What’s not to like about Microsoft Teams?

In today’s work-from-anywhere world, the giant cloud-powered platform has become the go-to solution for millions.

It enables customers and colleagues to communicate and collaborate, and is acting as a potent digital enablement driver for millions of small-to-medium sized businesses still reliant on legacy systems.

For technology service providers, the ability to help those businesses seamlessly merge the old with the new creates huge opportunity to either begin a new, lucrative and long-term customer relationship or to bring extra stickiness to an existing one.

Providing users with Teams-native telephony capability in particular can be a game-changer. Integrating outdated PSTN functionality with cloud-powered voice calling not only modernizes, it also enables investments in legacy infrastructure to be sweated.

And that’s a win-win for all parties.

“The ability for businesses to leverage Teams as a single-interface, omnichannel communication and collaboration hub can have a hugely positive impact on efficiency, productivity, and user experience – frictionlessly integrating all of that functionality delivers huge value for everyone concerned,” says Akshay John, Principal Customer Solutions Architect at Dstny for Service Providers, whose suite of Teams voice integration solutions is the perfect case in point.

“Providing a Teams-based solution is crucial in the modern voice market.

We have been working in both those worlds for many years – with Microsoft and with telephony service providers – so we understand how best to bring them together. That experience means we can help service providers get connected quickly with effortless integration and management; launch an offering fast with our Carrier grade infrastructure and high availability service; and ultimately help them scale without limit.”

Dstny’s comprehensive Teams offering caters for every type of voice integration currently available; Their globally popular Direct Routing solution Dstny Call2Teams enables organizations to connect their own telephony infrastructure to Teams to make and receive calls using PSTN, retaining all the benefits provided by their current phone system; Dstny Carrier Automate gives Carriers a route into Operator Connect, which enables organizations to consume the telephony services of their preferred or existing phone service provider within Teams; Dstny Teams Connect provides feature-rich Teams-integrated office phone system that brings everything together onto a single interface; and now Dstny Converge adds a potential mobile connection into the Microsoft Teams ecosystem.

However, as well as the purely-functional capabilities of the offering, it is its white-label invisibility, speed-to-market, and support wrap which catches the eye.

“Our service provider partners don’t necessarily want to expose their customers to the fact that they are leveraging our integration middleware, and that invisibility is something we are good at across our entire product range,” says John.

“We also play well with others in the sense that our integrations can quickly unlock additional value for our service providers and partners. Many have lengthy development cycles, lengthy go-to-market cycles, and extended sales cycles. So, for example, when we can get a service provider in the market and selling Operator Connect within three or four months, that’s a big win.

“In addition, we have the people, the processes, and the decades of experience needed to understand the dynamics at play in the channel; the needs of end user customer organisations; and the delivery challenges faced by service providers. It’s not just about the technology, it’s about the whole commercial journey; such as providing marketing collateral, and pre-and post -sales support.”

Importantly, enabling customers to fully-leverage their Teams investment also presents service providers with significant upsell opportunities. A range of additional cloud-based plug-ins and integrations can complement an ever-evolving stack, such as contact centre, compliance, analytics, data management, and AI-powered tools capable of simultaneously deriving yet further end user ROI and boosting service provider revenue.

“It’s like using building blocks to add value everywhere for everyone,” says John. “We are a trusted partner; we don’t just sell and move on. We invest ourselves in our service providers’ success. We say: ‘What’s your one year strategy, what’s your two year strategy?’ and

every six months we review that to ensure everything is going in the right direction. We’re always thinking ‘what next’ too. We only grow if our service providers grow, so we have constant conversations about innovating and improving.

“Voice is still very much a thing, and the Teams-related opportunities for the channel are huge, particularly in the SMB sector. Service providers with an attractive offer can simplify and modernize communications for those businesses whilst continuing to provide a really reliable, easy-to-use voice channel.

“Suddenly, having commoditized their PSTN functionality, they have an offering that is telephony plus, plus, plus.”

For service providers looking to add value and differentiate, Teams is the gift that just keeps on giving…

To learn more about how Dstny for Service Providers can help your and your customers’ businesses reap the rewards of Microsoft Teams voice integration, click here.



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