Unifying Phone Systems into a Single Microsoft Teams Voice Platform

The group fosters a collaborative spirit to drive innovation and efficiency, but disparate telephony systems were creating unnecessary complexity and disconnection in its communications. As a recently merged business, the organisation had inherited three different phone systems across six sites, the legacy of bringing together a number of previously independent specialist companies into a single group.

The result was operational inefficiency, increased cost, and a lack of any standardised approach to how the business communicated. Managing multiple telephony vendors added another layer of complexity, causing significant difficulties in maintenance and support, and making it hard for the IT function to provide a consistent experience to staff regardless of which site they sat in.

The Head of IT recognised the potential of leveraging the group's existing Microsoft Teams environment for voice calls. Teams was already the centre of gravity for meetings, messaging and collaboration; bringing voice into the same platform was the natural next step. What was needed was a trusted partner to manage the project end-to-end and provide ongoing support to ensure smooth adoption and operation across the merged business.

Formation Tech began with a comprehensive audit of the group's voice estate, which surfaced a number of inefficiencies, including an over-subscription of voice lines that was unnecessarily increasing cost. The audit gave both parties a clear, evidence-based view of where the savings and the simplification were going to come from before any migration work began.

The pre-sales engagement also gave the customer the opportunity to meet the project management team and attend a Microsoft Teams learning webinar, building confidence in Formation Tech's capabilities and approach well before the formal project kicked off. By the time delivery started, the trust was already in place.

The solution itself was designed around five key steps:

• Discovery: Understanding the group's specific requirements and challenges to tailor a suitable solution.

• System Audit: A thorough review of the existing voice systems to identify inefficiencies and areas for improvement.

• Voice Migration: Consolidating the three disparate systems into a single platform using Microsoft Teams, streamlining the voice infrastructure across all six sites.

• Project Management: Providing full project management to ensure a smooth transition, including detailed planning, execution and continuous communication throughout.

• Ongoing Support: Offering comprehensive support and training for both administrators and end-users to ensure complete adoption and satisfaction post-go-live.

Formation Tech transformed the group's telephony estate by consolidating three vendors into one, achieving a 75% reduction in voice lines and substantially lowering operational costs. The over-subscription identified in the audit was eliminated, and what had been a fragmented, vendor-heavy environment is now a single unified platform supporting voice, video and collaboration through Microsoft Teams.

Beyond the platform itself, the engagement delivered the simplification the IT function had been looking for. With one vendor instead of three, support and maintenance now sit within a single managed relationship, and the standardised platform means staff across every site work in the same environment, with the same tools, regardless of which legacy business they originally joined from. For a recently merged group still working through the operational realities of bringing multiple businesses together, that consistency is a meaningful step forward.