UNMS Modernises Telephony Without Disrupting Business

“Extend our current PSTN solution without causing an internal landslide”. That’s how you could briefly describe the question UNMS presented to us. A nice challenge and a great example of how we configured a PSTN extension in a cost-effective and user-friendly way. Read the entire story!”

Extend PSTN Solution Without a Big Bang

UNMS aimed to extend their current classic PSTN solution (Public Switched Telephone Network), so people would be able to work place, time, and device-independent. The customer already used Skype and Teams for internal communications.

The biggest challenge was that they didn’t want a big bang migration and still desired to keep using the current classic PSTN environment. They also wanted to keep the internal communication between Teams and systems as smooth as possible, with ‘short numbers,…’. Whatever system the client used, they should be able to call a colleague seamlessly.

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Cost-Effective and User-Friendly Approach

We suggested to add voice telephony to the Teams tenant, so they could realise their goals in a cost-effective and user-friendly way. As the clients were already familiar with Teams, the user adoption would be much less.  We created a direct routing gateway to extend the existing PSTN solution to Teams. By means of this, the customer could still use the old telephony where they prefer, and easily move to Teams voice if desired.

Well-Defined Phased Roll-Out

In agreement with the customer, we opted for a phased solution. We worked according to the following process:

1. Gather the business needs and customer requests.
2. Deliver a project plan with timelines and regular customer reviews.
3. Design
   
   • Create a tailor-made design, with a realistic scope of what will be possible, and what won’t.
   • Agree with the client on design, scope, and cost.
   • List all the functionalities and scenarios the customer can have.
4. Build
   
   • Get all the prerequisites, actions, and responsibilities. Act upon them.
     
     • Ensure all the information is gathered.
     • Agree with the customer who will be responsible for what.
     • Make sure all prerequisites are met and build can continue.
   • Testing
     
     • Create an extended test plan with all the functionalities and scenarios the customer can have.
     • Agree on the action and test plan review
   • Proof of concept.
     
     • Create a proof of concept which includes the basics of the scope.
     • Have them tested and signed off. (basic calling, policies,…).
     • Extend the proof of concept with the items that were in scope.
     • Execute the test plan and have it signed off.
   • Implement the infrastructure in production
     
     • Create the infrastructure according to all specifications (hardware, software, backup, functionalities, security,…).
     • Document the complete infrastructure.
     • Validate the infrastructure.
     • Create maintenance and backup plans.
   
   
5. Customer-centric implementation
   
   • Have customer meetings on how to implement voice to the users.
   • Train the IT staff and hand out documentation.
   • Design a user migration/implementation plan.
     
     • Only users?
     • Are phone groups needed?
     • Special cases: reception, meeting rooms,…
   • Migrate the end-users according to the plan.