Krome Cast: TECH-IT-OUT - Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams

In this episode of Krome Cast: Tech-IT-Out, we discuss how to use and set up Microsoft Teams for calling, and how Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams is the best option for business calling in Teams.

We review the features and benefits of using Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams for calling, instead of using the standard Microsoft Calling Plan. 
 
This podcast features Krome’s Commercial Director, Sam Mager, along with Krome's Pre-Sales Telecommunications Consultant, Jonathan Ledner, sharing their insights into the best options when using Microsoft Teams as a phone system.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS
Sam Mager, Commercial Director, Krome Technologies
Jonathan Ledner, Pre-Sales Telephony Consultant, Krome Technologies

Sam Mager  00:00
Welcome to Krome Cast, Tech-It-Out. I'm Sam Mager, Commercial Director for Krome Technologies.  On this week's edition, we talk to Jon Ledner, Pre-Sales Consultant, about the features and benefits of using a direct routing model for calling on Microsoft Teams. Jon, welcome to the podcast. 

Jonathan Ledner  00:09
Thanks for having me Sam. 

 Sam Mager  00:17
Well, this is obviously a very relevant topic right now, given the effects of the pandemic and having pushed many organisations, including our own, to adopt, this fully remote or hybrid working model, the adoption of such tools as Teams, it's surged over the past 12 to 18 months. Recently I was reading an article, and it quoted, Microsoft as saying they have grown  from 20 million active users from pre pandemic  to 115 million active users. And that was as of October last year, that's what is that, 600, nearly the best part 600% increase.  Now that would have grown since then, that's last October.  So we're probably past 600% growth by now.  

 And you know, many businesses, we know they've adopted teams, initially to utilise the video conferencing element and collaboration capabilities, of that tool or other tools like it.  And now we're seeing many businesses and again, including our own, that are now utilising teams, for inbound and outbound calling as well.  I guess, first question for our audience, if you could explain what the options are for using Microsoft Teams for business calls?   

Jonathan Ledner  00:43
Okay, so yeah, first of all, Sam, you're very right, we see this massive increase in the last 12 to 18 months of organisations, taking Teams, but what you're seeing is you're seeing organisations, using Teams, as you say, for conferencing, meetings, internal communications in whatever shape or form. But the telephony side of it, they're still using the traditional systems. And so you're seeing all sorts of setups where people are having people still in offices, diverting calls to mobiles, paying recurring fees for phone systems. And, and but at the same time, they're using Teams. 

So what Microsoft has now done is they've incorporated telephony functions into Teams that allows you to quite literally make and receive phone calls through the Team's platform, just like you would with a traditional phone on the desk. But what's interesting, though, Sam, is, as I was saying, we've seen these organisations that have adopted Teams for one part of the business, but not for the telephony part of the business, because there's a lack of information out there, and they're unable to make an informed decision as to how best to progress with it. So they're not progressing at all.

Sam Mager  03:09
Okay. So I guess how, how do we help them unblock that people that aren't progressing? Clearly, there's some benefits here, of utilising something you're already investing in. You're mentioning there's, there's people using different platforms, right. So people have what we know, traditional kind of PBX telephony, versus Teams. And so they're not making any progress at all. How do we how do we break that? How do we help people move forward and adopt Teams more fully? I guess, two-part question, I do this to everyone just to confuse them. What are the pitfalls of that?

Jonathan Ledner  03:45
Okay, so I think the first thing is education of organisations to say, look, you've got Teams, and this is what it can potentially do, and sitting down and having conversations with them. Some organisations are doing a bit of research into it for themselves, and they're going off down the, because it's really this there's two roads you can go, when you're looking at Teams and telephony. 

You can either go down, which is usually the worst idea, the road of least resistance, Or you can do the road where you’ve got to do a bit of research, a bit of homework. So what you could do, for example, is if you're already a Team's user, you could just log on to your your Microsoft account, and you could just click the button that says, Microsoft route my calls for me. 

Now, this is not necessarily the best way to go, because as I'm sure we'll discuss, it's not the best financial move, and also, it only gives you real, real basic functionality. So what a lot of other companies, a lot of organisations are starting to do now, is they're starting to use the telephony function of Teams that are front end telephony, but in the back end, what they're doing is that they're programming it to route the calls through a preferred network, and this is what is known in the industry as Direct Routing. 

So by using that Direct Routing function, what you're doing is, you're still keeping that front end Teams, that that front end that everyone is familiar with, but when you make a phone call, that phone call, is then routed through your preferred supplier, and not only is it routed through a preferred supplier, but you've also got a lot of increased functionality about how those calls are routed, who they're routed with, and also you've got increased functionality, when those calls are coming in. There's a lot more you can you can control through that side of it as well.

Sam Mager  05:50
Okay, so we just talked about the functionality there, is that things you know, like, simple things, like DDi's, for instance?

Jonathan Ledner  05:58
Yeah, so what we're seeing is, when it comes down to the Direct Routing option, where you're, you're not giving those calls to Microsoft, you're actually routing them through your own preferred supplier. 

What we're finding with that is, that's definitely the thing that's being adopted by the medium to larger organisations, the sorts of organisations that need the control, they need the flexibility, but at the same time, they need to be routing through certified Microsoft partners. So that's the freedom that Direct Routing gives them, and by doing that, they, they can remove that concern about the the Microsoft pre plans, and it gives them as I say, give them a lot more control over what they're doing. 

So that's preferred as I say, with the larger organisations, they may have a large headcount, a lot of employees, they might have a lot of remote workers, or they might be businesses that are making a lot of outbound phone calls, or need additional functionality, like you would see in a more traditional type phone system.

Sam Mager  07:07
Understood, understood. So I guess, you know, when you're setting up Teams, you look at you know, you could take the Microsoft plan, and like you said, that's the path to least resistance as it were, but there seems to be some pitfalls there. So again, we talked about some podcasts a lot, you know, proper planning and execution to make sure you get a better result that you could go, I guess, the path least resistance, does it save money? I guess people looking at a Microsoft calling plan that is easier to set up, but versus a Direct Routing model, is there a cost benefit? Is that why people lean that way? Or is it simply because it's simpler? And actually this direct routing model, I guess, is it commercially better as well?

Jonathan Ledner  07:41
You know what Sam, this is really one of the most important things that whenever you're considering this move, this is one of the key conversations you want to sit down and talk about. So we, obviously I, talk to a lot of clients about this, and they say to me, Jon, what can I expect to happen? So what, so what, for example, if you were to go down the Microsoft route, and say to Microsoft, please route my calls. So what they'll say is right, okay, that's fine. It's, and it's done in a very much, per user per month, licence. So what we'll give you..

Sam Mager  08:17
Like their standard licencing platforms and so on, that kind of dovetails into all of that.

Jonathan Ledner  08:22
Exactly that. It's per user per month, and what they'll say is, right, what we'll do is we'll give you the ability to make phone calls, and we'll give you 1200 minutes, a month. So this is all very familiar to us. You know, we all we've all got mobile phone contracts or house phone contracts and it sounds very easy to consume. So yeah, that will do us. But you need to take that apart, and you need to say, right, well, how does that fit my business? 

We have to let's, Okay, so let's look at 1200 minutes, 22 months, 22 days, the average month, working? Yes, it works out about 50 minutes, how much time, so you're, let's say for example, you're a contact center and you're making outbound phone calls, and you're employing loads and loads of people to make loads and loads of outbound phone calls. Well, you know how much how pleased with the sales director be if the average person was spending about 50 minutes on the phone a day, wouldn't be to happy would you? [Laughter] 

So we need to think of things like that. So what we did is we did a really an interesting thing where we put some figures into a spreadsheet and we created a call center and said, right okay, here's a contact center, 200 members of staff let's put them on the Microsoft plan and let's get them making outbound calls and let's get them get making calls just slightly over the allowed amount every single day, and let's have a look and see what that looks like.

Sam Mager  09:45
I bet that's quite interesting, go on.

Jonathan Ledner  09:47
Well, the interesting thing what we did was we did about a minute or so. The phone bill for that make believe call center was about four grand. What was interesting Sam, is what we then did, we said right okay, well lets up their productivity by 10 minutes a day, you know, not a great deal.

Sam Mager  10:07
Again, if you've got a Sales Director, and he's got an outbound call center, only achieving an hour's activity a day, I guess he's still gonna be pretty unamused, but let's go with that.

Jonathan Ledner  10:17
But what we did, we turned, we turned the dial up, and we said instead of it being, you know, 50 minutes, we made it an hour, and the phone bill went from, and this is routing through Microsoft, the phone bill went from roughly four grand, per month, to nine and a half grand a month.

Sam Mager  10:35
Okay, see where that goes. You've done a bit of work in this space, I know you have, but you know, the average contact center, you know they're all behind dialers and whatever else, its, the guys are on the phone all day. So that can easily be, you know, 18, 36 into 60,000 pounds a month?

Jonathan Ledner  10:52

Yep. But what's also really, really interesting Sam, is is the way the Microsoft policies set out the way the plan is set out. So what they do is they say, okay, as as just backup a second, I'll say this 1200 minutes thing?  But what they then say is, right, okay, so you and I, when we make a phone call with our mobile, and we go over the amount of minutes, what actually happens for you and I is we get our phone bill comes through at the end of the month, and there's your normal amount plus another 50 pence or whatever it is, for the additional phone calls you made. Well, what Microsoft's done is they've they use and this is a very important thing, the using something called a Communications Credit. So what you do is, you buy your 1200 minutes for all of your people, but then you buy it for want of a better term, a bit like a bond, where you've got this amount of money sat in a pot with Microsoft, and what you're basically saying is Microsoft, if I go over my minutes, start taking money out of that pot. 

Sam Mager  11:11
Okay, right. 

Jonathan Ledner  11:57
I can see you thinking, and what you're thinking is bill shock! Because when your Sales Director says, let's do a campaign, let's do this, let's do that and at the end of the month, you suddenly discover that your pot is almost empty, or even worse, you empty the pot halfway through the month. Many can't make any outbound phone calls. And someone's trying to get a hold of the FD to top, to fill the pot back up. The thought of half pay monthly, half pay as you go, kind of set up, it's very, it's very confusing and it's stuff like this, that's confusing business leaders as to what to do with Routing through Teams.  So the Direct Routing function, the way that Direct Routing is billed is traditional. You pay this much to rent the service and if you go over, you just get a bit more of a bill at the end of the month and that's the way it should be done. 

Sam Mager 
Okay, so if someone has ignored all of this advice, and they've gone, they've signed up directly to Microsoft calling plan, and then they've watched this and they've you know, thank you, Jon, amazing, going to save lots of money, brilliant, and then we need to move them to a Direct Routing model, I guess, I guess, how do we do that?  

Jonathan Ledner 
Yeah, it's so simple to do. So okay. If for example, you are, let's say, Joe Smith and Co, they've signed to Microsoft, and they are looking at it and they think, right, okay, we've probably not made the right move here, let's start with the whole Direct Routing thing. It's half the works done. they've, they've got Teams, they've got the, because the phone system is a bolt on within Teams. So you've got Teams, you've got the phone system bolt on, and everyone's familiar with using it. 

As far as moving to Direct Routing is concerned, it's really, really simple. So for a smaller organisation, you would quite literally speak to your provider. And you'd say, I want to look at Direct Routing and without getting too technical about it, Sam, it's it's pretty simple stuff. 

You order the service, you order the licence, and then you basically push that config into Teams via PowerShell. Yep, and, and so that's now got your outbound and then what you do is the, what we call the losing provider, the company that you're taking the telephony service from, you just transfer the phone numbers from those guys, onto your platform, and that so that that's how you would move somebody from an existing Teams set up, but obviously, if you are completely new to it, and you'll say, I want to, I want to go from the ground up and I want to start from scratch. 

Yes. So you're going to need a Microsoft Office 365 Licence that includes Teams, and you're going to need as I say, you need that bolt on that phone system bolt on, obviously, you'll need an internet connection, obviously. 

Sam Mager  15:09
I bet most people have one of those. [Laughter]

Jonathan Ledner   15:13
Be a bit like having a car without a steering wheel, wouldn't it. [Laughter]

So that gives you the foundations of setting it up. Okay, and then what you can do is you can then look at what direction to go in once you've got Teams set up and Teams has got the ability to make a phone call, and there are two ways of doing this. If you are a simple business that has a simple requirement, pick the phone up, make a phone call and stuff like that, then we would set it up as a simple Direct Routing, where we would licence each individual user to just make and receive outbound calls. However, if you're a larger organisation, that has multiple offices, or multiple user types, and what I mean by multiple user types, you might have 80% of your staff might be sat in an office using PCs and Teams and stuff like that, but you then might have a mobile workforce, you might have a factory workforce, with analogue phones bolted to the walls and stuff like that, you might have multiple offices that all want to dial through one system. So if we were to go down that road, that would be a bit more complicated, and would involve additional hardware and software, we'd look at a device called a Session Border Controller. Okay, and the best, the best way to describe that is it's like a gateway, and all of the users and all of the equipment, all goes through this gateway, the Session Border Controller, and the Session Border Controller, then connects out to that traditional phone network, but what it's doing is it's acting as a go between, the middleman to route all that stuff out, onto the, to the public network. 

So that is how you would do the simple setup of it. But what was really important Sam, I can't stress this one enough, is plan your solution, take the correct advice, because what you don't want to be doing is you don't want to be going down that thinking "Oh, yeah, we just tend to we just make and receive phone calls", and you go down the rabbit hole, a rabbit hole and then you realise "Oh, hang on a second, we've got this requirement, we've got that requirement, that requirement, and then you are having to back up and start again. So it's very important in the early stages, to take the correct advice and say, do I go off on this direction, where I just do a basic..

Sam Mager  16:00
I think, this is where, and I'm telling you like you don't actually work for Krome, but obviously you do, so you know all this, but this is why we do RDW's right as well, we take the time to serve the customer, and do the where are you now? Where do you want to be? Understanding all pitfalls in between and actually do that project plan before we move forwards, because if we define what success looks like, before we move, we should take the right steps to get there. Like you say, we've seen many projects historically, where people have kind of wanted to do something, have run out at it, and have gone past a stage gate without thinking about it and let it go on pick that, unfortunately, the way to do that is to kind of go back and start again. You've lost that time, you've lost that money. And you know further forward, you'll just have more problems.

Jonathan Ledner  17:47
And you'll never get it back.

Sam Mager  18:21
No, absolutely. Doing that RDW, you're defining what the success criteria and outputs need to be, that'll ultimately shape the size and shape of the project that we have to undertake to get someone there. So I'm with you, everything we do at Krome is that kind of factual, sort it out at beginning type thing, do it once, what is it, measure twice, cut once type thing. That doesn't apply to my DIY, it very much does apply to this. 

I'm with you, it's all about that proper planning. Okay, so just, thinking out loud actually on a couple of points you said, how do we manage, this has literally come to my head talking about it, but you've mentioned mobiles, now I can see how mobile connected to internet connection, we could use Teams to call on. How do you manage that with your providers? So, you still need telephony, a kind of mobile plan provider for mobile phones and so on, and then how do you, your Session Border Controller, is that taking care of the kind of analogue phones you still have? How do we manage those different requirements there?

Jonathan Ledner  19:22
So, the Session Border Controller is is for a telephony geek like me is really interesting bit of kit, I'll try not to be too nerdy and geeky about it, but it's a fantastic gadget where what you can do is you can get old world, and new world and bring them together. 

So and what you'll also find is when it comes down to the per user, per licence per user per month model, as you start scaling up and up and up, it no longer becomes financially viable. What I mean is it let's say hypothetically, you've got 10 users and it's 10 pounds a month. So fine, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's 100 quid  I had to stop and think about it, did you see that. But then when you start scaling that up to 1000 people, you then step back and retort and say crikey, what am I spending! 

So what the Session Border Controller allows you to do first of all, is get a large population of staff and route them through one device and how it actually works, instead of having an individual phone licence as it were, for each user, what you do is all those users go into the Session Border Controller, and that Session Border Controller, then connects to the telephone network using SIP Trunks. So SIP Trunks are basically internet phone lines, the best way to describe it's just like a normal phone line, but it routes over the internet, and they're measured with the amount of phone lines, and you can have direct DDi's on them, and all that sort of stuff. 

So what you might have is you might have a model where you've got 1000 staff, the 1000 staff need to be able to make a phone call. But those 1000 staff don't actually make that many phone calls. Yeah, so what you don't want, is you don't want 1000 licences, that only 10 of them get used a day, what you want, is you want 1000 users connecting to a Session Border Controller, and that Session Border Controller, then has 20 SIP Trunks connected to it.

Sam Mager  21:31
So this is a bit like, just to put it into my terms, and kind of more my background, but you're looking at concurrent user licencing. So, we have this many people, but we know on any given time, 20% of our of our client base would actually be proactively be making an outbound call. In my world, that's 20 people be accessing the system, but I have 200 people that could, but the chance of all 200 people accessing it is never gonna happen because of shift work, and so on and so forth, right? So I'm assuming in this case, that's what the SIP Trunk is allowing you to do. You're taking, we could potentially have 1000 people, let's say, but we know, because the shift work and waiting work and whatnot, they never will be doing at the same time. So, we can take a bet that, you know, I'm assuming we have tools, we can measure this as well, Jon, you know that only this amount of people ever kind of jump on at the same time, building some headroom, and then monitor to make sure we're inside the headroom?

Jonathan Ledner  22:23
Exactly that, and what you can also do with that Sam, is you can flex. So say for example, you're a seasonal business, you can just say, right, okay, well, for for 11 months of the year, we only need this amount, but for one month, we need to flex up and we can just you can just get up, you can just flex it and bring it up and bring it down. So that's one of the fantastic things about the Session Border Controller. But what, I'll give you another example, where you have, say, for example, a university or a large school or something like that, and what you'll find with an organisation like that is they've got, as I was saying earlier, you've got that 80% workforce modern, 20% workforce analogue. Well, what the Session Border Controller allows you to do is, let's say, hypothetically, it's a school, and you've got all of the office area, but then you've got, you've got like a catering team, you've got a maintenance team, and then you've got some classrooms that need analogue phones, or whatever. So, what this what the Session Border Controller will allow you to do is get the whole Teams environment and connect that, but get those literally old telephone extensions, that old 20-year-old telephone extension in the kitchen, you can put it on Teams, and somebody in the office can ring extension 1234 and speak to the kitchen through an analogue phone that's been bolted to the wall before Teams was invented.

Sam Mager  23:48
I'll be honest with you Jon, and you know, and I'm around this all the time, it's clearly not my area of specialty, but that's actually news to me, and I've worked for a company, and we do this daily. Obviously, I'm not on telecom on a daily basis., but that's news to me. So I wouldn't be surprised if this is news to some of our customers

Jonathan Ledner  24:07
Exactly

Sam Mager  24:09
that they can do that because I didnt, rightly or wrongly, obviously wrongly, have assumed, as you put there, that Teams is kind of the new side of it. 

Jonathan Ledner  24:15
Yeah.

Sam Mager  24:16
And I wouldn't, I would not have made the assumption that I could bring into my estate part of my old phone system and the older handsets and whatnot, and yeah, be able to  call to them, have some level of functionality there, so people can understand that we can do that, that you can mix environments and you know, piecemeal approach almost to evolving your systems, and that will open people's eyes, you're absolutely right, and that's going to be out of all the stuff, we've talked about, cost savings, clearly everyone is interested in cost savings, but that functionality element and not having to rip and replace everything at once I think that's really going to resonate, it's an interesting point. 

Jonathan Ledner  24:51
It's a brilliant point.  

Sam Mager  24:52
Absolutely. So like any, I guess, I know what times like and you and I can talk, so we'll go on forever, but anything else you can impart on our audience just around obviously, in Direct Routing over Microsoft, clearly sounds like it's a no brainer, straightforward to set up. Any other benefits that can be delivered with Direct Routing, that we should kind of air now that our audience would, would find of value.

Jonathan Ledner  25:17

Definitely, there are a whole host of different functions and benefits with regards to yeah, Direct Routing, and also other little bits and bobs that you can do through whether it's Direct Routing, or with Teams that people aren't necessarily aware of. 

So but for Direct Routing, one of the big things is always what happens to our old phone numbers. So it's really, really simple, it's obviously really important that somebody know that knows what they're doing, ports those phone numbers for you. Because a lot of organisations out there, they've had that phone number for 20 years, everyone's got it saved, everyone knows, you don't want to lose your phone numbers. 

So with Direct Routing function, yeah, it's really, really simple, you can very easily not only port all the main numbers away, you can port all of your DDI's into Direct Routing, and you can also port point all of those DDI's to individual users, and you can do all types of crazy things where you could say, if someone calls me from a Manchester phone number, route them to our Manchester office, if someone calls us from a London phone number route them to our London office, if they call me at 5pm do this, if they call me at 5am do that, and you can, so you can keep all of those numbers and route them in all different ways, shapes and forms. 

But not only that, you've also got the managerial, the managerial and the reporting side of things, you can start looking at the way that you're handling calls, your productivity, and your call patterns and behaviours. What time do we get our most calls? So we can, you can put more staff in or reduce staff, depending on what time calls are coming in. And what are our people actually doing? How long does it take them to answer the phone? How long are people hanging on for? How long are they on hold for? What was the outcome of the call? And the old chestnut, the average handling time, how quickly do sales, you know, pick up the phone? How quickly do the faults department fix something? So you've got all that side of it as well. 

There's also the great advantage of it can be just a software-based solution, headset on. There's no there's no need for disruption and cost of hardware, that's a very, you know, attractive point regarding it.  DR, Disaster Recovery, you know, when something goes wrong, you and I we can just get our laptops and go and sit in a coffee shop and start answering the phone.

Sam Mager  27:51

What did we all do last March Jon, we will picked up our laptops, went home, we've worked absolutely fine in that time. 

Jonathan Ledner  27:58
But what would happen if we had if we had a physical phone and the IT department said, "Oh, take this physical phone home “Where's your study? Where's your desk? Where's your Router?” I'll be having a CAT5 cable running up the staircase.  And the other thing with Direct Routing, this is a really important one, I'm very passionate about; is you're getting support. What happens - it's your phones, if a laptop dies, you know what a laptop dies, we'll be alright, but if the phones go off, then you've switched off from the outside world, and you need to be able to go to your supplier and say, guys, I've got a fault, help, and, and having that peace of mind of that, UK based, 24/7 support where they can help you if something happens. You know, it's not you know, and I know Sam, it's not, you know, if it happens, it's, it's when it happens, and

Sam Mager  28:22
It's always when, unfortunately Jon, always when..

Jonathan Ledner  29:00
Yeah, and the mark of a great company it's not if something breaks, it's how quickly they fix it. 

Sam Mager  29:06
100% 100%.

Jonathan Ledner  29:08
So those are just some of the benefits. 

Sam Mager  29:10
No listen, that's fantastic, and you know, I've certainly learned some things on this podcast that's brilliant, I'm sure our audience has as well. So, thank you Jon, it's been really interesting. Yeah, so understanding the different features, benefits and the obvious, it's obvious why people move to Teams now from a traditional PBX based solution and looking at Session Border Controllers and so on, I can now understand how that we would do that for customers. So really informative, really interesting. Thank you very much for joining us.

Jonathan Ledner  29:38
Not a problem, great talking to you Sam.

Sam Mager  29:40
Brilliant.  Thank you for joining us on this week’s edition of Krome Cast. If there's anything you'd like us to cover in future episodes, please do leave that in the comment section below and remember to like, comment and subscribe and share and join us again, Krome Cast, Tech-it-Out.