Rob Lith, CCO Telviva

Digital transformation is not an event or milestone, rather it is the ongoing streamlining and simplification of business processes to support better efficiency, more productive teams, better customer experience and service, and much more. And so, it would come as no surprise that even environments that were considered by many to be the beacon of digital transformation, are now themselves, in need of further enhancements and improvements.

Before we look ahead, let’s take a moment to look in the rear-view mirror for a moment. While collaborative suites such as Google Workspace and Microsoft Teams were already leading the charge pre-pandemic, it was the pandemic itself that tilted the balance of widespread adoption of cloud-based collaboration suites.

Microsoft Teams, which is popular in the business world, combines persistent workplace chat, video meetings, file storage and application integration. However, we must realise that we still live in a world where voice is crucial.

In other words, what is the point of having a self-sustaining collaborative ecosystem, but then forcing team members to drop off and use another means of communication altogether to handle their voice functions - either internally or externally? If the phone rings, the user needs to answer it.

Companies such as Telviva integrate voice and other collaboration tools, but what about businesses using Teams? This led to the development of Microsoft Phone System, which allows businesses to replace their existing on-premise PBX system with a set of features delivered from MS 365, all the while tightly integrated into the business’s cloud experience. However, the Microsoft Calling Plan is not supported in all countries, and South Africa is one such country where it is not available. 

To navigate this, direct routing is used to achieve the same goal - it allows a business to connect a supported customer or service provider’s session border controller (SBC) to the Microsoft Phone System. This means an organisation can connect to a local voice carrier to leverage existing voice contracted rates or it can contract a new service with competitive rates. Each phone system user gets a number for inbound calls and a calling line identity for outbound calls.

Cloud-based unified communication and collaboration (UC&C) companies such as Telviva understand the importance of voice, and how a true omni experience brings different platforms and tools together to streamline businesses, which led to being able to provide a Microsoft-certified AudioCodes multi-tenant SBC for a customer’s Microsoft Phone System and Direct Routing to connect to a public switched telephone network - hosted in the cloud with redundancy.

Now, if the digital transformation jargon is becoming too much, it means this: Direct Routing enables you to integrate phone PBX functionality into Microsoft Teams. Within the same interface and environment, calls can be answered, made, put on hold and transferred - between Teams users and between Teams users and non-Teams users. 

It is key, when an organisation investigates Direct Routing, to seek out a provider that not only has the capability, but also a solid track record in UC&C broadly, and Microsoft direct routing specifically. Then, working with a good Microsoft partner to integrate the service is vital to unlocking the full benefit of the exercise. A company such as Telviva works extensively with Microsoft partners and so can either refer a partner or work closely with a new partner on integrations. Ultimately, direct routing provides businesses with a leg-up in the next phase of their digital transformation journeys.