‘Advanced Analytics Boosts Hybrid Workplace Experience’

As the memory of deskbound work fades in the move to the hybrid workplace, enterprise customers and managed service providers (MSPs) face mounting…

Marian McHugh

As the memory of deskbound work fades in the move to the hybrid workplace, enterprise customers and managed service providers (MSPs) face mounting pressure to deliver – and even enhance – the high-quality experience users expect.

Many harnessed Microsoft Teams driven by the immediacy of availability and simplicity of deployment. Establishing a UC platform fit for the remote working world, unifying digital workflow and access to services both inside and outside the corporate network.

However, the challenge of managing service performance is complicated by bridging strictly controlled enterprise network and infrastructure, with a mix of unmanaged home networks and cloud services used by the distributed workforce.

Virsae’s Teams solution, launched at Microsoft Inspire 2021 global partner event, offers full-stack UC diagnostics and AI-powered optimisation for superior customer and user experience with Microsoft Teams.

Virsae Service Management (VSM) uniquely focuses on three distinct areas to enable MSPs and customers to get the most out of Teams: Technical analytics, WFH network analytics, and Rooms analytics. Delivering full-stack, end-to-end CX and UX analytics that is presented in a single pane of glass.

Technical analytics takes information from the Teams graph API and combines it with information from other sources, including session border controllers involved with Direct Routing, Teams, and Operator Connect.

WFH network analytics works via a small agent deployed on the user workstation, bringing visibility to home networks, WiFi, workstation and ISP performance.

Room analytics provides pattern detection and headset analytics for situations when the background environment is too noisy or impeding work.

“This tripartite approach addresses the key areas that cause poor CX and UX. So, while the Graph API provides data about the Microsoft environment, this needs to be complemented with the full work-from-anywhere picture to fix root causes,” said Ross Williams, Chief Success Officer at Virsae.

Virsae further closes the experience loop by leveraging the Teams post call survey, offering a premium service capability for MSPs. Once triggered, the survey response is integrated with VSM’s AI and machine learning to deliver data-led insight to IT managers, ensuring user experience issues are both acknowledged and fixed. Complementing Microsoft’s Viva employee experience platform where people and teams are empowered to be their best from anywhere.

“Teams changes the technology landscape, encouraging businesses to switch from large, expensive, and complex on-prem solutions to using a Teams enabled interaction, as part of Microsoft or Office 365 licencing,” said Ian McCarthy, Director of the UK and EMEA at Virsae.

“But the hybrid working environment is largely unmanaged and invisible, because 90 per cent of it is delivered from a cloud beyond the control of MSPs. VSM provides both the MSP and the customer with direct line of sight to their unmanaged environments.”

Williams added that in the switch to remote working many organisations ignored usual processes involved in setting up service management. “The vast majority of these deployments have been turned on without the usual project disciplines, because the chaos of the pandemic left insufficient time for a formally orchestrated migration – it was all about remaining operational,” he said.

“From a service management perspective, many of these organisations have gone backwards in the rush, driven by the pandemic,” he said. “But the time has now come for them to readjust and put properly productionised solutions in place.”