Whether you’re a Microsoft house, use Cisco for UC and VoIP, or have a mixture of multiple phone systems and collaboration apps, provisioning (and the time it takes) is one thing every UC platform has in common.
Managing UC provisioning can be a cumbersome task, especially at scale. The time taken to perform X number of tasks, alongside the associated costs, add up to a clear calling for automated UC provisioning.
The good news is that it’s here—and has been for a little while now.
In this blog post, we’re going to share ten benefits of automated UC provisioning, that we’re confident will get you nodding along and buying into the concept.
Let’s start with the big hitters…
1 – You could save $500,000 using automated UC provisioning tools
Told you it was a big hitter.
Here’s how…
A provisioning ticket can cost as much as $60 per ticket. And that’s just for account creation.
Throw in moves, adds, changes, user migrations, and any other “small” change your team makes, and they all add up.
And, sorry to be the bearer of bad news (it ends soon), but that’s only when things go smoothly.
That $60 provisioning ticket doesn’t account for manual errors and any repercussions. Here, we’re talking about the loss of time, drain on productivity, and lost revenue.
The average IT support ticket to resolve a configuration error is approximately $45.
| Cost of error (IT Cost – no escalation) | ||||
| Item | Resource | Number | Hours | Cost |
| Service desk ticket logged | Office Worker | 1.00 | 0.10 | $1.53 |
| Ticket triaged & assigned | 1st Line Engineer | 1.00 | 0.20 | $2.97 |
| Ticket actioned by engineer | 2nd Line Engineer | 1.00 | 1.50 | $29.01 |
| Ticket management | 1st Line Engineer | 1.00 | 0.75 | $11.06 |
| Ticket Cost | $44.57 | |||
This can almost double in cases where escalation is needed to fix the most complicated errors.
| Cost of error (IT Cost – with escalation) | ||||
| Item | Resource | Number | Hours | Cost |
| Service desk ticket logged | Office Worker | 1.00 | 0.10 | $1.53 |
| Ticket triaged & assigned | 1st Line Engineer | 1.00 | 0.20 | $2.97 |
| Ticket actioned by engineer | 2nd Line Engineer | 1.00 | 1.50 | $40.10 |
| Escalation engineer | Specialist Engineer | 1.00 | 1.00 | $19.35 |
| Ticket management | 1st Line Engineer | 1.00 | 1.00 | $14.88 |
| Ticket Cost | $78.83 | |||
At this stage, it’s easy to see how costs are spiraling out of control without you noticing.
Multiply the number of provisioning changes you make per month and your (genuine) average ticket cost (including error and escalation) and you have a rather alarming number.
So, how does automated UC provisioning help?
Orto is a UC provisioning tool that automates your entire user provisioning process, so you save time, reduce errors, and remove manual inefficiencies.
In Microsoft Teams, for example, all you need to do is add your new user’s Entra (AzureAD) attribute then leave the rest to Orto.
That means every time you have a new starter, or need to make a move, add, or change, you add assign them a persona and we assign all the relevant policies.
Say, for example, marketing hires 10 interns on the same day as you have a new sales academy of 40 starters. And it just so happens that your operations team has doubled from 25 to 50 to meet the new demand of all your marketing and sales staff.
That’s 100 new users to provision.
It’s one thing coping with the tedium of doing the same task over and over again. But think about the time you could be spending on tasks where you add real value. Think of the time you get back in your day.
And what happens if you make a mistake (we are all human, after all)?
One small mistake, caused by manual data entry, could lead to marketing having access to private documents your accounts team wouldn’t dream of sharing with anyone.
Orto does all the heavy lifting, so you can get on with your job. We even cover when someone changes job roles. There’s no need to revert to manual processes here, either.
Our personal migration tool allows you to easily switch a user’s templated policies to their new location, job type, or department.
Continue Reading: You Could Save $500,000 Using This Microsoft Teams Provisioning Tool
2 – Automated UC provisioning will save you tons of time
This is a given, right? The major benefit of any automation tool is to do the repetitive work for you.
Assuming you configure your user personas correctly and upload your new user’s basic information without error, your automated UC provisioning tool can run everything in the background and create a new user with everything they need, according to their job role, seniority, or location.
It’s one thing removing the button pressing on your side. It’s another thing entirely ensuring everything happens without a glitch.
Computers can only make errors that we (humans) program them too. So, while we’re not completely off the hook, the automation work in the background is going to save you hours of config time per week and potentially weeks of config time per year.
Webinar: Discover the Benefits of Automated User Provisioning for Microsoft Teams
3 – Onboarding becomes simpler and quicker
On a new employee’s first day, or even first week, the last thing they or their manager wants is for them to be sat around waiting for access.
In a perfect world, they start, and you’ve loaded their details into Entra, Exchange, or wherever you enter your first element of user information, and your automated UC provisioning tool does everything else for you.
It almost sounds too good to be true. But, when you’ve created your user personas, all you need to do is enter their basic information, select their persona, and Orto does everything else for you.
You’re saving time and costs (benefits 1 & 2), your new user feels like they’re contributing from day one, and the hiring manager gets payback on their new investment quickly.
Continue Reading: Use This Microsoft Teams Onboarding Template To Speed Up Provisioning
4 – You get a single pane of glass for UC management
When you’ve got multiple UC apps and thousands of users to look after, switching between apps becomes a nightmare.
Not only can you lose information copying and pasting all over the place, but the negatives (and costs) associated with context switching are plain to see. When we flick from one app to another, with a different look and feel, we’re asking our brains to work overtime.
That’s when mistakes start to happen. So, not only do you not have a consistent experience and platform that new admins must learn once, but you also run the risk of clicking the wrong button or entering the wrong line of code.
When you use an automatic UC provisioning app, everything tends to be in one place. This means several things:
- Consistent experience for users in different locations
- Less time training needed for new admins
- Faster migrations and PBX consolidation
- Continuous provisioning workflow
- Fewer manual errors
Continue Reading: We Created A Single Pane Of Glass For Microsoft Teams Management
5 – Number provisioning is a piece of cake
Wouldn’t it be great if you configured a new user (automatically), and they got the next available number in a range associated with their department?
Well, that’s exactly what our UC provisioning tool, Orto, can do for you.
Yes, you can assign numbers one by one, but what about when you’re adding users at scale?
All of a sudden, your Excel spreadsheet spirals out of control (or crashes 🤕), and you’re left working in the dark as to which numbers have been taken, are available, or have been deleted.
There’s a delay to new users being able to make phone calls and you must dedicate time to fixing and maintaining your number store.
Or you could let Orto automate your number assignment every time you provision a new user.
When you connect a UC platform to Orto, you can move your numbers to live here too. This way, regardless of the carrier, you have numbers available for automatic or manual assignment to users.
Continue Reading: How To Automate Microsoft Teams Number Provisioning
6 – Enhanced analytics to provide usage insights
When you centralize your UC provisioning, all your user data and behavior come together in one place.
A direct output of the ways your users use your UC tools is the reporting and analytics on the other end. So, if users start to make lots of external calls when you turn on Teams Phone, it’s an obvious win. You can now roll this out to other departments who’ve been calling for this functionality.
Likewise, if you implement Shared Calling to save money in a small department, you gain the insight you need to confirm it’s a good business decision.
Whatever you turn on in your UC portal, you can report on and ensure you’re moving your business in the right direction.
7 – Enables a hybrid cloud environment
When you stitch together your phone systems and automate the provisioning of new users, you’re not just automating new Teams users, but any new phone users.
Let’s say you’ve integrated your Avaya PBX with Microsoft Teams. In a previous life, you’d have to provision users one by one on both your PBX and on Microsoft 365.
Now, with automated provisioning, you can enter the new user details once (and in bulk if you have a lot of new starters) and the automation replicates the details across your entire UC infrastructure.
Long gone are the days of manual data entry and running disparate systems. If you need to keep your on-premises equipment for any reason, you can now run your cloud telephony in perfect harmony.
8 – Reduces risk of failure
When you leave provisioning in the (literal) hands of humans, you’re exposing your entire UC estate to the risk of failure.
One small keyboard entry, rogue script, or accepting the wrong changes at the wrong time and BOOM! That’s it. Mad rush to undo whatever it is you just did by accident.
Trust me, I’ve made plenty of provisioning mistakes in my time. You’re not alone.
Maybe you can top turning off 1,000 users’ phones for an hour on the last day of the month? It was certainly a learning curve for me.
When you create the automations, test them thoroughly, and roll them out to replace your manual processes, you do two things:
- Reduce the chance of embarrassment if you cause an outage
- Remove the risk of downtime caused by human input
9 – Better number management
When someone leaves your business, what happens to their phone number?
Does it end up on a spreadsheet that will then go unmaintained for the next six months? Maybe you end up paying for it “just in case” someone starts to call that number again.
If a user leaves, what you don’t want is their phone number to return to a free-for-all pool of numbers then get assigned to the next person that joins your company.
Why?
Because if a sales user had the number ending 019, their customers will likely have their direct dial saved and call it out of habit. If you have randomly assigned that number to a new user who happens to be in accounts, your customer is getting an inferior experience to the one they’ve come to expect. You’re choosing to add an extra transfer in their call journey.
You’re also unfairly treating your new accounts user as a receptionist, asking them to forfeit time in their day to carry out the work of a phone system.
The ideal scenario is automation that quarantines a phone number when a user leaves your company, removing the chance of incorrect assignment.
Within this quarantine pool, you may have a few scenarios applied:
- Call forwarding to other sales users
- Call forwarding to a sales hunt group
- Play a message stating the user has left
- Do nothing and stay quarantined
Read More: 5 Microsoft Teams Number Management Best Practices
10 – Consistent user experience
When every new user gets provisioned automatically, there is no deviation. One day one, user A receives the same experience as user B when they start six months later.
On a department by department basis or ranked by seniority, everyone with the same user persona gets exactly the same UC experience as each other.
There’s no bias or preferential treatment. And nothing gets left behind as you’ve spent time upfront planning what each type of user needs. You enter their details once, select their user persona, and everything else gets automated.
Conclusion: automated UC is a must for businesses with over 2,000 employees
When you spend a large chunk of time provisioning users, be they new or existing (don’t forget about those moves, adds, and changes), it will pay dividends to invest in a UC provisioning tool that has your back.
Whether your goal is to reduce manual errors, gain back your valuable time, or create an autopilot scenario for onboarding new users, automated UC provisioning is the present as well as the future.
If you’re ready to automate your UC provisioning, book a call with an expert here.
