Steve Flavell | Source | co-CEO and co-founder at LoopUp

Co-CEO and Co-Founder of LoopUp Steve Flavell tells UC Today how telecoms can make themselves indispensable in an increasingly cloud-first communication landscape

Steve Flavell's What's Up with Tech Podcast interview. Cloud telephony is revolutionizing how multinational businesses communicate, and nobody understands this transformation better than Steve Flavell co-CEO and co-founder of LoopUp. After 20 years in remote communications, his company now specializes in integrating cloud telephony with Microsoft Teams—filling the crucial gap in Microsoft's otherwise comprehensive unified communications platform. The pandemic accelerated Teams adoption dramatically, with Microsoft experiencing "two years' worth of adoption in two months." Yet despite Teams' dominance, telephony remains the missing piece in truly unified communications. By bridging this gap, companies gain remarkable efficiency: eliminating on-premises equipment across global locations, consolidating dozens of regional telecom vendors into a single relationship, and managing their entire global communications estate through one intuitive portal. Beyond operational efficiency, this integration enables a fundamental shift in how we think about business communications. The traditional "landline versus mobile" distinction is evolving into "business versus personal" identities, where your business number follows you across all devices. This separation gives employees flexibility while maintaining clear boundaries between work and personal communications. For organizations embracing AI initiatives, telephony integration also ensures valuable voice conversations contribute to their data ecosystem. Without this integration, companies miss capturing insights from a significant portion of their communications for analysis by tools like Microsoft Copilot. Looking ahead, LoopUp continues innovating with their upcoming "LoopUp One" portal, which will enhance global support capabilities, introduce role-based access, and provide more sophisticated analytics. Want to transform how your multinational organization approaches communications? Discover how consolidating global telephony can streamline operations while enhancing your Teams experience.