3 ways to improve productivity and reduce costs with Microsoft Teams Phone

As the way we work evolves, today’s organizations need cost-effective, reliable telephony solutions that help them support flexible work and truly bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds. Our customers are searching for products that help them promote an inclusive working environment and streamline communications. And they need solutions that simplify their technological footprint and cut the cost of legacy IT solutions and other non-essential expenses.

Helping our customers do more with less is at the core of our mission for Microsoft Teams Phone. Today, I’m excited to share a new study highlighting how implementing Teams Phone can help organizations reduce costs and empower employees to connect and work more efficiently.

Enable seamless, effective communication and collaboration with Teams Phone

With more than 280 million monthly active users this quarter, Microsoft Teams continues to play an essential role in keeping people connected at work.¹ We’ve seen growth across every category, including collaboration, chat, meetings, calling, and app integrations. Teams Phone maintains market leadership in cloud calling, and I’m proud to share that we’ve added more than five million public switched telephone network (PSTN) enabled users over the last 12 months alone.

People turn to Teams because it transforms the way we work and engage with one another. Teams enables individuals and organizations to connect, communicate, and collaborate in the way that best works for them—all within one secure, reliable, and innovative app.

With Teams Phone, people can make and receive voice and video calls right from Teams. This enterprise-grade calling solution supports Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and PSTN calls and enables IT leaders to connect with their teams, customers, and partners from chat or calls in Teams. It’s the only native telephony solution for Teams, too.

Ignite collaboration and productivity, reduce costs and IT burden

I’m especially encouraged by the results of a recent Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Teams Phone study conducted by Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Microsoft in December 2022. The study found that an enterprise composite organization that adopted Teams Phone had a three-year return on investment (ROI) of 143 percent and a payback period of less than six months. A small and medium-sized business (SMB) composite customer had a three-year ROI of 146 percent and shared a payback period of less than six months as well.

After examining the potential ROI that companies may realize by implementing Teams Phone, this study also found that businesses could:

1. Reduce licensing and usage costs. Freeing organizations from traditional solutions—such as telephony, VoIP private branch exchanges (PBXs), other types of voice providers, or some combination of these and other services—and choosing Teams Phone can reduce costs across categories. These savings are achieved by replacing previous solutions and eliminating or reducing long-distance and international calls and mobile phone reimbursement charges. For the enterprise composite organization (moving from another hosted calling solution) and the SMB composite organization (moving from a VoIP PBX solution), the eliminated costs total was USD10.8 million for the former and USD94,600 for the latter. With Teams Phone, organizations also enjoy the collaborative benefits of VoIP calling, including screen sharing, video calling, and real-time shared access to all Microsoft 365 apps.

“Historically, we had servers that did nothing but calls. That’s all they did all day. We were able to get rid of a lot of that. We’ve reduced that infrastructure footprint by probably 90 [percent] from a telephony perspective. We have very little telephony infrastructure for internal use in our data centers anymore.”

—Lead IT engineer, telecommunications.²

2. Minimize the burden on IT. Managing Teams Phone on the same platform as Microsoft 365 saves time, reduces complexity, and requires fewer specialized skills compared to legacy systems. Key tasks were faster and easier, allowing IT departments for SMB and enterprise composites to trim management and maintenance efforts, and focus on keeping their organizations connected. The SMB model sees a decrease in admin burden being reduced from 0.5 full-time equivalent (FTE) to 0.1 FTE, and the enterprise model sees a decrease in effort from three FTEs to two FTEs.

“Having everything in one platform is highly efficient and encourages more communication, more collaboration, and it’s easy to implement [and] use. From a technical standpoint and [an] IT administrative [standpoint], it’s going to save you time, effort, money, and it’s a secure platform, and you can administer it to the same administrative platform you use for your emails.”

—Chief information officer (CIO), financial services.²

3. Help people save time and collaborate more effectively. Moving to Teams Phone—and, in turn, eliminating the need to switch between different platforms and devices—enables employees to stay productive and connected. This helps make workers more efficient and business processes more streamlined. In both analyses, employees save time—on average, mobile users save 1.6 hours per week and nonmobile users save 15 minutes per week. For the enterprise composite organization, the three-year benefit is USD8 million, and for the SMB composite organization, the three-year benefit is USD79,000.

“We’re more efficient now because we standardized on Teams for internal communication collaboration.”

—CIO, financial services.²

View our Microsoft Teams Phone infographic for more information.

Explore hybrid work-friendly telephony solutions and results

No matter how much things change, efficient communication and collaboration remain key to productive work. Technologies like Teams Phone bring us together across different physical locations, helping us stay connected and work effectively.

Take a look at the new Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Teams Phone study conducted by Forrester Consulting to learn more about the benefits, costs, and risks associated with an investment in Teams Phone.

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¹Microsoft FY23 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call, Brett Iversen, Satya Nadella, Amy Hood, Microsoft. January 24, 2023.

²The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Teams Phone, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting, December 2022.