Integration Mania: Uniting VoIP and Microsoft Outlook

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Looking to win new VoIP customers? Making VoIP work seamlessly with Outlook could make you the office hero.

For a few years now, VoIP technology has allowed customers to centralize their business communications, from faxes to voicemail messages, in a single Microsoft Outlook inbox. But expanded integration features such as directory dialing and calendar synchronization are proving to be a potential business generator for resellers.

Jayanth Angl understands the allure of providing clients a central repository for the everyday deluge of faxes, emails and voicemail messages. Angl is a research analyst at Info-Tech Research.

“Navigating your inbox is a lot more intuitive than trying to navigate through the audio problems of a voicemail system,” he says.

Another factor driving value added re-sellers (VARs) to offer unified communications tools is an increasingly mobile workforce. Whether sitting in a conference room in Anywhere, USA or a hotel suite in Tokyo, a system that instantaneously routes voicemail messages to an email inbox allows road warriors to be “more available, more accessible and more responsive” to clients, Angl says.

VARs need only look to today’s top VoIP providers for Microsoft Outlook integration capabilities and special features. Major players include Cisco Systems, Avaya and Nortel Networks. Cisco, for example, offers click-to-dial, a feature that lets users dial a contact from within Microsoft Outlook without having to open a separate application or softphone to initiate the call.

Avaya recently announced additions to its unified communications portfolio, including a feature that allows workers to see the real-time telephony presence status information of colleagues on their buddy lists.

Through its Innovation Communications Alliance, Nortel Networks is developing solutions that complement Microsoft’s unified communications platform, including enterprise contact center applications and mission-critical telephony functions.

While the integration of VoIP with Microsoft Outlook presents fresh business opportunities, VARs should still proceed with caution. For starters, unified communications tools are typically licensed on a per seat basis – a costly endeavor that’s unlikely to produce an immediate return on investment. It’s for this reason that Angl recommends “testing [an integrated solution] among a small user group first to actually see if there’s a benefit to receiving all your communications in an inbox.”

This piecemeal approach is particularly advantageous when Microsoft Outlook integration only applies to a portion of a company’s work force. Take, for example, help desk representatives who, ensconced in a call center, have no need for voicemail access in the first place.

If, however, a company proves to be the perfect candidate for a unified communications tool, Angl says that VARs would be wise to recommend that businesses stick to the same VoIP provider for a solution.

“When you’re going with a vendor that’s providing your telephony solution, interfacing the two is relatively straight-forward,” he says.

In the end though, experts suggest that while integrating Microsoft Outlook with a VoIP system is the next step in enhancing business communications, resellers should be careful not to bite off more than they can chew just for the sake of increased revenue. Unified communications tools promise to boost sales but setting more conservative goals can deliver greater rewards without the risks.

Warns Angl, “It’s important for VARs to look for ways where they can help smaller businesses get started [with VoIP] rather than pushing a full-fledged solution right off the bat.”

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