For organizations running both Microsoft Teams and traditional telephony or Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) platforms, productivity often suffers when the two systems don’t work seamlessly together. TeamMate solves that challenge by building native Teams applications that tightly integrate AI, call control, messaging, and notifications, making Teams a true hub for unified communications.

As part of the Mitel Unified Communications (UC) Accelerator, TeamMate is helping organizations bring the best of both platforms into a single, streamlined experience. 

We sat down with Eric Hernaez, Co-Founder and CEO of TeamMate, to discuss how their solution enhances Mitel’s offering, the opportunities opened by this collaboration, and where they’re headed next.

Eric, what problem are you solving, and why is now the right moment to solve it?

TeamMate bridges the gap between Microsoft Teams and Mitel systems. We build native Teams apps that turn Teams into a central hub for calls, voicemails, messages, and chats so Mitel users can leverage Teams as a centralized hub for unified messaging, voice, and automation.

With the rise of hybrid work and the rapid adoption of Teams, organizations can no longer afford the inefficiencies of disconnected systems, making this the right time to deliver seamless integration.

How do you see your solution changing the way enterprises or customers operate?

More than ever, organizations expect their phone systems to integrate with external systems such as CRMs, ERPs and AI agents.  This interaction produces rich data that cannot always be communicated effectively over a voice-only connection.  The TeamMate solution lets Mitel users leverage the rich chat capabilities in Microsoft Teams to surface data from external sources in a way that complements existing workflows. 

With more than 340 Million active users, Microsoft Teams has become the de facto collaboration client of choice for businesses worldwide. With TeamMate’s Mitel connector, enterprise users can seamlessly access the Mitel services and features they rely on alongside the growing trove of rich data coming from external systems —without ever leaving the Microsoft Teams environment. This not only simplifies daily workflows but also helps enterprises maximize the value of both platforms.

Can you share an example of how that might work in practice?

One of our customers, a large financial institution, uses the TeamMate connector to display a screen pop in Teams that contains information assembled from several external systems, including an AI voice agent. Being able to associate this data with an inbound caller’s phone number and display it as an adaptive card in Teams, before the call is answered, has taken their agent productivity to a new level.   

How does working within the Mitel UC Accelerator open up new opportunities for TeamMate?

The Mitel UC Accelerator gives TeamMate access to the business and technical experts that it needs to build and maintain the ultimate Teams integration for Mitel, and a means to fast-track exposure to the Mitel community. It also creates a platform for us to showcase our solution to a global audience of customers and partners much faster than we could on our own.

In what ways do you see your solution complementing or extending Mitel’s technology?

With TeamMate in the mix, Mitel customers no longer need to choose between Teams and Mitel clients. Instead, they will have the best of both worlds, in whichever client they prefer. This flexibility ensures that organizations can adopt the workflows that best suit their needs without compromising on capability.

What’s your long-term vision for the company and the impact you want to have?

TeamMate strives to become the pre-eminent provider of connectors for Microsoft Teams, with best of breed integration solutions for all external communications platforms. Ultimately, we want to empower enterprises to unify their communications strategy so employees can focus less on continuously switching between tools and more on meaningful collaboration in a unified platform within Teams.

Thank you, Eric. To wrap things up – what does success in this program look like for you?

Success in the Mitel UC Accelerator program means that Mitel dealers and customers will choose TeamMate anytime they need to solve a compatibility or integration problem with Microsoft Teams. It’s about becoming the trusted go-to solution for bridging that gap, creating long-term value for both Mitel and its customers.

By embedding Mitel’s trusted communication capabilities directly into Microsoft Teams, TeamMate is eliminating the productivity trade-offs that enterprises have long faced. TeamMate’s connector approach ensures that organizations no longer have to choose between collaboration and telephony—they can have both, seamlessly. Beyond boosting efficiency, this integration empowers enterprises to future-proof their communications strategy, giving employees the flexibility to work in the tools they know best while maintaining access to the robust voice and UC features they rely on.

Stay tuned as we highlight more innovation stories from the Mitel UC Accelerator cohort.

To learn more about TeamMate, visit teammatetechnology.com.