Navigating the Future of Global Business Communications: Insights from LoopUp Co-CEO Steve Flavell
The world of business telecommunications is undergoing a profound transformation. Moving beyond traditional landlines and on-premises hardware, companies are rapidly adopting cloud-based solutions to empower their distributed workforces and simplify global operations. Recently, Steve Flavell, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of LoopUp, sat down with Wisdom Plexus’s “Extra Mile” series to share his perspective on these shifts and LoopUp’s pivotal role in shaping the industry’s future.
From Fixing Conference Calls to Leading Cloud Telco
LoopUp’s journey began in 2003 with a clear mission: to fix the frustrations inherent in remote meetings. At a time when conference calls were often a “nightmare of visibility, security, and control,” LoopUp developed simple, intuitive software designed to make online meetings less daunting and improve the user experience. This early focus on user-centric solutions helped the company grow.
However, the global pandemic significantly altered the landscape. The widespread adoption of unified communications (UC) platforms like Microsoft Teams superseded their initial conference calling product. This shift, ironically, paved the way for LoopUp’s current direction. Today, LoopUp operates in a “very different world,” focused squarely on next-generation business telecommunications, often referred to as cloud telephony. LoopUp confidently asserts that it is the world’s most global telecommunications service provider, offering services in more countries than any other provider.
The core mission is now centered on helping large multinational enterprises consolidate and simplify how they procure and manage their telecom services globally.
Telecoms Undergoing a Double Restructuring
Steve Flavell highlights that the telecoms industry, despite being decades old, is currently experiencing an exciting and fundamental restructuring. This transformation is happening in two significant ways:
Migration to the Cloud: The provision of telecom services is rapidly moving away from traditional on-premises equipment (like switches and physical circuits) to cloud-based infrastructure. This shift is critical for enabling post-pandemic work models, allowing employees to make and receive calls from anywhere. It also frees companies from the burden of maintaining costly on-site hardware.
Integration with Unified Communications (UC): Telecom functionality is being integrated directly into leading UC platforms such as Microsoft Teams. While platforms like Teams excel at internal communication, chat, video, and meetings, they often lack the ability to make and receive traditional external phone calls – a “big hole”. LoopUp bridges this gap, providing the essential telecommunications layer to make these platforms truly “unified”.
This evolution is possible because next-generation telecoms is essentially data transmitted over the internet. Voice becomes a data application served globally over broadband or fiber networks.
LoopUp’s Differentiated Strategy: Multinational Service Leadership
Unlike traditional telecoms, which has historically been country or region-specific (e.g., a different provider in the UK, US, or Germany), LoopUp has a clear strategy: to be the leader in multinational service provision within the next-generation business telecoms segment. By offering the world’s biggest coverage, LoopUp provides a differentiated proposition that is driving strong growth.
Seamless Integration with Microsoft Teams: Operator Connect & Direct Routing
LoopUp works closely with Microsoft Teams, identified as the world’s leading UC product. Microsoft provides programs like Direct Routing (the original) and Operator Connect (more recent) specifically to allow telecommunications companies and specialist providers like LoopUp to integrate their services directly into Teams in a unified manner. These programs are necessary because Microsoft, primarily a software and cloud company, is not a regulated telecommunications provider. LoopUp offers both services, selecting the most appropriate program based on specific customer requirements.
Achieving Milestones and Delivering Real Value
LoopUp’s focus on multinational cloud telephony has led to significant success. The new product has reached revenue milestones in “almost record time,” placing the company in the top 0.5 percentile for speed to revenue from a product launch. Steve Flavell attributes this rapid adoption to a clear and compelling value proposition: enabling large multinational companies to consolidate their telecoms from potentially 25 vendors down to just one, ensuring global consistency.
A key innovation supporting this is the launch of their software portal. For the first time, this portal provides multinational companies with a single, unified view of their entire global telecoms estate. They can manage all their phone numbers worldwide, access detailed usage analytics, and provision users within a single, intuitive system, eliminating the complexity of fragmented, country-specific management tools.
Furthermore, the integration with Microsoft Teams introduces an interesting AI dimension. Telecom content can be included in an enterprise’s AI data set, providing a “very rich source of information” for AI operations – a new evolution in this long-standing industry.
Focus and Leadership in a Changing World
Steve Flavell describes his leadership style as leading by example, being “stuck into the business,” and maintaining an open and honest approach with the team, which is vital when navigating periods of significant change. He emphasizes that LoopUp is fortunate to be “super focused” with one clear strategy: multinational differentiation. This singular focus allows them to maintain a consistent long-term vision and dedicate attention to day-to-day operations, growth, and customer delight.
For aspiring entrepreneurs in the tech and cloud communications space, Steve offers practical advice: don’t over-plan, but have an “educated crack”. Get the “most minimally viable variant” of your idea out quickly to gather feedback, and be prepared to iterate or “try and fail quickly” to accelerate the path to success.
Enabling the Hybrid and Global Workplace
The shift towards remote and hybrid work models isn’t just influencing LoopUp’s future; it’s fundamental to their core purpose. Cloud communications, by providing ubiquitous and flexible service provision, is essential for delivering global service and underpinning LoopUp’s multinational strategy in this new era of work.
LoopUp’s evolution reflects the dynamic restructuring of the telecoms industry. By providing a unified, global approach to cloud telecommunications, LoopUp is actively enabling the flexible, multinational work environments that define today’s business landscape.
