Effective collaboration depends on reliable communication. With the workplace now more distributed than ever, having the right tools to enable that communication is essential.
With so many organizations now relying on a dispersed workforce, enterprise voice solutions are becoming an ever more essential part of the workplace experience, alongside video meetings and instant messaging.
That’s why businesses are now choosing to partner with a managed service provider (MSP) for enterprise voice solutions as part of their wider collaboration environment.
Here, we’re going to outline three advantages of using an MSP for your enterprise voice solution, so you can make a more informed decision about whether it’s right for your organization.
Most organizations rely on platforms like Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, and Zoom for day-to-day collaboration. But when they also want to use these platforms as part of their enterprise voice environment, they need to consider how calls connect to the public switched telephone network (PSTN).
The major platforms all provide options for doing this. Microsoft Teams Phone offers direct routing, Webex Calling supports premises-based PSTN through a local gateway, while Zoom Phone provides bring your own carrier (BYOC) options. These approaches can allow organizations to retain existing carriers, phone numbers, or elements of their telephony infrastructure, while also bringing voice and collaboration closer together.
The challenge is that enterprise voice environments can become complicated quickly, particularly for businesses operating across multiple locations, carriers, or platforms.
This means you essentially have two options. Manage direct routing or PSTN yourself and host critical connectivity components in-house or in the cloud, or partner with an MSP provider who will take care of everything for you.
A managed collaboration service provider will assume responsibility for much of that complexity, helping you to deploy and manage the right connectivity model for your existing environment, rather than pushing you toward a particular platform.
The second advantage of using a managed collaboration service provider for your enterprise voice solution is the potential to reduce costs and make spending more predictable after migration.
A managed service can reduce the need to buy and maintain dedicated infrastructure, while also limiting the amount of specialist training and support needed. Depending on the service model, predictable operating costs can also make voice services easier to plan and manage over time.
In addition, costs can be controlled by tailoring the solution to your organization’s actual needs. Partnering with a managed service provider is the best way to guarantee that. No two businesses have the same combination of users, locations, platforms, and calling requirements, so the voice environment should reflect how your people actually work.
It may be that you simply don’t need certain features or functionality, so you certainly don’t want to be paying for them. A managed voice service provider will determine all of this during the system design and configuration phase to ensure you only pay for the functionality you need.
Managed services typically include proactive monitoring, incident support, service management, upgrades, and lifecycle planning, backed by a service level agreement (SLA). This helps you spot issues earlier, maintain consistent service across locations, and improve the environment over time as technology and user needs change.
By having this ongoing management and maintenance handled by an MSP, your internal teams can be freed from routine voice administration and have more time for work that directly supports your business. This way, there’s clear ownership for the performance and reliability of an integral part of the workplace experience.
Kinly’s role goes beyond deploying individual technologies. As a workplace experience partner, we unite people, spaces, technology, and services to create reliable collaboration experiences. Our lifecycle approach combines consultancy, integration, and managed services, with ongoing monitoring, support, and optimization so workplace technology continues to deliver value long after deployment.
Contact us to find out more about how we can support your collaboration and workplace technology environment.
An enterprise voice solution gives employees business calling capabilities across an organization, often as part of a wider unified communications or collaboration environment.
A managed service provider can design, operate, monitor, and support enterprise voice services, helping reduce operational complexity and providing clear accountability for ongoing performance.
Managed services help keep workplace technology reliable, supported, and aligned with changing user needs through monitoring, service management, lifecycle planning, and continual optimization.