As featured in UC Today, December 9 2020
Driven by the rapid rise in demand for Microsoft Teams, leading software developer Tollring will be delivering a new solution for collaboration analytics. The Analytics 365 offering from Tollring brings a new level of call recording management and collaboration analytics to the Microsoft Teams ecosystem, to assist companies in managing customer engagement, staff wellbeing and performance.
Tollring has been showcasing the new solution to several key partners and this has already driven huge interest. With a GA launch date projected for February 2021, it won’t be long before businesses everywhere can unlock a new level of Microsoft Teams insights.
I caught up with Tollring to learn more about how Analytics 365 works.
What’s the Purpose of Tollring Analytics 365?
Tollring is an innovator of products in the recording and analytics space and stepping into the Teams landscape was a natural progression for the company. “We already have several partners delivering voice through Microsoft Teams, so the synergies are there. We’re first looking at collaboration and then other parts of the Microsoft ecosystem to strengthen the analytics we can deliver to the market.”
The 3 main focus areas of Analytics 365 is to provide insights in customer engagement, staff productivity and wellbeing. The Analytics 365 solution aims to support these three pillars by allowing teams and individuals to get a deeper view into their collaborative experiences. “We’re leveraging the Microsoft Graph API and our Policy Bot for this solution and extending our Azure Cloud deployed infrastructure for accessibility, scalability, and security.”
Tollring’s in-depth knowledge of cloud-based call recording and analytics, its relationship with Microsoft and the work the company already does on Azure made the transition into analytics on Microsoft Teams an obvious next step.
What Can Tollring Analytics 365 Do?
Ultimately, the Analytics 365 solution aims to deliver high-level collaboration analytics across the entire business ecosystem. The app and portal solution delivers powerful and intuitive dashboards and in-depth reporting to team leaders, to give them better insights into what’s really happening with customers and employees.
“You can see how many meetings have been organised, how many people participated in those meetings, how many had an external participant and much more. Combining this information with calls and messaging, users will have a complete picture of how well they are engaging with their customers and how well they are collaborating with each other across departments.”
“We can then bring in some great insights about call quality and sentiment analytics. This allows us to deliver the right information, ensuring it is relevant to the user based on their roles and responsibilities”
The solution integrates with an organisation’s Active Directory and CRM as well as Tollring’s iCall Suite so that businesses using Microsoft Teams can get a complete, 360 degree understanding of their customer engagement. “Understanding staff productivity and effectiveness now requires more than just analysing UC data; we now need to look at how we collaborate with our eco-system of customers, suppliers and colleagues. For organisations to really make the most of Teams, you need to know who are the most effective contributors and collaborators and who are not. Members of your team that are not collaborating effectively will be less informed. Poor knowledge sharing will lead to poor customer experience and, with the pandemic making this more challenging, this level of business information is critical in today’s world.”
With Analytics 365, businesses can look at activity by user or department and track how this activity is changing over time. This provides insights into staff effectiveness and well-being, which have become essential now that remote working and disparate departments have become the norm. You can filter the insights so you only receive the metrics you need to drive better decision making.
Is This an Exciting New Solution for Analytics?
Tollring Analytics 365 is essentially a comprehensive analytics solution for the Microsoft Teams environment. With dashboard access that showcases important team performance and trends, business leaders can make more informed decisions. You can report on calls by call type, Team activity and messaging.
Within messaging, there’s insight into reactions and sentiment, and you can check meeting habits and participation levels in meetings. Teams recordings can be managed, saved and accessed in line with company policy for compliance, training, and dispute resolution, and all of this embeds natively into Microsoft Teams for a completely straightforward and familiar experience.
“The world of remote working is really challenging the current business landscape. Understanding the key drivers of productivity and positive outcomes for staff and customers is crucial. Recording your collaboration data compliantly protects businesses when they need it most.”
How Does This Offering Go Beyond Compliant Recording?
The Tollring Analytics 365 solution isn’t just a tool for supporting compliant recording in Microsoft Teams. This solution is also about boosting accessibility in the collaborative environment. Companies can record valuable team meetings and ensure that people who weren’t available to attend the meeting can still get the information they need.
“There’ll be a home environment where you can set up the widgets and group information that you need and ensure that you’re getting the details that are most valuable to you. You can even see how meetings with customers change from one department to the next.”
According to Tollring, allowing companies to better understand the way that their teams and customers are interacting leads to a future of enhanced experiences for everyone. To add to the information available, Tollring also integrates with CRM tools that allow for further insights into the customer engagement story.
What’s the Go to Market Strategy?
Tollring told me that the new solution isn’t just about providing recording compliance, it’s about providing teams with better analytics and visibility.
“We’re reacting to what the market needs in the current landscape. In the future, we’ll be expanding into other spaces like Zoom or Cisco Webex Teams too, but our main focus is Microsoft Teams for now”
According to Tollring, for this new analytics system to be effective, it needs to be easy to access. There’s going to be a marketplace app offering and a web portal. “You don’t have to roll it out to everyone in the organisation either. You can turn the functionality off or on at a user level.”
The app functionality will hone in on notifications that users can manage and tailor. Tollring will also be offering a full partner wrap so partners can take the new solution to their market. Though they want to make the solution as accessible as possible through the Microsoft marketplace, they’ll also be enabling existing channel partners with new revenue opportunities.
With predicted availability in multiple languages, the Tollring Analytics 365 experience could open the door to a new level of understanding over collaboration tools. Those looking to learn more about the new solution can reach out to Tollring today.
