. Platform developments would help increase business opportunities arising from this segment, as they would have access to the same tools as their desk-based counterparts. Also, lesser need to travel or communicate in person would benefit employees’ health and safety.

“Only a small proportion of the global workforce is desk-based. So being able to offer an inclusive collaboration solution, which can include mobile workers, is key to many organisations – Microsoft has clearly realised this, and focusing development in this area will appeal to many businesses who want to include all of their remote workforce, not just those with access to a laptop or desktop endpoint,” Watson added.

In fact, Cavell research indicates that better mobile performance is among the top improvements enterprises want to see in their collaboration solutions.

Giacom’s Mike Wardell spoke about the direct impact of platforms like Teams on the bottom line. For contact centres, the opportunities are massive, as they can use Teams for external communication, customer acquisition/retention, and profitability.

“The introduction of Business Voice in Teams brings all your internal and external communications together into a single place. This means remote workers can work as effectively as if they were in the office, because not only is all the internal communications covered by Teams but now it can also support all their external communications”

“Using Business Voice, you can connect directly to the PSTN network and make and receive calls as you would from any traditional phone system, but all from within Teams,” Wardell explained, zeroing in on the specific advantages of Microsoft Teams Business Voice.

Apart from this, there is obviously a dramatic improvement in how employees work, plan, and collaborate. Wardell mentioned three examples:

• The recent integration of planner and to-dos means Teams is increasingly becoming people’s primary workspace, the ‘virtual desk’ if you like
• You have your to-do list, work boards, messages, channels, collaborative documents, and files all accessible right there within the Teams window
• Relatively simple platform enhancements like background blur and custom backgrounds can make remote client meetings look professional whatever the home-working environment

Ultimately, it is the ability to perform both internal and external communication tasks from one platform that unlocks a genuine business advantage.

Mark Herbert from Qunifi pointed out how Teams enables real-time collaboration at a time when employees cannot meet face to face, and getting on a call isn’t always possible.

Challenges in real-time collaboration were among the primary impediments to business productivity last year, as employees sitting in different locations struggled to get on the same page. “Teams can be used for the co-authoring of documents and, for the creative process, the use of a meeting room and a whiteboard is no longer a requirement. With Teams, colleagues can work remotely and still collaborate in real-time,” Herbert said.

In addition to its collaboration tools, Teams’ real-time presence technology, which automatically updates user presence status without any lag or delay, plays an important role. All of this, says Herbert, helps with the management of remote staff.

After the pandemic, Teams will increase companies’ ability to support flexible work requirements, thereby meeting employee demands. “Having the ability to access the work phone system through the unified Teams client has proved invaluable,” Herbert told us.

Finally, Microsoft Teams has helped to improve the business environment in almost imperceptible but vital ways. As Herbert puts it, “Microsoft Teams can provide a space to chat – just as we used to when in the office kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil. It can be used as a tool to help keep up morale and engagement from those working from home.”

After covering the opportunities (and possible challenges, as StarLeaf’s Steve Raffe mentioned) arising from platform developments in Teams, we wanted to delve into the top WFH trends for 2021.

WFH Trends for 2021, with Microsoft Teams on the Center Stage

We asked our experts about the most prominent WFH trends they predict will dominate the UC landscape in the coming months. We asked them, what are your expectations from Microsoft Teams during this timeframe? The answers revealed interesting insights, spanning the role of hardware, more external-facing use cases, continuing WFH (or at least hybrid), and possibly, the eventual ubiquity of Teams – akin to a browser or your OS.

Rufus Grig from Maintel believes that 2020’s remote work has fundamentally shifted our operational modalities, a trend that will continue to play out in 2021. He also predicts the addition of new tools, integrations, and hardware support.

Here are his four predictions on Teams and WFH in 2021:

1. Hybrid and remote working, not necessarily from home – “Hybrid working is likely to be a more permanent fixture in our working lives – so equipping people to be effective in the home as well as the office, and enabling people to be able to collaborate with colleagues in multiple settings (some at home, some in meeting rooms with facilities, some at their desks in office) will also be important.”
2. Integration with existing communication systems – “I hope for better API support for calling to enable greater integration with contact centres, and other key applications.”
3. More focus on hardware, further catching up with competing players – “I expect to start seeing more support for hardware – it’s an area where the traditional players (Cisco for example) have a significant lead with integration between the software and hardware elements of their portfolio. There will be use cases for office-based room systems and a personal-issue kit.”
4. Collaboration outcome-based, and not just collaboration-enabling, features – “I expect the “value add” to become more prevalent too i.e., focus on improving the outcome of the meeting, not just enabling it to happen. Tools like note-taking, translation, automatic scheduling, etc. will bring real value – and Microsoft is well-positioned to take advantage here.”

StarLeaf’s Steve Raffe reaffirmed what Rufus Grig had to say, stressing the continued reliance on remote work. This will impact communication, such as prioritising video over voice in order to make remote communication feel more natural and intuitive.

“Security will become a priority as businesses look to ensure they have a remote working platform that’s safe and reliable for the long term,” he added.

A vital trend that Raffe highlighted is the intended ubiquity of Teams. “Microsoft makes no secret of their desire for Teams to become ‘a digital platform as significant as the internet browser, or a computer operating system.’ For Microsoft, a strategy based on owning the WFH-experience makes perfect business sense.”

This is an oft-discussed trend here at UC Today, as Microsoft’s growing partnerships with its competitors like Cisco indicate a definite push towards ubiquity.

But what does this trend mean for end-users?

Raffe isn’t quite so optimistic, as continuous changes to the Teams platform could end up complicating the user experience. Partners and integrated third-parties like StarLeaf will be instrumental in “cleaning up” the UX, says Raffe.

“As platforms like Teams and Slack look to dominate the remote workspace by adding new core capabilities, their customers will find themselves on a constant learning curve, and that’s just not what they need right now. People want remote collaboration tools that feel clean and intuitive to use, and which make it simpler to connect with colleagues and get work done. That’s where StarLeaf comes in.”

Nuvias’ Jeremy Keefe, too, spoke about continuing WFH, eventually giving way to a hybrid working model. “I think we will see workforces split between working from home and returning to the office as businesses give their employees the option – whether that means all employees work from home 3 out of 5 days or week, or whether some people will choose to WFH full time,” he said.

Apart from this, he predicts that more companies will start using Microsoft Teams as a replacement for their PBX. This could positively impact the bottom line, using existing infrastructure investments for better calling capabilities.

“Currently, some businesses still see the Microsoft Teams platform as an internal tool. I think a reduction in the price of the external calling licence might help Microsoft shake off this reputation, but I doubt this is likely. Therefore, for businesses who see the Microsoft Calling Plan as expensive, Direct Routing offers a cost-effective-way of utilising existing SIP trunking services to connect their users to the PSTN. It is an easy progression to use Teams to replace their PBX,” opined Keefe.

Finally, he mentioned a few recent Teams features that could pave the way for large, group calling use cases in 2021.

“I think Microsoft Teams’ latest features – together mode and breakout areas- will be popular in the education sector. A couple of other features that could increase the use of Microsoft Teams and encourage adoption for external use would be an option of webinar/event registration and the option to transcribe meetings, which is offered by Zoom,” he added.

Cavell’s Patrick Watson told us how analysts’ predictions and trend forecasts changed in the last few months of 2020, no longer predicting a prompt return to BAU in 2021.

Initially, most businesses were forecasting a contraction in the number of remote workers in 2021, as they anticipated the world returning to ‘normal.’ however, this could no longer be the case given world health scenarios, as well as the outsized benefits businesses, have gained from remote work.

An important focus area for Teams this year will be customer services and CX. “Customer experience provision is becoming more vital as a tool for businesses to differentiate from their competition – in a remote working world or otherwise. Tools like collaboration apps that aim to unite a remote workforce also need to offer organisations the capability to improve their CX provision to end customers,” Watson believes.

According to him, Microsoft could add capabilities like a workforce management feature to Teams, helping organisations plan for customer service positioning, from within the platform. “There could even be some form of direct contact centre capability,” Watson said.

Mike Wardell from Giacom spoke on similar lines as Maintel’s Rufus Grig, StarLeaf’s Steve Raffe, Cavell’s Patrick Wilson and others, questioning an immediate return to on-premise work. “In the early days of Lockdown 1, there was lots of talk of an overnight permanent change to the way businesses think about offices and the need for them and the general consensus was that hybrid working, i.e., a mix of office and work from home, would be the new normal,” he said.

“As we enter Lockdown 3, I am starting to wonder if the change will be even more significant and that working from offices will be a thing of the past.”

As for Teams, Wardell is eager to find out what Microsoft does next on its road to ubiquity. In addition to consolidating the various aspects of communication into Teams, is 2021 the year it brings together all its communication products? “The one thing which continues to interest me is whether Microsoft will ever combine all of its comms solutions in one place, i.e., will they ever merge Outlook with Microsoft Teams,” he suggested.

Qunifi’s Mark Herbert shared his four predictions for WFH, collaboration platforms, and Teams specifically in 2021. Expectedly, he too believes in a hybrid working future and a cautious return to physical events, although he might not agree with Mike Wardell’s belief in the rise of video.

Here are the trends in full detail:

• Unwillingness to return to the office – “In 2021, we will see a greater emphasis on flexible working, with perhaps a blend of 2- or 3-days home working, combined with the office. This is demonstrated in the research out there – for example, Future Forum shows that just 12% of employees want to return to full-time office work.”
• Larger and fewer events for customer engagement – “For business engagement, I think we will see fewer face-to-face meetings. In turn, more value will be placed on trade shows and exhibitions, with these being utilised for many customer interactions in one go.”
• Voice-Teams integration and the onset of video fatigue – “I think we will also see a decline of video, as remote workers suffer ‘Zoom fatigue’, bringing a resurgence for the traditional voice call. This means there’ll be a greater emphasis on aligning traditional voice services with Teams, so securing the last piece of the collaborative communications jigsaw.”
• The gradual “swallowing up” of Zoom – “From Teams over this timeframe, I think Zoom is the next target. Zoom is a household name. It’s not a great platform, the call quality is not great as it focuses on ‘video first.’ Yet I think Zoom can be agile and innovate, and Microsoft will just then just replicate that within Teams.”

Overall, Herbert echoes the sentiment that WFH is here to stay, at least partially, and Microsoft will add to its investments in Teams to cater to this opportunity.

At the end of the day, Teams isn’t alone in its push towards ubiquity, trying to provide its customers with a one-stop solution by acquiring, replicating, improving on, or integrating with its competitors in the landscape. There is massive potential on the road ahead, given that WFH will remain a kind of “interim normal” for the foreseeable future. For example, onZoom is Zoom’s new marketplace for immersive experiences, allowing users to leverage it as a part of their business model. LogMeIn has also expanded its hardware capabilities with further investments in the GoToRoom ecosystem.

What this means is that a platform-based revolution in how we communicate, collaborate, and do work, moving away from isolated point solutions that fragment user experiences on the one hand and add to IT workloads on the other.

In this journey, Teams is aided by three things – Microsoft’s established market positioning due to its OS and productivity tools, a “co-opetition” mindset where Microsoft doesn’t shy away from partnering with its competitors, and the resources to introduce regular, incremental upgrades. While 2021 will be all about converting last year’s short-term efficiencies into long-term gains, there will also be more radical innovations that open up new ways of doing business – hinged on WFH.

Please check out Part 2, coming later this week, of this roundtable for more insights on Microsoft Teams for WFH. And a big round of thanks to our industry experts for taking the time out to contribute to this edition of the UC Today Round Table.

 

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