Remote collaboration apps are the new normal
Adoption of Microsoft 365 spiked with the recent lockdown. Here’s why they’ll remain a major feature of the business landscape when offices reopen.
Update: Rogers is now Canada’s largest operator partner of Microsoft Teams solutions and is the first in Canada to offer Operator Connect Mobile, a new all-in-one communications and collaboration solution built on Microsoft Teams! Learn more here.
Chief among these challenges is maintaining the same level of productivity and collaboration they had when everyone was at the office. To achieve this, many businesses are relying even more heavily on the collaboration features of Microsoft 365.
Initially, this increased reliance might have seemed like a temporary fix for their remote employees, but it’s safe to say most have discovered the value these tools bring to the workforce, lockdown or not.
As the business world gears up for a phased re-opening of the workplace, teams everywhere will return –or perhaps continue working from home—fluent in mobile working processes and recognizing this new literacy as a competitive advantage. Here are three reasons why:
Boost employee morale
Cloud-based productivity suites, such as Microsoft 365, are not only giving teams the flexibility to securely store, access and collaborate on documents, but they’re also changing the culture of remote work.
Work-from-home practices have become normalized, and the idea that we need to be in the office to be productive is being challenged. Whether teams are working from home or on the road, collaboration tools are creating new work habits that are building trust between managers and teams, boosting morale and employee satisfaction.
Communication tools that communicate with each other
Traditionally, many businesses adopted a variety of different third-party communications solutions, or even natively developed their own tools, each of which tended to serve a singular purpose with little relation to the rest of the communications infrastructure. For example, imagine a business that uses one solution for voice calling, another for video calls and yet another for file sharing. In this case, to switch from a voice call to a video call for the purpose of screensharing requires disconnecting and reconnecting video. The result is a fractured communication experience instead of a seamless one.
Likewise, Microsoft Teams, which is a hub of communication functionalities within Microsoft 365, enables meetings, chat, file sharing the ability to move seamlessly between them. Plus, businesses already using Microsoft 365 can easily incorporate voice calling into Teams with Microsoft 365 Business Voice: a comprehensive, cloud-based phone system that comes with a long list of calling features and administrative capabilities. This integration of many apps in one hub takes the strain of juggling multiple tools from the employee and helps focus their energy on the job at hand.
Do more from anywhere
The shift to working from home has not only enabled teams to connect and collaborate in new ways with new technology, but it has also proven that remote work can lower TCO (total cost of ownership) by reducing the need for physical infrastructure and the resources tied up in maintaining it.
By moving operations to the cloud, and away from servers located in the office, businesses can free up time and resources required to maintain them. Cloud hosting also ensures security without the need to run regular patches or updates. Ultimately, this frees up IT professionals to focus more on their businesses’ core missions.
Businesses that have learned to use cloud-based productivity apps to work together seamlessly from any location while reducing the strain on IT resources are already moving forward. As offices begin to reopen, the new habits, attitudes, skills and cost-effectiveness that Microsoft 365 have introduced will be a distinct advantage in the post-pandemic business landscape.
To learn more about Microsoft 365, connect with a Rogers business specialist.