Last year, organizations across the world swiftly adopted remote working policies to accommodate the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. This trend has continued into 2021, with many businesses electing to make work-from-home a permanent solution for their workforce.
One of the most effective ways to support a remote environment and ensure business operations remain ongoing is through a solid collaboration tool such as Microsoft Teams. The benefits of using Microsoft Teams are far-reaching as it offers workspace chat, videoconferencing, Teams calling, file sharing and storage, application integration, and more, making it one of the most popular platforms among midmarket and enterprise organizations.
The Main Benefits of Microsoft Teams
If you are a business leader who hasn’t incorporated a collaboration tool into your overall IT strategy, here are some of the top benefits of Microsoft Teams to consider for your organization.
1. Encourage Collaboration
Microsoft Teams houses a plethora of capabilities that facilitate collaboration among employees and the benefits of Microsoft Teams in the workplace have proven to be essential during this era of remote working.
The benefits of Microsoft Teams meetings are undeniable, as audio and video conferencing are some of the most popular features the platform offers. With the click of a button, meetings can be scheduled for multiple – even hundreds – of individuals, and participants are equipped with the ability to join from virtually anywhere, allowing important business activities to remain on schedule without disruption.
Real-time chat is another feature that enhances organizational collaboration. With Microsoft Teams chat, employees can easily communicate with one another about a specific project and receive instantaneous responses to pressing questions.
Teams calling can be an organization’s cloud-based phone system with advanced features including call transfer, multilevel auto attendants, and call queues. Employees can have their own DIDs and they can make calls from their data-enabled devices such as a desktop, laptop, mobile phone, or tablet. Employees can also access their voicemails and the transcription from anywhere.
The file-sharing functionality in Microsoft Teams provides yet another avenue for seamless collaboration. With the ability to upload various document types, employees no longer have to send different versions via email which can result in version confusion or antiquated files.
Additionally, because of Microsoft Teams’ tight integration with Microsoft 365, there is no need to switch between apps to collaborate on Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents, as it can easily be done within the Teams platform.
2. Boost Digital Transformation
Companies without a digital transformation strategy have no doubt been faced with challenges as a remote workforce becomes the norm, and frankly, the expectation for many employees. A great place for business leaders to start cultivating their move to a digital workplace is investing in a solid collaboration tool such as Microsoft Teams.
As Teams is a cloud-based solution, data storage locations can be minimized and streamlined for improved accessibility and document availability.
Microsoft Teams also makes information and data sharing significantly easier for users. Because of its robust feature set and digital capabilities, employees can work faster and smarter by cutting out time-consuming processes.
3. Enhance Connectivity
BYOD policies have become commonplace across many organizations due to their flexible nature. This has been especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic where potential employees are interviewed and hired remotely, as BYOD allows new hires to begin working with little downtime.
With BYOD, employees can access the company’s enterprise system and data utilizing their chosen hardware. Having technologies in place that are conducive to these policies, such as Microsoft Teams, ensures employees can easily access the necessary applications to effortlessly collaborate with their colleagues.
The Microsoft Teams application can be downloaded onto a variety of devices, whether it be a laptop, desktop, mobile phone which eradicates the limitations of hardware or software preferences. Teams is supported on Windows and Mac as well as iOS and Android, allowing employees to stay connected across their portfolio of technologies.
4. Improve Productivity
Another benefit of Microsoft Teams in the workplace is the consistent connectivity it provides. Employees can respond to client communications and correspond on urgent business matters without having to send or receive emails, cutting down on unnecessary threads and reducing the time lag between team members who may not have access to their emails.
Important files, apps, meetings, and more are all accessible from a single shared workspace, providing a streamlined and simplified end user experience. Employees can easily reference a past conversation, grab a document, ask a quick question, and so much more from right within the platform.
5. Receive Data-Driven Insights
With the recent shift to remote working, company leaders may be concerned that employee productivity could drop, altering normal business operations. If an organization is interested in tracking employee productivity, that, too, can be accomplished with Microsoft Teams.
Metrics such as chat messages, number of meetings organized, ad-hoc meetings, screen-share time, shared files, and more are recorded for each user. Microsoft assures only the global administrator has rights to the analytics and reporting experience, which provides insights into how the organization is using Microsoft Teams.
Depending on how a business chooses to use these insights – if at all – new business processes could be implemented to promote and improve employee productivity.
Learn more:
- How to Overcome the Most Common Cloud Migration Challenges
- How to Create a SharePoint Migration Project Plan
- Top 11 Benefits of Cloud Managed Services
- 5 Ways to Enhance the End User Experience
Curious About Microsoft Teams?
Microsoft Teams is an extremely intuitive platform that fosters a productive and collaborative work environment, with both onsite and remote employees – or a hybrid of the two – able to benefit from its functionality. If you are interested in the business benefits of Microsoft Teams and are interested in incorporating the platform into your suite of business applications, contact Buchanan today to get started.
