SoftwareOne case study
Transforming Teams with Easy Directory: A unified contacts search solution
Easy Directory offers a unified contacts search on Teams, resolving the most important pain point in leveraging the Microsoft ecosystem to make calls.
The Zurich-based digital agency TwinCap First was founded in 2014 as a cloud specialist and “IT concierge”. It offers five out of the six Microsoft Solutions Partner designations and has built a portfolio of specialized competencies and solutions for Microsoft telephony. “When Microsoft launched Teams in 2018, we immediately saw an opportunity,” says Christoph Schoch, CEO of TwinCap First. “We started to sell our calling solution using Microsoft Teams to make calls on a public network. Almost immediately our customers began to ask us for solutions that Teams did not offer. And so we started to develop some of those solutions.”
These Teams add-ons are available on Microsoft’s AppSource, and one – the Teams directory solution Easy Directory – can also be bought from Cloud-iQ, SoftwareOne's (formerly Crayon) self-service portal for cloud products and services.
“Easy Directory is a niche solution that fills a gap in what Microsoft Teams offers,” says Schoch. “There are other gaps and we have developed other tools that can be combined with Easy Directory. But for most businesses, the lack of a presence view in Teams, and the fact that CRM or Salesforce contacts are not available in Teams to work with – that’s biggest pain point.”
Easy Directory integrates contacts from multiple sources: Outlook, Microsoft Entra IDs, third-party ERP or CRM solutions, or any other contact databases. “The data does not reside with us,” says Schoch, “but always with the tenant of the customers. In this way you avoid any discussion about access to the shared mailbox – the user allocates it. You also sidestep any complications around GDPR.”
Having unified access to all your contacts allows you to tag and manage them coherently across all your workflows, and create custom views in Windows, Mac, as well as Android and iOS.
“This is a game-changer for sales teams executives who are in their cars going from meeting to meeting. Without Easy Directory, every time they need a contact email or number they have to go into their Notebook or iPads and activate the VPN to connect to their CRM. Now, they can find their contacts in a matter of seconds and see if they are available because Easy Directory gives you a presence view.”
- Industry
- Professional services
- Country
- Switzerland
We transform Teams as a calling platform
CEO, TwinCap First
Schoch believes the potential for Easy Directory and its adjacent Teams solutions is enormous. “According to the latest figures, there are some 70m daily calls on Microsoft which is nothing compared with the quarter of a billion users on Teams every day. Everyone uses Microsoft Teams, but not necessarily for making calls. This is changing, and we see even larger businesses transitioning from their legacy PBX to Microsoft Teams.
“When they do that, they immediately come up against the pain points I described,” Schoch continues. “They know that what they need is a tool like ours – but what they don’t always know is where to find us. And that’s one of the reasons we are partnering with SoftwareOne Cloud-IQ: it increases the visibility of Easy Directory.Mark Woodhouse, Global ISV Director at SoftwareOne, agrees that the channel mechanism creates awareness. “In Cloud-iQ there’s a list of ISV solutions making it much easier for people to find you and then purchase Easy Directory directly without having to go to another channel, deal with another ISV, and process another invoice. Being on Cloud-IQ takes a lot of the friction out of the process.”
“And I would add,” says Schoch, “that partnering with SoftwareOne and offering Easy Directory on your portal was also painless. That’s not typically the case.
“What I see with your competitors is that they are not ready yet to transact in this way because they do everything manually in Partner Center. This has stopped us from launching on some channels. They tell us we have to wait until they have an automated solution in their marketplace. But SoftwareOne has such an automated solution and is way ahead of the field.”
Another gap in Microsoft Teams is that its call queues do not log missed calls. “What if a customer being held in your support queue gets frustrated and hangs up? Support will never know that it missed a call. Our tool for this, Easy Call Report, posts all your missed calls in a Teams channel. If you also have Easy Directory, you will also get the caller's name and other contact details which can be invaluable. Easy Call Report is not available on Cloud-iQ at the moment, but it makes a great fit with Easy Directory.”
TwinCap First is gradually adding functionality to Easy Directory. At the top of Schoch’s wish list is an attendant console leveraging Easy Directory to allow busy receptionists to see at a glance if a contact is available and route internal calls with one click – a process that currently requires up to seven clicks in Microsoft.“We have quite a long roadmap of additional features that will increase the value of Easy Directory, but I think businesses have to first gain an understanding of what features they are missing when they switch to Teams. This is how we are positioning ourselves. Our pitch is: ‘We are a unified search engine for all your contacts, and we can help resolve other pain points as well.’ I see this going in tandem: we expand our ecosystem of Teams add-ons as we ramp up customer acquisition.
“SoftwareOne is an important part of us getting our product the exposure it needs and merits,” concludes Schoch. “Once that message gets out there, there will be no stopping us.”
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