How North Highland cut global voice costs by 70% with Operator Connect

North Highland operates globally, but its voice environment did not. Four separate telecom platforms supported one workforce, driving cost, complexity, and inconsistent support.

With collaboration already in Microsoft Teams, the next step was clear. Simplify voice.

Working with Trace3, North Highland partnered with Pure IP to consolidate voice into Microsoft Teams and create one scalable, cost-controlled global model.

Managing global voice is complicated enough. Managing four separate platforms makes it worse.

At North Highland, a global change and transformation consultancy, voice had become difficult to manage and harder to justify financially. The company operates across the USA, UK, and other international locations. Over time, its telecom estate had splintered into four separate solutions supporting one workforce.

From the inside, the strain was clear:

We were challenged from a budget perspective. How do we reduce our [annual] costs? And then for me, I was frustrated with the fact that we’re a global company and I have four different solutions for my telecom space.”

Users felt it. Engineers felt it. IT leadership felt it. Through its strategic partner Trace3, North Highland engaged Pure IP to design a simpler, globally scalable voice model aligned to Microsoft Teams.

To hear directly from North Highland about the journey and decisions behind the project, watch the video ⬇️

The challenge

North Highland is an early adopter of Microsoft Teams. Collaboration already lived inside the platform.

Voice did not.

Instead, the company was managing four separate telecom solutions across regions. That fragmentation created friction:

Multiple vendor relationships
Different support models by geography
Inconsistent management overhead
Limited global standardization
Rising monthly costs heading into a new year

Managing voice across four platforms consumed time and energy that should have been spent elsewhere. Budget reduction targets made the urgency sharper.

Any replacement needed to meet three criteria:

Stay within a reduced budget
Integrate natively with Microsoft Teams
Support a true global footprint

Global coverage was non-negotiable. The solution had to work in the US, London, and across international offices without regional workarounds.

The solution

Working alongside Trace3, Pure IP helped North Highland consolidate its global voice estate onto Microsoft Teams Phone using Operator Connect.

Because Teams was already embedded across the business, adding PSTN capability was a natural extension. For employees, it meant voice inside a platform they already used daily. No new application. No parallel system.

The program included:

Standardizing globally on Teams Phone
Implementing Operator Connect for PSTN services
Consolidating providers into a single global partner
Simplifying number management and porting

Operator Connect enabled rapid provisioning for testing, allowing North Highland to validate performance early in the process. During number porting, minor issues were resolved within scheduled maintenance windows. No calls were missed.

The structural shift was significant: four telecom platforms became one, vendor sprawl decreased, and management overhead was reduced.

The results

Six months after deployment, the financial impact is clear.

North Highland reduced monthly voice costs by:

66% in the United States
70% overall

The operational improvement is just as important. Voice now runs inside the same environment employees use for collaboration every day.

As Jason put it, "telephony is now operating the way that it's supposed to work and everybody's extremely happy."

Cutting cost requires structural change

Reducing cost starts with simplifying structure. Pure IP supports enterprises in consolidating global voice onto Microsoft Teams Phone using Operator Connect, delivering measurable savings without adding complexity. If your voice environment is fragmented:

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