Why Organizations like Softcat are Choosing 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams

Amanda Hill

October 11, 2021

When the pandemic hit in early 2020, many organizations chose Microsoft Teams to ensure their employees could continue to work, communicate, and collaborate remotely. But over the course of lockdown, work expectations started to change, and many people are now reluctant to return to a daily commute. A recent PwC survey found that 55% of employees would prefer to work remotely at least three days a week, even once pandemic concerns recede. As a result, organizations are now looking for ways to make Microsoft Teams an even more valuable, long-term business solution – one that will be able to support flexible and hybrid working for the foreseeable future.

Softcat and team productivity

One organization taking action to do this is Softcat, a large UK-based IT infrastructure and services company with global expansion plans. Some Softcat departments were already using Teams and, as the pandemic hit, the leadership team decided it was the right solution to roll out across the entire organization.

Unfortunately, Softcat’s existing unified communications (UC) system, used for internal and contact center communications, didn’t integrate with Teams. It left people using two separate systems, and this started to have an impact on both the employee and customer experience.

Softcat’s CIO, Rob Parkinson said, “Having a UC provider that didn’t integrate with Teams meant we weren’t able to make or manage calls from within Teams. It wasn’t a good experience for our staff, or our customers – in fact, it led to a lot of missed or abandoned calls, and negative feedback from our customers. So, maintaining the status quo wasn’t an option for us.”

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Integrated calling is a Microsoft Teams feature that many organizations are looking to build on. In a recent survey of 500 IT decision makers in the US and UK, 87% of respondents said they were interested in global telephony with Teams but were concerned that existing international calling plans were limited, and that they would have to invest in additional services. 80% said they were likely to integrate Teams with third-party telephony providers.

Many organizations also expect new tech solutions to include data analytics, with more than 80% of interviewees having a strong interest in inbound and outbound communication reporting on Teams-integrated calling, according to the accompanying report.

8x8 for Microsoft Teams

To get the additional functionality it needed, Softcat chose 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams, a single cloud platform with advanced telephony and contact center capabilities, and designed to integrate seamlessly with Teams. It comes with all the features users need and expect from a UC calling platform, but is delivered directly within Teams, through the Teams experience that employees are already familiar with. 8x8 Voice for Teams delivers crystal-clear calls in 120+ countries, with unlimited calling plans in 47 of them, and full PSTN replacement in 43 countries. It can also integrate with contact centers, and business apps, like Salesforce.

Jim Chapman-Leach was Softcat’s Solutions Architect for the project. “8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams has brought simplicity to the way we communicate. It enables our employees to access all our internal and external collaboration, including calling, from a single interface,” he said. “We’re also getting much more data, giving us detailed insight into how sales and customers are communicating.”

Softcat’s users are pleased with the improvements, too. Michaela Nankin, Softcat’s Sales Manager for collaboration solutions, is often working out of the office and used to struggle with the old system, “Now there’s simplicity in the way we communicate, internally and externally. I can be productive wherever I am, on the road or in different offices, which was challenging before. Now I get the same experience wherever I am – plus I additionally get the data and insight on my team and my customers – everything I need to do my job.”

Softcat now gets all its telephony in Teams via the 8x8 platform, enabling it to access new features from both Teams and 8x8 as they’re released. And as a global platform with tens of thousands of users worldwide, 8x8 is a key partner for Softcat as it expands its business into the US, Europe, Singapore, and beyond.