Different countries, different regulations, different providers—that’s a lot for any IT leader to juggle. Dispersed telephony may feel like the only realistic option for enterprises headquartered or operating in EMEA. The good news—it doesn’t have to stay that way.
Imagine operating efficiently and reliably through a single vendor for an entire region, no matter your teams’ geographic locations. That’s the power of consolidating carriers—eliminating the complexity of a fragmented communications strategy.
Let’s explore the advantages of IT consolidation for businesses that run across borders.
Benefits of IT vendor consolidation
Global digital transformation (DX) spending is projected to reach almost $3.9 trillion by 2027. Most investments are centered around improving operational efficiency and customer experience through the use of technology. Progress is being made, but a challenge persists:
37% of geographically distributed businesses say building and maintaining a coherent IT infrastructure across locations is their biggest obstacle.
That’s where consolidating telephony comes in—it’s a strategy that can make a huge impact on your technology goals. By managing and maintaining fewer moving parts, you open doors to impactful changes across the board.
For your business: Maximized efficiency and ROI
- Ease of operations: IT consolidation frees your team from managing numerous vendor relationships and troubleshooting across multiple platforms. This leads to more productivity (and a lot less headache) across your EMEA operations.
- Improved ROI: Fewer vendors (or a single one) means fewer contracts and invoices. When you consolidate communications, you help reduce administrative and operational overhead. Plus, consolidating usage with one provider often comes with volume discounts and economies of scale, which contributes to total cost of ownership savings.
For your employees: Enhanced communication
Carrier consolidation makes it easy for your teams to stay connected, regardless of where they work. Select a carrier who offers the coverage and quality needed to keep your business running. With all communications services housed on a single platform, IT teams can better support the needs of their geographically dispersed employees to ensure seamless collaboration.
One such example comes from Docusign’s global contact center—they centralized telephony by consolidating from nine carriers down to one. As mentioned by Vipin Kalra, Docusign’s Senior Engineer of Collaboration and Contact Center, “Integrating our CCaaS platform into Bandwidth’s universal platform will make new agent set-up, troubleshooting, and any future migrations so much easier.”
Simply put, centralized telephony helps IT teams work together with less technological friction.
For your customers: Consistent experiences
Your customers expect fast, easy, and dependable service every time they contact your company. Consolidated communications with a trusted provider will deliver exactly that. Go with a vendor that offers built-in network resilience to eliminate concerns over business continuity—at least from the telecom side. You can also ensure compatibility between multiple systems in your tech stack with a provider who offers advanced call flow integrations.
Key considerations for successful carrier consolidation
Choosing a provider who knows global telephony inside and out will help you gain the most value from IT vendor consolidation. Let’s unpack the top priorities you need to evaluate for a strong partnership.
Regulatory compliance
Every country in EMEA has its own set of rules that can change rapidly—ranging from notification obligations, KYC/local address requirements, service restrictions, and beyond. You need a centralized provider with regulatory expertise who stays on top of the changing landscape. Getting this right will help you avoid costly fines, service suspension, or license revocation—along with negative customer experiences and damage to your brand reputation.
+ How Bandwidth partners with you:
Bandwidth has established PSTN interconnections with other tier-1 network providers to provide in-country voice services in 26 EMEA countries. Our Product Compliance Operations team can help your enterprise and end-users stay informed as you navigate industry requirements and product compliance. Bandwidth’s approach makes your voice, emergency, and messaging services a priority to ensure reliability of services and to support your own focus on regulatory readiness.
Network resiliency
High availability and geo-redundancy matters—especially when the unexpected happens. Seek out stability and business continuity when considering IT consolidation. Prioritize a provider who delivers a geo-redundant network architecture and continuous network monitoring. This will help you maintain customer satisfaction, employee productivity, and company revenue.
+ How Bandwidth partners with you:
Bandwidth’s global network is engineered to achieve 99.995% uptime with its georedundant data centers, featuring 10 Super PoPs around the world. With network monitoring 24/7/365—plus real-time insights on your traffic—your multinational enterprise can continue delivering world-class service without worrying about localized outages knocking you offline.
Scalability and flexibility
Whether you’re consolidating communications today or eyeing an expansion tomorrow, you need a vendor that can grow with your enterprise. Can they adapt to any stage of your digital transformation, from SIP trunking for on-prem deployments to full cloud adoption? Are they evolving alongside you as the industry shifts?
+ How Bandwidth partners with you:
Wherever your company is headed, Bandwidth’s extensive reach and solutions suite will help prepare you for what’s next. Our global network delivers reach into 40 countries across EMEA—with 31 of those delivering full-stack PSTN replacement services. Easily migrate your telephony with our Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC) integrations for UCaaS and CCaaS platforms—or connect your premise-based or cloud SBCs with our expert implementation guides. You’ll be equipped to scale no matter your platform, traffic volumes, cost requirements, or coverage needs.
Porting and number management
Consolidating telephony involves handling large volumes of numbers across disparate locations. Sound overwhelming? It shouldn’t be—if you have the right provider with number porting expertise and robust phone number management capabilities to help you add, manage, or migrate numbers.
+ How Bandwidth partners with you:
Bandwidth offers self-serve number management tools that let businesses easily order, provision, and initiate porting in 65+ countries. The automation for local and toll-free number porting also cuts down the time it takes to get numbers active on your platform. Plus, a dedicated team of porting pros makes sure you enjoy a ‘Happy Porting’ experience.
Emergency services
Whether your employees are in-person at an office location or working remotely, rapid help should always be within reach. Connect your communications with local emergency services—all while your enterprise remains compliant with regulatory guidelines.
+ How Bandwidth partners with you:
Bandwidth ensures employee safety by managing up-to-date location information for emergency responders, supporting fixed and nomadic endpoints, and meeting local requirements for emergency services.
Consolidate confidently with Bandwidth
As part of your IT consolidation initiative, Bandwidth serves as a global partner that understands EMEA’s telephony challenges. We’re uniquely positioned to provide enterprise communications solutions that enable more connected customer and employee experiences. Plus, you’ll benefit from our always-available technical support through each step of the IT vendor consolidation process.
Curious how a consolidation project would look for your business? Contact Bandwidth today to start the conversation (and keep this checklist handy to help you ask the right questions).
