Does Microsoft Teams Give You the Application Visibility You Need?

12 Aug 2021

As Microsoft Teams proliferates within enterprise voice networks, business managers and IT departments require more advanced legacy UC platform reporting visibility than Teams provides.

In April, Microsoft reported that the number Microsoft Teams daily active users had climbed to a staggering 145 million. This followed last year’s exponential, pandemic-related Teams’ growth: to 44 million daily users in March 2020; 75 million by April 2020; and 115 million by last October. Not bad for a platform launched globally just four years ago.

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Easing Microsoft Teams migration pain

For most organizations, migrating to Microsoft Teams remains a walk rather than a run. Even Microsoft’s own “FastTrack” adoption guide notes that once an organization decides to move to Teams, driving internal adoption is a constant cycle which doesn’t end with the platform’s launch.

Not surprisingly, and as Gartner noted in its most recent “Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service,” the COVID-19-driven remote workforce surge has meant that many enterprises are working at a significant clip to deploy Teams infrastructure as quickly as possible – and then focusing on employee adoption.

But this sudden and dramatic growth, the analyst firm and others caution, is introducing serious IT challenges, not the least of which are internal technical and business leader concerns about legacy UC data clarity and its importance to informed decision-making across the enterprise.

Losing this critical voice, meetings, and user adoption insight is simply not an option.

One answer is to deploy cloud analytics software – which can reside in Microsoft’s Azure cloud alongside Teams itself – to collect, process, and report on call data from Cisco, Avaya, and other UC platforms.

Enhancing hybrid workforce productivity

“Going Hybrid: The Future of Work is Here” reads the Forbes headline in a nod to what many, if not most, business leaders have already come to accept as the proverbial new workplace normal.

But what does “hybrid” mean to organizations deploying Microsoft Teams as a productivity enhancer when 73% of employees surveyed expressed a desire for flexible remote work options to continue in a post-pandemic world, while at the same time, 67% want more in-person time with colleagues?

The answer lies in an organization’s ability to measure both in-person and remote staff performance, as well as gauge staffing levels and customer-facing employee training requirements. Line of sight insight information that is presented clearly, readily, extensively, and on a self-serve basis to business leaders – and which can impact the need for IT staff.

Summary

“Over the past year, no area has undergone more rapid transformation than the way we work,” notes Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in the Company’s “2021 Work Trend Index” Report. “Employee expectations are changing and we will need to define productivity much more broadly – inclusive of collaboration, learning, and well-being.”

The exponential growth of Microsoft Teams in the last year – including the more than doubling of employee time spent in Teams Meetings according to the Index – lends credence to the critical need for business managers to have the communications application visibility required to make better informed business decisions about employee engagement and productivity, as well as the customer experience. Combining Teams with data analytics can provide just the clarity these business line leaders need to make this happen.


Jason Forehand is CEO of ISI Telemanagement Solutions, LLC. (ISI).

 

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