This information looks at how your manufacturing organisation can move beyond this split between voice and other systems. It will guide you on the best ways to bring all your communications together onto modern cloud-based collaboration tools that bring you a new competitive advantage in terms of operational agility and production process efficiency.
Microsoft Teams is a single platform that can empower your people with new more efficient ways of working. Have all your collaboration and communication within Microsoft Teams, such as voice and messaging, but also have the capability to surface your critical operational systems for, say, task and shift management. It is also possible to integrate vital systems for lone worker safety, fire alarms and E.911.
We will describe the practical steps required to make this happen and outline the methodology that has helped other leading manufacturers integrate their voice communications into their overall business and enterprise workflow systems.
Voice Matters
Voice is the most important real-time communication channel as it results in more efficient and faster decision making, enabling you to resolve problems quickly and decisively.
These days, no manufacturer can afford to keep its voice communications on outdated, and in some cases unsupported, technology, isolated from all the other communication channels that you now rely on.
Over the last decade, voice has been supplemented with new channels including messaging and video for both internal and external communications.
Teams Direct Routing
For manufacturers that use Microsoft Teams, it is now possible to completely replace legacy voice systems with full telephony features in Teams. Available solutions, such as Resonate’s Voice for Teams platform, include a comprehensive, enterprise- grade product that provides full telephony functionality with service levels 24x7x365 for the largest enterprises.
Such solutions provide a globally available, feature-rich platform that is proactively monitored for voice quality and possesses unparalleled security.
They are ideal for organisations looking to retire legacy or PBX solutions, migrate from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams for telephony, Office 365 users who want to enable the telephony functionality of Teams, or companies looking to enable hybrid working, or enhance and simplify communications for workgroups working remotely.
Resonate, for example, has delivered Microsoft voice solutions at scale across a range of industries, including manufacturing. For one customer alone, we manage 150,000 users in over 1,000 sites across 50 countries.
In another project, a Microsoft voice solution resulted in cost savings of 60%; significant improvements in collaboration, mobility and flexible working; improved knowledge management and business intelligence; realisation of new technologies such as industrial workplace augmented reality (AR); and voice integration with core enterprise business systems.
Endpoint Mapping
Manufacturing organisations need an approach that is based on a focused methodology with defined benefits that are tracked and monitored throughout the migration process.
To capture the considerable potential cost savings and efficiencies that moving voice communications to Teams can realise, you need to clearly understand the features and functionality of your legacy voice estate. These are then mapped to the equivalent functions within Teams.
This mapping process, done correctly, allows customers to optimise their savings and greatly reduces cost of change and project timelines.
The endpoint mapping methodology should be designed to simplify the customer journey to unified communications with Teams through a clear roadmap that identifies difficulties, challenges and opportunities from the outset.
At the heart of the best solutions on the market is the concept of endpoint mapping and management. In today’s workplace, endpoints have become increasingly diffuse and difficult to track. With Covid-19 disrupting expectations of where different members of the team are located, that complexity has only increased. Mapping voice endpoints is essential to smooth migration, avoiding disruption, and obtaining rapid returns from the migration from legacy voice to comprehensive unified enterprise communications.
In a manufacturing environment there are often a variety of systems that are reliant on legacy analog technology, such as DECT phones, walkie-talkies, door entry systems, fire alarms or personal alarm systems for lone worker safety. A successful migration to a modern direct routing platform must take into account all of these endpoints and provide solutions to upgrade, replace or integrate them.
Hybrid Working with Teams Voice
With Resonate’s Teams for Manufacturing solutions hybrid working arrangements can be put in place without compromises or a reduction in end-user efficiency. You could easily migrate to cloud telephony and communication within Teams and still retain your existing telephony provider and numbers, as well as access to legacy analog systems.
Manufacturers can use Microsoft Teams as a single platform for communication and collaboration which helps make hybrid working truly possible for your organisation. You can easily keep everyone in touch and aware of the information they need to know.
This will save a significant amount on the investment and maintenance costs of the legacy telephone exchange, the internal walkie talkie network, in-house paging and DECT network.
With one Teams app and one enterprise smartphone, all desk phones, mobile phones, DECT devices, walkie talkies and pagers can be replaced, making life easier and communication more seamless for your entire workforce, wherever they are located.
Enhanced Team Collaboration
Workers on the factory floor often struggle to connect with management to contribute new ideas and provide valuable input to important discussions. You need a channel that easily connects teams with management, so they can work from the same data and offer ideas to improve efficiency.
Legacy communication systems can slow down collaboration and lead to dissatisfaction among managers and workers on the front line. Equip these workers with agile shift scheduling tools, deeper communication capabilities, and seamless task management - all in a single, intuitive user experience with Microsoft Teams.
You can align schedules to your fluctuating needs while saving workers time and energy. You can provide staffing and schedule management with Shifts in Microsoft Teams, backed by tools you might already use like Kronos, BlueYonder, and AMiON – this will allow you to manage shift schedules seamlessly.
Connect your workforce by increasing employee communication with tools like chat, video calling, and push-to-talk Walkie Talkie. Coming soon, deliver a single destination for shifts, news, tasks and company resources with Viva Connections.
Simplify the task management process by giving frontline workers better control over tasks and clearer direction with Tasks in Microsoft Teams. Now, easily distribute tasks from headquarters to frontline locations and track progress with task publishing.
These days, supervising and assisting workers often has to be done remotely. To do so efficiently, organisations require effective communication tools like Teams that will make up for the lack of face-to-face interactions.
Admin and Authorisation
The strength of the Teams hub is that all communication moments can be automatically recorded in a log file. This can be used for automatic reporting.
Your workforce only needs to focus on the job on hand and not the administration burden. In addition, Teams can handle all your administration needs, such as health and safety reports.
The Teams App from Resonate offers the option to employees to submit an authorisation request and to executives to approve or reject it from within the app. All authorisation requests are automatically logged for management reporting and inspection purposes.
Your workers can easily schedule meetings and find the best available times for invitees through the native scheduling calendar. They can also create and co-author documents, spreadsheets and presentations in the cloud. As well as upload and share files in a secure cloud-enabled repository with Files, all segmented into individual channels with a high degree of user access control.
Process
The simplest, most obvious enterprise voice endpoints are items such as desk phones, ATA adapters, or conference phones. Increasingly, endpoints can also be found in software environments. Softphones and UC clients can give manufacturing workers ways to communicate through any hardware devices that might be present, including desktop computers, smartphones, laptops, tablets, or even stand-alone workplace headsets. These ‘soft’ endpoints can be physically in the office or production environment, but can also be home-based or mobile.
Typically, manufacturers will have a mix of voice technologies connecting these endpoints to a PBX, ranging from hard-wired, including analogue lines, emergency phones, as well as IP, soft endpoints, Wi-Fi and DECT.
With solutions tailored for manufacturers like Resonate’s Voice for Teams platform, a unique data collection and analysis process assists in endpoint mapping. This will provide templates and methods for capturing information on all active connections and mapping them to Microsoft Teams.
Resonate have evolved this process over many years and have proved and refined it in action, addressing over 500 sites using this methodology.
We have the capability to analyse site data and define personas, establishing Design Ground Rules, assigning correct connection types, and identifying questionable connections for further interrogation.
Our solution creates Teams Endpoint Mapping (TEMAP) output for each site and we review the document with the site contact for agreement. They will then make adjustments, as required, and agree on the final design.
So, What Next?
The big question is, with the added capability of Microsoft Teams, how will manufacturers be able to make the most of the platform, going forward, to stay ahead of the competition.
Analogue gateways are cost-effective, stand-alone VoIP devices that provide superior voice technology for integrating legacy telephones, fax machines and PBX systems to Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business environments.
The benefit of this is having an all-in-one omni channel with the ability to have a voice conversation and a recording within Microsoft Teams. This enables you to get to a direct routing platform and move voice into the cloud for greater efficiencies.
It can remove all or part of your legacy PBX which means reduced maintenance. It also may allow you to turn off machines supporting on premise architecture and reduce CO2 emissions through Azure. Furthermore, it will enable the entire workforce for remote and mobile working.
Once you move to Microsoft Teams, instead of your fire alarm going off just triggering a call to emergency services, you are enabled to build a platform which allows you to communicate this news with all the relevant people, whether that’s the health and safety team or the people close to the fire alarm who need to evacuate.
Moving to Microsoft Teams also takes the shackles off your business and enables you to take advantage of all the benefits of ongoing digital transformation.
Benefits like the Microsoft Power Platform. This is a collection of services that enables your business to be more insightful, collaborative and efficient. These services can help you achieve operational efficiency through the deployment of business process automation, applications, integrated reporting and even chatbots that can be used internally within Teams or as a customer-facing service. Above all, it’s a low-code platform that can be used to develop apps and automate business processes quickly.
Get Ahead of the Curve With RealWear
Digital workspaces are transforming how organisations think about operational efficiency and productivity.
But when it comes to manufacturing, digital transformations must promote and support safety around machinery or in dangerous working environments, as well as offering operational efficiencies. That’s why AR is starting to play a huge role here.
Microsoft Teams on RealWear turns the HMT into a voice-activated remote collaboration headset that can be deployed to outfit a fully connected workforce. RealWear is the only company that has a certified intrinsically safe head-mounted device for extremely hazardous areas where explosive gases are present.
In a manufacturing environment one very practical application of RealWear is within service and maintenance teams. Locating your most skilled systems maintenance professionals in a central location and equipping on the ground teams with Realwear technology means they can benefit from their experience, without waiting for them to attend a physical location. This means downtime can be reduced and the rate at which equipment is fixed first time increased.
All this is exciting, but new opportunities are presenting themselves all the time, so the longer you leave it to make your move, the more you’ll miss out.
If you would like to discuss Resonate’s Teams for manufacturers solutions and benefit from our extensive experience, we would be happy to talk you through how we could help your business.
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