It’s no secret that Microsoft Teams usage has skyrocketed this year. As the COVID-19 crisis swept the globe, organizations from all industries and verticals needed to make a quick shift to virtual offices and remote collaboration tools – and MS Teams was one of the greatest beneficiaries. Usage has recently surpassed 115 million daily active users (DAUs) – up 53% from 75 million in April and just 13 million in July 2019.
You don’t have to be a full Microsoft shop or Microsoft CSP to realize there’s potential and value here. What might be less clear is how to extract it and increase recurring revenue from your clients who are already using MS Teams.
As always, success hinges upon differentiation, value-added services and your ability to save your clients money. One avenue for MSPs to grow revenue is through integration and customization opportunities – particularly those that can enhance the MS Teams experience through an integration with a powerful business communications system with advanced Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) features.
MS Teams currently provides organizations with a centralized hub for team collaboration within Microsoft 365, complete with document sharing, online meetings, and many more extremely useful features for business communications. It also enables voice communications – and, in the rush to facilitate remote work, some of your clients may have started using Teams for everything, including as their phone system with Microsoft serving as their PBX, if they weren’t doing so already.
However, Microsoft is not a telecoms provider and is only just getting into the voice space. There have been some growing pains with the platform, and it is difficult to reach the Microsoft support team.
Moreover, using Microsoft as a phone system is by no means the most cost-effective solution for the enterprise. For starters, Microsoft charges full price for every user on Teams whether they use it or not. Both domestic and international calling plans are metered and capped as a “bucket of minutes”, as opposed to being unlimited, and overage charges apply if a user goes over their allotted bucket. If a user wants to send a call off-network (e.g. to a cell phone or an after-hours/emergency call center or answering service), they have to load calling credits onto their account and then pay per-minute charges on those calls.
In addition, though Microsoft does provide some standard unified communications features such as auto attendants, hunt groups and call queues, there is an additional cost for each – which can add hundreds of dollars to the bill just for basic UC phone system features.
The best way to enhance your clients’ MS Teams experience, save them money on calls, and enrich their phone system with advanced unified communications features is by integrating Teams with a comprehensive UCaaS solution like net2phone.
Unlike Microsoft, net2phone is a telecoms provider with more than 30 years’ experience in the voice space. Our platform is exceptionally stable with 99.99% uptime and we offer 24/7/365 support, including on-boarding assistance by a dedicated team of engineers and technical support agents.
net2phone includes completely unmetered unlimited domestic and international calling to over 40 countries and does not limit the user to a bucket of minutes. In addition, all of our unified communications features are included for no extra cost. These include unlimited auto attendants, unlimited hunt groups, unlimited call queueing software, video conferencing with dial in, SMS/MMS texting, web and mobile apps, call recording, and more.
Finally, net2phone has a native integration into Microsoft Teams – so set up is easy and controlled through the net2phone online admin portal, meaning it is completely non-disruptive to your end users who will be set up with net2phone in a matter of minutes.
Simple pricing, easy configuration, an expanded range of options – there’s no better way to enhance the MS Teams experience than with the net2phone integration.