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Microsoft 365 and TELUS: A foundation for hybrid work

Tech Trends · Dec 1, 2021


When you think about hybrid work, you likely think about video conferencing and chat tools. But it’s much deeper than that. While it’s enabled by technology, hybrid work is more like a business philosophy that sees flexibility, innovation, and productivity working hand-in-hand. As the world re-opens, businesses have the opportunity to reimagine what the future of work looks like for them and focus on core elements such as improving workflows, employee satisfaction, and customer experience. But achieving this often requires a holistic reevaluation of technology infrastructure and putting in place a strategy for deployment.

As John Stakel, Head of IT at Export Packers puts it, "I think it’s easy to look at hybrid work as teleconferencing and audio and video... But collaboration is much richer, and much fuller. And it begs the question, how are you doing work … [Microsoft 365 and TELUS] help us get what we need done today, but also carries us into the future."

"Microsoft 365 and TELUS help us get what we need done today, but also carries us into the future."

- John Stakel, Head of IT, Export Packers


Microsoft 365, a foundation for hybrid work

Microsoft Teams, along with their full productivity suite, Microsoft 365, provides a solid foundation for your long term hybrid work deployment, all of which can be increased or enhanced through integrations and support offered by TELUS. This unified approach of tools, network, and integrations is already helping Canadian businesses adapt to the new workplace reality.

The innovative Microsoft 365 collaboration platform is cloud native and gives your team the ability to access and edit files from anywhere with a good internet connection, while seamlessly sharing and collaborating with colleagues.

Combining the services of Microsoft 365 and TELUS can help you make the most of Microsoft 365 - providing you with the ability to integrate multiple applications to create bespoke workflows that fit your evolving business needs. Bringing on new employees, solutions or additional data storage is simplified and can be managed from a single pane of glass.

In Stakel’s words, "The short answer is that they [Microsoft and TELUS] make this pretty easy," says Stakel. "They’re fully integrated up and down the stack… this is fundamental to how we’re transforming as a business," he added.


Hybrid work is more than just internal communication

Communication is at the heart of hybrid work and traditionally, external communication services such as telephony have lived outside of your internal team collaboration apps. This can lead to a range of issues such as increased customer wait times, lower productivity, decreased employee satisfaction, and increased difficulty for your IT teams to centralize systems.

TELUS Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams turns the stalwart collaboration tool into a full enterprise telephony solution, creating a centralized hub for both colleague and customer communications. No matter where your users are, they can make and receive external calls directly from Microsoft Teams, while also accommodating any customer communication - whether it be through audio, video, or chat.


Navigating the complexities of hybrid work, IT and the cloud

Empowering your hybrid and remote teams to collaborate and communicate effectively often means moving from on-premise servers to a cloud-based solution. The unfortunate reality is that the complexities of cloud migration can often be a tall order for IT teams that are already operating at full capacity. One of the benefits of partnering with TELUS is that we can act as an extension of your IT team and help your business move seamlessly to the cloud. We assist your business with any complicated setup and migration while your IT team focuses on your core business needs.

And with TELUS’ fully managed solutions, your teams receive the ongoing support and services they need to thrive in this new era of work. You receive many benefits such as access to Microsoft’s Enterprise Support ticketing system and the ability to centralize and streamline the total number of vendor relationships your IT team manages.

As John Stakel puts it, "We need to be strategic and be wise with our decisions on where our IT team focuses their day-to-day efforts. We wanted to bring on a partner who has done these type of implementations many times before … and TELUS helped make the implementation easy so that we could focus on our other strategic priorities."


TELUS: Your ideal Microsoft 365 partner

When your IT team receives assistance from the right technology partner, your business can implement its hybrid work solutions faster and more effectively. These benefits include:

  • Migration: With our expert technical partners, TELUS can assist your business with any complicated setup and migration steps to get your business into the cloud.

  • Telephony: We can integrate your phone system into the Microsoft Teams app in a variety of ways to help you achieve your ideal setup given your circumstances.

  • Premium-Ongoing Support: We provide extensive 24/7 bilingual support. And if you need advanced support, we can access Microsoft’s Premier Support ticketing system to resolve issues quickly. This is the full enterprise experience - even if you are not an enterprise company.

  • Extension of your IT Team: Our experts act as an extension of your IT team, and can help you design your full IT strategy to build out your hybrid work roadmap. So you can focus on running operations, and not having to worry about the day-to-day complexities. And when your IT team needs to dive in and get that insight immediately, all of your tools are managed from one dashboard.

Find out how TELUS can help you make the most of Microsoft 365.

Authored by:
TELUS Business
TELUS Business