Telephony License Savings From Eliminating Legacy Solutions

Evidence and data. Interviewees noted that before integrating Microsoft Teams Phone and D365 Contact Center, their organizations employed multiple solutions, often from different vendors, to meet contact center and telephony needs. As such, they experienced high technology vendor costs for legacy telephony licenses or spend on redundant licenses within the same vendor. With the Microsoft integration, the organizations eliminated legacy telephony solutions and replaced them with Teams Phone to realize technology cost savings from consolidating vendors and optimizing spend with remaining licenses and contracts.

• Fifty-eight percent of survey respondents indicated their organization has or expects to save on technology costs by consolidating licensing, consumption, and other vendor fees with a unified contact center and telephony solution.

• Sixty percent of survey respondents indicated their organization has or expects to reduce PUPM voice license contract costs by replacing voice solutions with a unified contact center and telephony solution.

• An external consultant at a nonprofit indicated that by streamlining CCaaS and telephony providers to a single vendor, their organization not only made its environment easier to manage, but it also reduced licensing and maintenance costs. They said: “We have some third-party solutions in place [for telephony]. We will not need those anymore. And if you compare it to our model today, our current solution is three times more expensive, so we will save money fast on licensing.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization is an existing D365 Contact Center customer.

• Prior to the Team Phone investment, the composite used multiple telephony solutions from different vendors.

• The organization rolls out the D365 Contact Center and Teams Phone integration capabilities to individual contact centers during the three-year investment period.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $328,000 (low) to $602,000 (high).

Integration Service Fee Reduction

Evidence and data. Interviewees from organizations that utilized different vendors for CCaaS and telephony said their company was required to pay monthly service fees to integrate the disparate solutions and that those fees were eliminated after streamlining CCaaS and telephony to Microsoft solutions.

• The product manager at a manufacturing organization explained that in their company’s prior environment, with different telephony and CCaaS vendors in place, it paid a service fee of $2,500 per month to its telecom provider for the session initiation protocol (SIP) trunks. They indicated that by consolidating those solutions to Microsoft products and by effectively making Microsoft the telecom provider, it eliminated the monthly fee and replaced it with Teams licensing fees, which were less expensive.

• A platform developer at a travel organization said their company currently spends $2,000 per month on integration service fees but that they anticipate cost savings with a unified contact center and telephony solution: “I think we will see big savings on the [network provider] fees because that’s one of the more expensive parts of the setup for us. We will no longer have to pay the [network provider] to host and manage our telephony for us anymore because that will be part of the Teams license costs.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization previously used different solution vendors for telephony and CCaaS, and this required paying monthly fees for integration services.

• The composite rolls out the integration capabilities to individual contact centers during the three-year investment period to realize additional cost savings.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $79,000 (low) to $157,000 (high).

Reduction In Resource Time Spent On Infrastructure Management

Evidence and data. In addition to vendor and service fee reductions, interviewees also said they expect their organizations’ infrastructure management teams to realize resource time savings by streamlining the back-end infrastructure that powers their contact centers.

• Survey respondents said their organizations spend an average of 68 hours per month on infrastructure management in their current CCaaS and telephony environments.

• Survey respondents said that by consolidating CCaaS and telephony providers to a single vendor, their organizations have reduced or expect to reduce the time spent on infrastructure management. They indicated an average reduction of 24% in time spent on infrastructure management by streamlining the back-end architecture.

• An IT manager at a real estate organization said that with the Microsoft integration capabilities, their company simplified its contact center and telephony environments and dedicates less time to managing that environment.

• The director of business technology and services at a manufacturing organization estimated that their company’s one infrastructure management FTE saved 10% of their time by no longer having to manually set up routing between the organization’s telephony provider and Teams environment. This organization had only rolled out the integration capabilities to a single, small contact center, so the director said they expect these time savings to scale as the company scales implementation of the native integration.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The infrastructure management team consists of six FTEs who spend 20% of their time on infrastructure management for telephony and CCaaS solutions.

• The time savings the composite experiences for infrastructure management scales for the low-, mid-, and high-range scenarios in direct correlation to the level of complexity of the prior state environment.

• The composite redistributes 50% of the time saved for infrastructure management resources to value-added work.

• Time savings for the composite’s infrastructure management team scales during the three-year investment period as the integration capabilities are extended to more contact centers, further simplifying the overall environment.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $26,000 (low) to $43,000 (high).

Administrator Time Savings From Streamlined Solution Management

Evidence and data. Interviewees said before the integration of D365 Contact Center and Teams Phone, administrators in their organizations’ contact centers spent additional time training representatives and managing system operations across the different tools and solutions in place. After the integration, administrators saw efficiencies from streamlining solutions in the contact center because it eliminated the need for additional training sessions and provided better manager or supervisor views across contact center operations. Interviewees from organizations that were existing D365 customers prior to the integration said their companies saw additional administrator time savings by extending a familiar interface to contact center resources, reducing onboarding timelines and accelerating time to value.

• A platform developer from a travel organization indicated their company was an existing D365 customer that extended the solution to its contact center as part of a larger digital transformation project. They said: “[With the D365 Contact Center and Teams Phone integration,] everything is in one place. The reps were already used to using Dynamics, so it was a very smooth transition. It didn’t take us long [to see value]. We didn’t have long training sessions, and we didn’t need to educate the supervisors on how they were going to do administrative tasks in Dynamics.”

• An IT manager in the manufacturing industry said that their organization was using multiple telephony providers in its contact centers prior to the integration of D365 Contact Center and Teams Phone. As such, it previously managed training sessions across the three different telephony providers for reps. Since the investment, the organization streamlined its telephony providers to Teams Phone and reduced time spent managing user training. The interviewee said, “We can now offer fewer trainings for users just on Teams, not the other three phone providers.”

• An external consultant at a nonprofit organization indicated that by bringing CCaaS and telephony solutions together under a single vendor, the nonprofit enabled better manager or supervisor views across contact center operations. They said, “[Since the integration of D365 Contact Center and Teams Phone,] our contact center managers have a better view of call data, such as calls that were routed to different reps in real time, as well as historical data.”

• Survey respondents estimated their organizations spend an average of 56 hours per month on system administration in their current environments. They also said their organizations realized or expect to realize a 29% reduction in time spent on system administration from streamlining CCaaS and telephony providers.

• Survey respondents said their organizations reduced or expect to reduce the time spent on IT support by 23% by consolidating CCaaS and telephony solutions to a single vendor.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• A team of four system administrator FTEs spends 25% of its time on system administration for telephony and CCaaS solutions. 

• The time savings the composite experiences for system administration scales over the low-, mid-, and high-range scenarios in direct correlation to the functionality enabled by the organization within its contact centers as well as the relationship with D365 that existed prior to the integration.

• Fifty percent of the time saved for administrator resources is redistributed to value-added work.

• Time savings for administrators scales during the three-year investment period as the composite extends integration capabilities to more contact center operations and individual administrators.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $38,000 (low) to $55,000 (high).

IT Support Productivity From Improved Telephony Performance

Evidence and data. Interviewees said that in their organizations’ prior environments, they experienced high volumes of incidents or connectivity issues that negatively impacted telephony quality in the contact center. Additionally, when there was an incident or issue that required problem-solving or mitigative action, the time to resolve was prolonged due to the sheer number of vendors and solutions involved in the contact center’s calling architecture. Interviewees explained that by streamlining contact center and telephony solutions with Microsoft, their organizations improved telephony performance by shortening the chain of vendors involved, which allowed them to get to resolutions sooner. 

• Forty-nine percent of survey respondents indicated their organization’s current contact center and telephony environments have persistent telephony quality problems or connectivity issues.

• Additionally, survey respondents estimated that IT teams currently spend an average of 48 hours per month (1.5 hours per rep per year) on support for telephony solutions.

• Survey respondents said their organizations have experienced or expect to experience a 23% reduction in time spent on IT support by consolidating CCaaS and telephony solutions to a single vendor.

• The platform developer at a travel organization expounded on the challenges related to issue mitigation in their company’s contact center before integrating D365 Contact Center and Teams Phone as it related to customer satisfaction: “Every time there was an outage or even a minor incident, we did not know where the issue originated. We would have to reach out to our CCaaS provider, our network provider, and our telephony provider. It took our four IT service desk resources 20 minutes to log tickets across all the involved vendors each time.”

• An IT manager at a manufacturing organization said that since their company integrated D365 Contact Center and Teams Phone, it has experienced far fewer performance issues in its contact center, resulting in fewer support tickets logged. They said: “For the telephone system, we had something in place to count how many tickets were raised with our external service provider. Today, we do not have the volume of tickets that we had in the past because we do not have the amount of performance incidents that we had in the past either.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite has 1,100 total reps across three contact centers.  

• The composite’s IT support resources are responsible for logging tickets related to incidents or downtime events in the contact center due to telephony issues.

• The time savings experienced by the composite organization on IT support scales over the low-, mid-, and high-range scenarios in direct correlation to the level of performance experienced with prior telephony solutions as well as the volume of telephony solutions replaced by Teams Phone during the implementation project. 

• Time savings for IT support resources scales during the three-year investment period as the integration capabilities are extended to more contact centers.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $19,000 (low) to $27,000 (high).

Reduced Downtime For Reps

Evidence and data. Citing poor telephony quality experienced in the before state, interviewees indicated some incidents inevitably impacted reps and resulted in downtime. But they said after the investment in D65 Contact Center with Teams Phone, their companies improved telephony performance in their contact centers and reduced downtime for reps.

• A platform developer at a travel organization explained that their company’s contact center used to have major outages four times per year. During those incidents, it could take up to two weeks for the prior operator provider to respond to an issue.

• The IT manager at a real estate company indicated their organization previously had 72 hours of downtime in a single month. During that time, customers were blocked from dialing emergency services. The interviewee said: “As a housing company, our reps need to be reachable. It won’t affect revenue, but it will help us avoid fines, customers complaints, and a bad reputation in the market.”

• The IT manager at a real estate company tied better telephony uptime in their company’s contact center to reduced rep churn. They said: “Our current churn rate is quite high. If the systems are more reliable, then stress levels should come down and reduce churn rate. I would estimate a 5% to 10% reduction in churn rating.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Of the incidents the composite experienced in the contact center in its previous environment, 20% caused downtime for reps. During downtime for an incident,  IT support resources spend 50% of their time logging tickets and initiating investigations.

• The scale of value across low-, mid-, and high-range scenarios reflects improved performance from using Microsoft for both CCaaS and telephony.

• The scale of value over the three-year investment period reflects the additional contact centers that go live with the integration each year.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $843,000 (low) to $2 million (high).

Accelerated Time To Value In Contact Centers

Evidence and data. Interviewees said integrating D365 Contact Center and Teams Phone made reps more efficient, which generated value in contact centers through metrics such as decreased wait times, abandonment rates, or handling times. They also explained that using Microsoft for both CCaaS and telephony accelerated time to value from shorter or fewer ongoing integration projects and the familiarity with Microsoft tools and the Microsoft ecosystem for the technology resources responsible for implementation.

• Seventy-five percent of survey respondents indicated that improvements to key performance metrics in contact centers were or are most important when considering a combined contact center and telephony environment. 

• Survey respondents estimated that streamlining telephony and CCaaS solutions to a single vendor improved or would improve handling times by an average of 13%. A prior TEI study looking at the value of Microsoft D365 Contact Center stated the impact of reduced handling times is up to 40%.⁷

• The product manager at a manufacturing organization attributed improvements to key performance metrics within their company’s contact center to the Microsoft D365 Contact Center and Teams Phone integration: “We’ve seen the wait time decrease by 27% and abandonment rates decrease by 14% when we measured it for voice channels. I think it’s even more in chat. Now, we have one place where we are routing and assigning all the incoming interactions to reps and have them in one place where the rep can pick it up and handle it. Reps don’t need to multitask in different applications, and we don’t need to route calls in different ways to determine where a voice call should go based on rep capacity, knowledge, etc.”  

• The same interviewee estimated that prior integration projects between telephony and CCaaS solutions took about nine months of combined effort from various internal teams.

• The IT manager at a real estate organization said that if their company moved all reps to Teams Phone, it would avoid the cost of a third-party contractor in addition to the accelerated project timeline. They said, “If we move fully to Teams Phone, it will only take days, and we will not need contractors to make the move.”

• The platform developer at a travel organization credited the accelerated project timeline to the simplified setup of the integration and the availability of more out-of-the-box functionality. They stated, “There are cost savings associated with the simplified setup of Teams telephony.”

• The IT manager at a manufacturing organization said there’s value in enabling an integration between two solutions from the same vendor: “It is much easier to integrate one Microsoft system into another Microsoft system. Microsoft supports the integration, which makes it easier to roll out telephone features into the CCaaS. And, of course, we only do have one big partner at the background with Microsoft.”

• An external consultant at a nonprofit organization said they expect future cost savings from avoiding ongoing integration projects to extend more functionality to the contact center through third-party or point solutions. As such, they said reps benefitted from more productivity tools and better solutions to manage their work without waiting for available capacity and funds to conduct the integration projects associated with enabling third-party solutions.

• A director of business technology and services at a manufacturing organization said out-of-the-box functionality available through the Teams Phone integration enabled their organization to avoid custom integration projects to deliver functionality to contact center reps. They said those projects typically required multiple developers and could take up to three months to complete.

• The same interviewee said they believe rep productivity would improve from streamlining and consolidating the tools available to handle customer inquiries: “The real problem with having multiple different tools from different vendors available to our reps is the possibility of them navigating away from the website or browser and missing inbound calls.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite measures additional value in contact centers as a reduction in handle times from simplifying tools available to reps, thus minimizing context switching and screen toggling. Integrating CCaaS and telephony solutions arms the composite’s reps with more data and smarter tools to resolve customer calling inquiries sooner.

• The composite sees value in the simplified integration project to set up the integration capabilities. Additionally, the functionality available through the native integration allows the organization to avoid future integration projects to enable more functionality through third-party tools.

• With the integrated solutions, the composite’s contact center reduces handle times by six weeks.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $251,000 (low) to $649,000 (high).

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• Additional technology cost savings. Interviewees said there are additional opportunities for technology cost savings depending on the prior environment, the architecture in place, and existing relationships with Microsoft.  

  • Microsoft license optimization. Interviewees from organizations with Microsoft 365 E5 licenses in place prior to the integration said their companies saw additional savings on PUPM costs for Teams Phone licenses. They explained that the remaining license cost covers the standalone add-on cost for the Teams Domestic Calling Plan. Table XX below estimates the cost of the extension for the composite, which was an existing D365 E5 user.
  • Cost savings related to prior on-premises telephony solutions. Interviewees from organizations that moved from an on-prem telephony solution to Teams Phone said their companies realized additional hardware and datacenter cost savings. Some used the integration project as an opportunity to pursue larger digital transformation initiatives across contact center platforms. An external consultant at a nonprofit organization said: “We have old platforms in place, and one goal of this project is to eliminate those platforms. We have some systems that were implemented in 1999, and it is time to get rid of them.” 
  • Reduced telephony consumption costs. Unused phone numbers were eliminated, reducing consumption costs. A product manager at a manufacturing organization said they expect their organization would reduce consumption costs by reducing overall calls handled to the tune of “some thousands of seconds per month,” which would translate into hundreds of dollars of savings per month. The IT manager at a different manufacturing organization saw having a fresh license agreement with Microsoft for Teams Phone as an opportunity to eliminate old phone numbers and realize consumption costs in that way. An IT manager at a real estate organization estimated that through the Teams Phone integration, their company might see $80,000 to $100,000 of telephony consumption cost savings.

• Better contact center reporting and insights. Interviewees said using a unified solution enables easier monitoring and reporting across contact center operations and provides a more detailed view of technology performance. These insights can be used to further improve how technology supports the contact center and business processes, which can contribute to higher customer satisfaction.

• Faster onboarding of new contact center reps. Interviewees explained that new hires in the contact center can onboard more quickly because there is less training required on a unified Microsoft stack. Additionally, they said because reps and administrators are often familiar with different aspects of the Microsoft integration (e.g., the D365 interface, the Teams ecosystem), which increases their comfort with the tools sooner. An IT manager at a real estate organization stated that with the D365 Contact Center and Teams Phone integration, their company’s contact center operations eliminated 3 to 4 hours of voice-related training for new reps.

• Increased customer satisfaction. Interviewees said that by streamlining D365 Contact Center and telephony providers to a single vendor, their organizations have faster response times during incidents or downtime events, resulting in better performance and availability of voice channels in the contact center. They explained that having better contact center performance in terms of availability and voice quality can increase customer satisfaction and lead to better customer retention and lifetime value. The IT manager at a real estate organization said, “When we have better uptime in our contact center, customers are more confident that they can reach us, and therefore, have higher satisfaction with us.” The same interviewee said they see rep productivity as a means to further invest in contact center resources by adding to the volume of reps, thereby further increasing availability for customers.

• Ability to meet security and compliance standards. Interviewees said D365 Contact Center and Teams Phone both incorporate Microsoft’s security and compliance solutions, making it easier to implement and manage and to demonstrate compliance to internal audit and regulators. An IT manager at a real estate organization said, “[My company’s Teams Phone] environment is quite secure with SSO (single sign-on) and MFA (multi-factor authentication).”  

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement D365 Contact Center and Teams Phone integration and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Meeting growth goals both within the contact center as well as at the organizational level. Eighty-four percent of survey respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that combining their organization’s telephony and contact center solutions has reduced or would reduce ongoing IT administration associated with implementing new phone systems in existing or new regions or territories. Minimizing or eliminating the barrier to providing best-in-class technology and tools to reps in contact centers can enable an organization to scale the investment globally and see additional value.
  Interviewees highlighted the importance of enabling AI in contact centers. An IT manager at a real estate organization said: “The D365 Contact Center and Teams Phone integration will help us meet growth goals by having a more stable and productive contact center. We need automated systems, clever IVR (interactive voice response), and AI to meet those objectives.” Forrester research predicts CCaaS vendors will need to change or perish: “As the shift to AI-led customer service unfolds over time, [agent] seat counts will decrease and vendors that rely on a seat-based commercial model will have to adapt.⁸ The focus will shift from managing human rep capacity to ensuring robust telephony infrastructure and maximizing AI scalability. Hyperscalers hold a distinct advantage here and could erode market share from traditional contact center vendors if they do not keep up with market demands.”
  Specifically, technology leaders should be aware of current barriers in contact centers around capturing tacit knowledge to continuously improve AI and make it more valuable in the context of the contact center. These barriers include flawed customer service data, uneven distribution of automated tasks, and poor-quality transcripts that miss crucial context to inform decision-making. Unifying CCaaS and telephony improves reporting and business insights across contact center operations to enhance customer service data and better track the distribution of tasks. Forrester research also states that genAI improves call summary and analytics that will supplement or improve transcriptions.⁹

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).