Item: Avaya UCaaS
Rating: 10
Author: Ahmad Touseef

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Children's Aid Society of Algoma in Canada uses Avaya UCaaS, which is RingCentral white labeled as Avaya UCaaS RingCentral VOIP on Desktops, Laptops, Surface Tablets, iPhones, Android Phones, Physical SIP phones at employee desks at their office. The biggest value for Avaya UCaaS for us is the ability to answer calls from multiple places (computers, physical phones, iOS or Android phones) and the ability to send text messages and receive text messages, which our staff need to see at one central place to copy and paste into their contact logs, as we are a health care workforce and have to maintain diligent contact logs, case logs in each client or patient contact history, be it their phone conversations, text messages. Another big value is complex call queues and complex scheduling abilities to enable different staff groups to be in different call queues and remove and add new staff to different groups as our goals change like moving targets within our business.

Pros and Cons

Complex Call Queues are much better than Teams' VOIP
Complex Call Handling Rules are much better than Teams' VOIP
No surprise costs, predictable billing, the most amount of features at the lowest cost
There are so many phone and text features in the phone app and the desktop app that are much better than Teams' VOIP
Integration with Teams on Desktop App
Call analytics and reporting BI are much, much better than Teams' VOIP

Integration of Avaya UCaaS App Phone/Text with iOS and Android Teams App is a must.
Integration of Avaya UCaaS App Workspace/Messaging/Files with iOS and Android Teams App is a must.
Data loss prevention policy DLP template enforcement on all data living in Avaya UCaaS Desktop and Phone App Workspace/Messaging/Files/ Phone/Text is a must, Teams VOIP has this!
End-staff-user-self-service training on Avaya UCaaS Phone App integration with Teams phone App and Avaya UCaaS Desktop App integration with Teams Desktop App is a must.
End-staff-user-self-service training on the Avaya UCaaS App and teaching problem-based situational examples is a must.

Return on Investment

$10,000 savings every year, in comparison to equal Teams VOIP

Unified Platform

Online Meetings/Conferences, Collab, and Calling are PHIPA PIPEDA compliant and this makes it a perfect option for us as a healthcare business (similar to Zoom Medical versus Zoom regular). Teams' VOIP and Teams unfortunately do not have good reputations in health compliance, despite their advertisement that they are compliant now (in their starting days only Avaya UCaaS and Zoom medical were, although not Teams). Keeping this as a key sell point for your account execs is key for all customers in education, health, and public service.

Support Rating

Always very fast from a human response (< 1 day). However, I gave 5 out of 10 only because you are still not using a private enterprise Azure AI service ChatGPT for your documentation. You can use Azure AI service ChatGPT for your corporate Avaya Private AI system and all your help docs are put in there. As an end-user, I would only interact with your web front end or Avaya help app (if you create that) where I can ask questions and get your private ChatGPT to answer my helpdesk questions). It will open up a gold rush opportunity for you to see what other businesses are doing with Azure AI Service CHatGPT, recently announced.

Integrations

In my opinion, integrations with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 are a huge must, otherwise, we would likely leave Avaya UCaaS.

Alternatives Considered

Avaya IP Office

SSO was not available for our former Avaya IP Office on-premises system, and after the pandemic, we needed hybrid work, so all workers could work from home and this ushered in the age of cloud for us with Avaya UCaaS: Cloud. It is our choice now only because our workforce is no longer in 1 building or 1 building and several site offices, but our workforce is at home, or at work, and hybrid work requires UCaaS, be it Avaya UCaaS or Microsoft Teams VOIP.

Key Insights

Do you think Avaya UCaaS delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Avaya UCaaS's feature set?

Yes

Did Avaya UCaaS live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Avaya UCaaS go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Avaya UCaaS again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Azure Bot Service (Microsoft Bot Framework), Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams, External User Manager for Microsoft Teams, Azure Application Gateway, Azure API Management, Azure AI Speech

Likelihood to Recommend

Small businesses can do with Teams VOIP and will be fine. Large SMBs and large corporate businesses with complex call queues, complex call handling, changing staff from one team to another, and predictable billing needs, will always find leaving Teams VOIP to Avaya UCaaS as their biggest value in platform-migration-led savings pitch from your sales reps and account execs. Retaining existing customers depends a lot on the next generation of integrations you bring for the iOS and Android Phone Teams App with Avaya. If you could do away with the Avaya UCaaS App on Phones and Desktops and have the entire app as a plugin directly built on MS Teams - that would be a wise move, as end users NEED 1 UCaaS interface, and they do not care what is the backend. You can have end users using Teams all the time for SharePoint and OneDrive and Instant Messaging/Meetings, while Avaya UCaaS is living inside Teams App on Desktop and Teams App on iOS phones and Android phones to do all calls and text. I would ask Avaya's engineering team to de-prioritize the workspace and files and focus more time on how can Avaya completely live on Teams App on phones and desktops, laptops, and tablets.

Avaya UCaaS for Children's Aid Society of Algoma

Overall Satisfaction with Avaya UCaaS