Powering a National Microsoft Teams Voice Rollout

One of Canada’s largest financial institutions is currently executing one of the biggest enterprise-wide telephony migrations in the country’s banking sector, transitioning from Cisco Call Manager to Microsoft Teams Voice across 900+ branches, corporate offices, and operational sites nationwide.
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But this isn’t your average tech refresh. It’s a full-scale reinvention of how one of Canada’s top-tier financial institutions connects, collaborates, and serves clients every day.
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And when you’re a bank of this size and profile, the stakes aren’t just high, they’re constant.
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Markets don’t pause. Clients don’t wait. Compliance obligations never take a day off.

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The institution’s goal is bold: modernize every single voice endpoint in the organization, moving to a fully cloud-based, Microsoft-powered communications platform.
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What makes this project particularly ambitious is its integration of third-party HP Poly hardware with Microsoft Teams, a configuration not yet adopted at this scale by any other Canadian bank.
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It’s one of the first implementations of its kind in the Canadian financial sector. But here’s the challenge: you can’t just shut down a bank’s phone system.
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That means migrating sites live, branch by branch (900+ sites total in scope), five to six locations per night, without disrupting critical conversations that keep the business running.

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Technology is only half the story. What truly powers a program like this is talent — assembling a team of specialists who can deliver under pressure in live, high-stakes enterprise environments.

You don’t run a national voice migration for a major financial institution with off-the-shelf resources. It takes:

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• Migration specialists, leading nightly cutovers with zero margin for error
• Post-implementation experts, embedded in Day One/Day Two support to stabilize branches post-migration
• Engineering teams actively collaborating with Microsoft and HP Poly to resolve new hardware quirks and interoperability bugs in real time
• Pre-implementation crews managing site surveys and data gathering across all 900+ locations
• Compliance and network pros ensuring every call path meets regulatory standards and business continuity demands

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And it’s all happening against a backdrop of tight timelines, evolving technology, and a constantly shifting operational landscape.

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“This isn’t just replacing phones, it’s transforming how a national financial institution operates, one live site at a time.”

Sr. Voice Collaboration Engineer

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Partnering closely with CIBC’s program leads, Spark mobilized the talent needed to keep the rollout moving coast to coast. We streamlined the hiring process with:

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• Voice Collaboration Engineers for nightly branch migrations
• Day One/Day Two operational support specialists to keep branches steady during and post-launch
• Flexible, collaborative screening and onboarding processes to move resources into play at speed, without compromising on technical depth or cultural fit

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And because this implementation involves integrating new-to-market hardware with an evolving cloud platform, Spark consultants are on the front lines of real-time troubleshooting — partnering with Microsoft and HP Poly engineers to refine solutions as the rollout scales.

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A national migration in motion, with zero operational disruptions to date — modernizing how a major Canadian financial institution connects, collaborates, and serves clients from coast to coast.
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For the engineers, migration leads, support specialists, and program managers behind it, this isn’t just another contract or internal initiative. It’s one of those career-defining projects you’ll be referencing years from now:

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“I was part of that national Teams Voice transformation. First of its kind in Canada. Tight timelines. New hardware. Live migrations. Unforgettable.”

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And that’s the part of the story that deserves to be told.

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Because while technology gets the headlines, it’s the behind-the-scenes specialists who make it happen.

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