Converged communications partner drives innovation and growth

Generation-e started its journey as a Microsoft partner focused exclusively on networking and voice services; however, when Microsoft shifted toward cloud solutions, the leadership team recognized the opportunity to expand its offerings and become an end-to-end unified communications provider. Today, Generation-e’s converged communications practice has grown to account for 80 percent of its overall business. “Microsoft Teams serves as a solid foundation for building a complete portfolio of tailored communication, collaboration, and productivity offerings,” said Nathan Chapman, CTO and CISO at Generation-e. “These solutions are resonating with clients because they simplify day-to-day work and consolidate functionality to reduce overall operational costs.”

Microsoft Teams Rooms has become one of the biggest drivers of growth for Generation-e, with its meeting room practice revenue increasing between 30 to 50 percent year over year. “Hybrid work has become standard operating practice for businesses, and the majority of people spend more time in meetings than they do picking up the phone to make a call,” said Nathan Chapman. “We made an early investment in incorporating meeting space solutions into our converged communications practice, and it has really paid off as companies are seeking to boost hybrid-work experiences.” As part of its Teams Rooms engagements, Generation-e developed a Modern Meeting Success Framework (MMSF), which outlines the multiple requirements and interdependencies for creating successful meeting spaces, including physical environment, network, security, platform configuration, change management, and more. “We wanted to educate customers on everything from planning and budgeting to technology implementation and construction. Even with the best technology implementation, if your network isn’t optimized for it, for example, you’re going to end up with poor-quality calls all around,” said Nathan Chapman. “Our framework ensures that customers can confidently achieve desirable business outcomes.”

Generation-e is taking a similar path of early investment in what the company sees as the next big innovation for its business: Microsoft 365 Copilot. With a dedicated and trusted AI practice already established to focus on the growth and integration of generative AI across all of its service areas, the experts at Generation-e are helping organizations understand and implement Copilot features within Microsoft Teams while also managing governance, risk, and compliance concerns. “Integrating Microsoft 365 Copilot into our converged communications practice gives us an AI foundation that helps our clients enhance productivity and ensure compliance for employees. We are seeing strong demand for AI transcription and meeting summarization, and as organizations mature in their use of these capabilities, we’re already deep into the next phase, developing automation and agentic solutions that unlock even greater value,” said Nathan Chapman.

While enhancing productivity and ensuring compliance, Generation-e's AI approach also emphasizes data security, protection, and operational efficiency. By leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot, the Generation-e team provides robust security protocols and governance frameworks that safeguard sensitive information and streamline processes. This comprehensive strategy simplifies day-to-day work and consolidates functionality to reduce overall operating costs, along with unlocking the additional value of Copilot investments across existing converged communications solutions.

Addressing customer needs for improving productivity, user satisfaction

With deep knowledge of Teams Phone and Teams Rooms; core infrastructure skills around networking, security, identity; and third-party contact center implementation expertise, Generation-e has established itself as a trusted partner with a proven track record of helping organizations improve productivity and user experiences.

Working with Liberty Financial, a leading loan aggregator that has served more than 900,000 customers, Generation-e deployed Teams Phone for all 500+ workers, along with a Teams-certified contact center to replace its on-premises Skype solution. With users up and running in just six months, the financial services provider quickly saw improvements in employee productivity and reductions in IT maintenance issues.

Generation-e is building on its success with Teams Phone and Teams Rooms to unlock additional value for customers with Microsoft 365 Copilot. At a leading online supplier of industrial and safety products in Australia, Generation-e completed a migration project from a third-party collaboration platform to an end-to-end Teams solution that boosts productivity and reduces costs. Because the customer is an online business without any brick-and-mortar presence, Teams offers a more stable and versatile platform to ensure there is no breakdown in communications. In fact, even during the migration, Generation-e was able to ensure that there would be no interruption to day-to-day productivity. “Our team was able to migrate this retail customer to Teams Phone, Teams Rooms, and a Teams-certified contact center over a six-month period without disrupting business operations,” said Melissa Lee-Young, Head of Marketing at Generation-e. “They’ve reported significant reduction in call-handling times and an increase in overall customer satisfaction – and are now looking at how Microsoft 365 Copilot can assist in continuing to optimize customer service operations.”

Teams Premium: Building block for growing hybrid-work engagements

Alongside generative AI, Teams Premium is becoming an increasingly important focus of organizations that want to enable hybrid work – particularly with the recent inclusion of Microsoft Places, which helps organizations optimize space, enable individual desk booking, and provide hybrid worker occupancy and utilization data. “Teams Premium is an ideal solution for us because it aligns well with all of our capabilities,” said Nathan Chapman. “It includes innovative technologies like advanced security, AI-powered tools, and Microsoft Places, which benefit from our extensive change management and adoption experience to help the full value of the solution materialize.”

Another area where Generation-e is seeing strong interest in Teams Premium is smart buildings initiatives, and the partner is already working with customers like global real estate consultancy Knight Frank to use Teams Premium features to support a better hybrid-workplace model. “We’re doing work with access control, CCTV, and badge swipe systems so that when a customer like Knight Frank has Teams Premium licensing in place, it puts us in a great position to connect into Microsoft Places and deliver workplace insights and guidance to both employees and management teams. We’re excited about the impact these advancements will make on the future of work for our customers,” concluded Nathan Chapman.

“Integrating Microsoft 365 Copilot into our converged communications practice gives us an AI foundation that helps our clients enhance productivity and ensure compliance for employees."

— Nathan Chapman, CTO and CISO, Generation-e

“Teams Premium is an ideal solution for us because it aligns well with all of our capabilities. It includes innovative technologies like advanced security, AI-powered tools, and Microsoft Places, which benefit from our extensive change management and adoption experience to help the full value of the solution materialize."

— Nathan Chapman, CTO and CISO, Generation-e

Generation-e evolves the hybrid workplace with Microsoft Teams