Just how loud is this clamour? Well, the Owl Labs State of Remote Work 2019 report found that 34% of employees were willing to take a 5% pay cut if they were only allowed to work remotely. 20% of those surveyed were even willing to accept a pay cut higher than 10%. So why is it a solution that companies are hesitant to adopt? One answer is sensible enough: some jobs simply can’t be done remotely and need to be done in person.

The Challenges of a remote work setup

Some of the other reasons cited by companies are that there is the fear that productivity will drop due to distractions and interruptions. Others cite the difficulty of setting up the technological infrastructure to ensure work flows smoothly. Studies, fortunately, have found that working from home tends to boost productivity when you get rid of the office watercooler chat and additional breaks in work. On the tech side of things, faster and more accessible internet connectivity has done away with most of these concerns.

The biggest challenge that you need to deal with has to do with remote work communications. Because your employees are going to be scattered far afield, it’s more critical that your communication efforts be clear, comprehensive, and adaptive. For one thing, you need to ensure that colleagues know how to work remotely. Owl Labs has found that 38% of employees and 15% of managers don’t get adequate training in preparation for remote work. This can be everything from the systems required to log in, to ensuring work outside the office is done in a safe and secure way.

Remote work by the numbers

That being said, the numbers certainly back the idea that it’s a growing trend that can’t be ignored. For example, a study done by FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics has found that—between 2005 and 2017—the number of companies offering remote work has jumped by a staggering 159%. In the United States, 3.4% of the working population of around 165 million people are actively remotely working. Looking at the way the trend is going, those numbers are likely to increase exponentially over the next few years.

Digging deeper, the State of Remote Work 2019 pushed out by Buffer reveals the biggest benefits as seen from an employee’s perspective. 40% cite the flexibility in schedule, which affords them time to spend on activities that matter to them that would otherwise be set aside for the sake of commuting or a rigid work schedule. These include time with their family, catching up with friends and loved ones, and even walking the dog.

Now it isn’t just employees that are better off, studies have shown that employers benefit as well. For example, a 25% lower turnover rate was noted in companies that allowed remote work—supported by findings that 76% of employees are more likely to stay if their employer offered remote work options. The State of Telecommuting study found that employers save upwards of USD 44 billion with remote work setups. Part of that is due to a 24% boost in productivity and overall satisfaction in employees that remote work at least once a month.

To enjoy all those benefits, however, you really need to leverage effective remote work communications.

Effective Remote Work Communications: Five Crucial Elements

Get the Right Channel Mix

One key foundation of remote work communications is technology. The communication options we have available today to connect and collaborate are myriad, but there’s a need to choose the right mix. Now, the “right” channel mix depends entirely on the specific needs of your company. There are, however, several basic needs that need to be taken into consideration. Chat and collaborations apps like Microsoft Teams, Slack and even Workplace from Facebook are the most commonly used and are effective for quick communications among teams.

You also need to have a channel for video conferencing, global broadcasts and even virtual face-to-face conversations. Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Workplace from Facebook are most effective here and even allow screen sharing and virtual whiteboards should it be needed. Cloud sharing and collaboration platforms like Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive and Modern SharePoint are also essential for all your company’s documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and other files. These allow for the organization and posting of content that is larger in size than email allows.

While not absolutely essential, it helps to have a company social network set up to allow for the posting of company updates, event promotions, media sharing, and other content that doesn’t fall under the remit of other channels. This is where intranets also come in. What these channels offer is a means to build up your company culture, boost morale, and engender a feeling of unity and belongingness across the vast distances.

Create a Clear Remote Work Communications Plan

If there’s one thing that the combination of the COVID-19 outbreak and the current uptick in remote work setups will teach us, it’s that planning is absolutely critical. Unlike in an office setting, you can’t just peek your head out of your office to announce something that’s really important. You’re talking about employees that are miles apart who might be on different time schedules. Others might be focused on their work and unable to review their company chats and social media.

If you want (and you should) angle your remote work communications towards educating them on key policies, driving attendance to online or offline events, or any other key activity, it’s important to plan things ahead of time. Having an effective cloud-based online planning tool like ICPlan allows you to not just create specific plans covering specific functions and audiences, it allows you to lay it out on a calendar to ensure that communications are effectively spread out and not overwhelming to a particular audience.

The collaborative nature of tools like ICPlan also makes it easy to get your team involved in your planning efforts online. This is important if you want to adopt a remote work model that is more or less full-time. Effective planning will allow you to cover the most pertinent needs of your employees when it comes to remote work communications as evenly as possible. With built-in analytics tools, you can also monitor the effectiveness of your efforts.

Be Proactive in Your Remote Work Communications

One of the biggest challenges in remote work is the feeling of disconnectedness. Because employees will often focus on the work that needs to be done, and because they’re physically distant from their co-workers, it’s easy for them to feel isolated and emotionally distant from their workmates. That’s why remote work communications need to be more proactive and vibrant in nature. Given the limitations, it’s important for communicators to get creative.

Several key initiatives include checkups among teams at the start and end of the workweek. It’s an effective way to track the status of work, giving everyone the opportunity share their experiences. While these should ideally not run for too long, sufficient time should be given for employees to open up, have a laugh, and interact with their colleagues. This is the perfect venue for sharing company updates. An additional mid-week check also works well.

Other companies even incorporate online video chat activities just to break the seriousness of work. Game nights with online games are popular options, as are online “happy hours” where employees can let loose, bond, and enjoy themselves. These can serve as good forums to place a greater emphasis on CEO and leadership communications. Their visibility in these types of setup will enhance remote work communications significantly while helping reinforce company values and culture.

Open Lines of Communication and Get Feedback

Two-way communication is always valuable in any company, but it becomes even more critical when you’re talking about a work from home setup. If before it was relatively easy enough for an employee to approach managers and human resources with any grievances, problems, or even suggestions, for employees that work remotely, those avenues might seem distant or even closed off. When this happens, you can have your employees sharing amongst themselves—never “letting you in” when it comes to crucial temp checks for employees.

The first thing you need to do is set up avenues for feedback. While email might seem appealing, you’re better off with channels that allow you to respond just as quickly. Slack, Skype, Messenger, and any number of chat apps allow you to create dedicated, private channels that you can use for feedback. When your employees see that their feedback is being read and—more importantly—responded to, it starts to build a culture of feedback that will help you improve your remote work engagement.

That’s the second thing that you need to do, actually: create a culture where your employees will feel that their feedback is valuable. This is especially critical if you want to find out what’s working and what isn’t with your remote work setup. The way to get this done is to respond to their feedback in a real and tangible way. Veer away from the positively scripted corporate-speak and talk to them like people—be honest and realistic in your responses.

Track Engagement Religiously

Companies that don’t take heed of the engagement on their remote work communications efforts can be surprised down the line when things collapse around them. With everyone so distant, it’s harder to see the tangible effects any of your communications has on your employees and their work. It’s easier to become complacent when everyone is so far apart. The problem with this is that issues that might be otherwise easier to address have room to balloon out of control.

When it comes to remote work communications, engagement surveys take on a new level of usefulness. These should be specifically and purposefully tailored to track the effectiveness of a particular campaign in terms of the metrics that are considered most important: comprehension, productivity, satisfaction, and similar. In remote work setups where it’s easy for employees to delay all but their work for the sake of time, it’s a good idea to take time for these surveys to be answered and submitted as quickly and easily as possible for colleagues.

It’s a good idea to also schedule one-on-ones with your employees to get their thoughts and opinions straight from the source. One benefit of the remote work setup is that anonymity is all but assured—no one else is going to know you’re talking to your employees. Emphasize this, put them at ease, listen—this way you will encourage them to open up. This, in turn, will help you spot problems and identify their causes so you can act upon them.

Good Comms is Always a Good Idea

The simple fact is that remote work is fast becoming the new norm in the workplace landscape. That’s why businesses need to pay more attention to doing what is necessary to keep things flowing smoothly in the brave new world. With the right mindsets when it comes to crafting your remote work communication plans, you can be sure that you’re ready to effectively communicate and engage your employee’s no matter how far-flung they might be.

The post Remote Work Communications: An Essential Guide appeared first on ICPlan.

For enterprise users of the Office stack, it’s the innovative new features that Microsoft are rolling out that will make a noticeable difference for end users within organisations.

What’s in a name?

The move towards ‘Microsoft 365’ is partly a move towards what is essentially a cloud-based subscription model. Though the ‘perpetual license’ versions of a majority of Office suite products like Home and Student 2019 will continue to be sold, subscription seems to be the destination Microsoft is trying to reach. Fortunately for end users, this brings with it a slew of features and upgrades with little change to the actual pricing as it stands.

These include the requisite Office apps. So, expect to still be able to enjoy Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Note, and Outlook—which are the most used. You also enjoy Microsoft’s intranet and collaborative platform SharePoint, enterprise social network Yammer, and the increasingly popular communication suite Teams. The announcement from Redwood also highlighted the 1TB of OneDrive storage included as standard, strong security features, continuous tech support and an hour’s worth of Skype calling time.

Microsoft 365 for everybody

While much of this recent announcement is focussing on non-enterprise offerings, the new features will overlap into versions of Microsoft products being used by large enterprise. Microsoft 365 is paving the way for a revitalisation across the board. Emerging technologies like AI and even online monetary transactions are taking centre stage and incorporated in the applications where these technologies are most beneficial. Here are the biggest improvements that you can expect.

Microsoft Word editor improvements

Proofing within Microsoft Word has always been somewhat hit and miss. Without customisations to its dictionary, it’s very easy for the program to overlook simple errors in spelling and grammar. Microsoft 365 seeks to keep people from having to rely on external, third-party software like Grammarly for their document editing needs. To this end, they’ve added far more advanced artificial intelligence capabilities.

Apart from advanced editing features that emphasise better grammar as well as style. It will also include rewrite suggestions to improve the final output as well as anti-plagiarism measures—including a quick-click citation addition tool. Like a lot of AI additions to Microsoft 365, much of this will stem from Azure AI services. While Word is the initial focus of this move, the same features will be rolled out to Outlook and even Microsoft’s proprietary Edge browser (via an extension) as well as other browsers like Google Chrome.

Microsoft PowerPoint Presenter Coach

If you’ve ever found your presentations either too long or too short, Microsoft 365 has you covered. It is rolling out an updated version of Presenter Coach for PowerPoint. The name says is all. Utilising advanced AI analytics, the latest version will actually monitor your speech, tone, and the words you choose as you dry run your presentation. It then gives a post-presentation report that tells you exactly how you have performed.

What’s great about this report is that it’s very comprehensive. You not only get the total time you have covered as well as a slide count, it provides powerful suggestions regarding your pace and cadence. More importantly, it also aids in improving the quality of your overall presentation by noting if you’re simply reading off slides without adding anything substantial. It also tags filler words you might be regularly using without realising or any convoluted phrases that might have slipped in. 

Better connectivity and communications in Microsoft 365

The feature updates for Microsoft 365 when it comes to Teams are subtle but just as relevant—particularly when it comes to collaboration. That’s seen in shared to-do lists within a team, the ability to organise shared calendars that sync in real-time, and even share team passwords. These are timely updates given that the recent and ongoing COVID-19 crisis has driven more companies moving towards a remote work model.

Mobile improvements in Microsoft 365

Whereas Microsoft’s Office suite used to exist as separate applications on mobile platforms. While those separate iterations still exist and function well, for Microsoft 365 they’ve created a single application that brings the functionality of all three together. This lets you interact with different file types without needing to open up a separate app. It certainly speeds up the workflow in instances where you’re working on a document, spreadsheets, and presentations all at once.

More than that, however, this new mobile platform also allows the transformation of images into Word and Excel files with relatively good accuracy—subject, of course, to image quality. There are also built-in actions that cover a wide spectrum of enterprise needs like PDF creation and electronic signing for contracts, Sticky Notes for quick drafting of ideas and facilitated file transfer. Overall it’s a streamlined experience that will make working on the go significantly easier.

More is coming in Microsoft 365

The transition to Microsoft 365 is going to take many more months of implementation and staggered releases. It’s clear, however, that this isn’t just a matter of a mere name change. Microsoft is looking to the future here and is working to ensure that its full range of products are future ready and adapting to evolving trends in both the tech and enterprise world.

The post Microsoft 365: An Overview of what’s to Come appeared first on ICPlan.

Despite the unprecedented circumstances companies around the world are in, much has and continues to be expected of business leaders around the world.

One company that has had both a strong and effective COVID-19 response as well as a clear plan for the post-COVID-19 world is Deutsche Telekom in Germany. Much of this stems from Tim Höttges who has been very visible and vocal in his role as leader of one of the biggest telecom giants in the world.

An Overview of Deutsche Telekom

Headquartered in Bonn, Germany, Deutsche Telekom has been in operation since 1995. It holds stakes in other telecom companies globally—stretching its span of operation east to west—from the United States all the way to Russia and Japan, including well-known brands such as T-Mobile, T-Systems and – as of May 2020 – Sprint in the US. As of 2020, it boasts a workforce of over 216,000 employees around the world. 

The Power of CEO Presence in Crisis

Tim Höttges, its current CEO has spent a significant portion of his career at Deutsche Telekom, joining the company in 2000. He was was appointed to the board of directors in 2006, eventually becoming its CEO in 2014. What has stood out since his appointment is the strong emphasis placed on great communications—particularly through the efforts of Tim himself. As well as consistently posting on his LinkedIn page he also regularly engages those that comment. 

As the COVID-19 crisis runs its course, Höttges has been very visible both internally and externally. As Deutsche Telekom’s employees, along with everyone else, deals with the fallout from the unprecedented world events, Tim has maintained the engagement and communication efforts—striking a reassuring tone with employees and clearly outlining the course Deutsche Telekom will take in the days, weeks and months ahead.

Let’s take a closer look at what he and Deutsche Telekom have done for an effective COVID-19 response.

Effective COVID-19 Response is Easier When it’s Institutional

Many companies struggled to push out an effective COVID-19 response when lockdowns started to go in place around the world—Germany included. Everything was turned on its head: restrictions were placed on travel and movement, businesses were shuttered down, people were asked to stay at home, and mass gatherings were discouraged. That’s why Tim Höttges almost immediately made the decision to forgo Deutsche Telekom’s participation at Mobile World Congress.

While the annual industry trade fair eventually did get cancelled, Deutsche Telekom initially came under fire for the withdrawal. Detractors insisted that, rather than cancel participation, Deutsche Telekom should instead establish a digital presence. Tim Höttges was adamant that the safety of not just employees but also attendees was their top priority. That distinction in his LinkedIn statement is reflective of the deeper institutional duty of care to everyone in the company’s sphere of influence from customers to employees.

Compassion and Decisiveness

A few days after the entirety of Germany went on lockdown, Tim Höttges took to LinkedIn to post a very comprehensive video that detailed his and Deutsche Telekom’s take on the evolving conditions brought about by COVID-19 as well as what their employees and customers could realistically expect. This honest, transparent and – in places – optimistic commentary on the situation, is something that has been a stand out component of leadership communications at this time of crisis.

A consistent theme in Tim Höttges communications around COVID-19 can be boiled down to three key elements:

• Transparency – The fact that internal communications are being proactively shared externally and also the messages are realistic in tone underlines the transparency that Höttges and Deutsche Telekom as a whole are currently operating
• The role of the company – A consistent theme in all of Höttges communications is the role that Deutsche Telekom plays at a societal level during this time, and the importance of service continuance for customers
• Charting the course – The third element that has been present in communications from Höttges has been looking forward to what the next steps are. Whether it’s to the positive changes that can come to ways of working or more practical steps when it comes to returning to offices, the Deutsche Telekom CEO has consistently presented a forward outlook in his communications

Deutsche Telekom Supports its Workforce and Customers

Many companies were forced into remote work situation when lockdowns prevented people from leaving their home to report for work. For Deutsche Telekom, it wasn’t as difficult a transition for a large portion of the workforce due to the company already having flexible working options in place.

An extensive communication exercise was rolled out to ensure that their employees were well-prepared and well-informed to handle changes to ways of working. This led to noteworthy measures like the shifting of over 12,000 contact centre agents in the US to a work-from-home setup in less than two weeks.

But what about those that are unable to work from home? Tim Höttges acknowledged early that many jobs in Deutsche Telekom could not be done “from home.” Those jobs included line technicians and those in service departments—those in the field who essentially keep things actually running. For those affected employees, new measures and protocols for working were rapidly rolled out to ensure safety and continuance of services for customers.

Deutsche Telekom Gives Back to the World

Apart from the continuance of service that is at the heart of Deutsche Telekom’s effective COVID-19 response, they rolled out additional data at no extra charge for their customers. They also partnered with SK Telecom of South Korea to provide stronger conferencing and communications solutions to help other companies in keeping touch with their employees.

It didn’t end there, however. Deutsche Telekom was also tapped by the German government to assist in the development of a contact tracing app. This is a critical technology that enables health services to find out who a particular person has interacted with in order to follow the lines of infection of COVID-19, helping Germany’s efforts to contain the virus’ spread within its borders.  

Effective COVID-19 Response Cares for Wellbeing

While many companies have – out of necessity – focused on the operational and economic aspects by COVID-19, at its core it is first and foremost a health crisis. As part of Deutsche Telekom’s effective COVID-19 response, they opted to meet one of the most critical components that is coming to define the new normal: face masks.

Often the last lines of personal defense against the COVID-19 strain, face masks have become increasingly scarce in the pandemic. Deutsche Telekom’s response was simple: create cloth masks from old, unused, but nonetheless clean fabrics. In a video posted on his own LinkedIn page, CEO Tim Höttges himself is seen creating one with a Singer sewing machine. These were then sent off to their employees all over Germany.

Working Towards the New Normal

As much of the world prepares to move to what everyone’s calling “the New Normal”, it’s unsurprising that Deutsche Telekom is well-prepared for what’s to come. As well as the distribution of face masks—which are to be mandatory for those working on company premises—they’ve also adopted additional measures in-office to protect their employees from the threat of a second wave of outbreaks.

To start only 20% of their workforce is preparing to return. Secondly, within offices, workstations that don’t conform to the principles of social distancing have been physically cordoned off with adequate spacing maintained for those working in-office. Finally, as Tim Höttges himself puts it, there is a stronger push towards allowing for some home working setups to continue—with stronger support for better digitalization.

What We Can Learn from Deutsche Telekom

There are several things that can be learnt from Deutsche Telekom’s effective COVID-19 response. These lessons aren’t just applicable for a crisis—in fact, they can be carried over into the daily operations of any business and company.

Internal Comms Matter

The COVID-19 crisis has underlined that internal comms is critical in keeping the company together in a crisis. What Deutsche Telekom did right was to keep its comms momentum from the moment that the crisis hit and never slowed down. They made it clear what the situation of their company was and what their employees could expect. This assurance, in turn, helped maintain business continuity when customers were relying on the company.

There are signs that internal comms should, once beyond an effective COVID-19 response, will acquire a greater importance in companies. This will in turn feed the need for proper planning, budgeting, and resources with personnel who not only have the skills, but are also empowered within their role. This delivers on multiple levels, for example, not only in terms of an organisations crisis preparation, but also in building a strong base of engagement and dialogue within the company. All of these are critical as the world emerges into a truly changed world.

Visible Leaders are Impactful

Much of Deutsche Telekom’s effective COVID-19 response features its leader, Tim Höttges, front and centre. His vocal, personable and compassionate style shines through. This, coupled with his position within the company, means his reassuring and consistent messages resonate. This is reflected in the comments from employees to his many LinkedIn posts.

Agility is Key

A final lesson that can be taken from the Deutsche Telekom example is that agility matters when it comes to business success. Companies that have seemed to navigate the the COVID-19 crisis successfully are those who responded quickly at the outset of the pandemic. Quick and decisive action is what makes Deutsche Telekom’s response stand out among others.

The crisis has underlined that agility and decisiveness is something that companies need to make central components of their philosophy and thinking.

The New Normal

As restrictions start to be lifted around the world, one thing is apparent: things will be far from normal for a long time to come. While the COVID-19 crisis has put the world into a very tough situation, there is much that can be learned that will be taken into the future. Deutsche Telekom is a great example of things done right. Its transparency, strong leadership, and consistent communications have allowed them to remain in control despite the prevailing conditions, with an agile internal communication strategy and leveraging CEO visibility and presence.

The post Deutsche Telekom Gets it Right With Its COVID-19 Response appeared first on ICPlan.

Microsoft Yammer and Fluent Design

The new Microsoft Yammer and its design are all informed by what Microsoft calls its Fluent Design System. Philosophically, ‘Fluent’ refers to the idea that technology and its use should have a natural, intuitive flow from one platform or device to the next. It’s really a reflection on how we consume technology nowadays—we often start work on our laptops and personal computers then shift to our tablets and mobile devices as we move about.

It’s a fitting design paradigm choice for Microsoft which used to be plagued by terrible cross-platform integration. Now, in more practical terms, ‘Fluent’ design is about anticipating use cases of its products and ensuring the overall user experience is crafted to meet many needs, contexts, and uses with little fuss and confusion. It’s certainly a long way from the days when Apple took potshots at the company for being the opposite of Fluent in its user experience.

What Fluent Means for Microsoft Yammer

A look at many other Office 365 programs will give you a glimpse into the future for what this could mean for Microsoft Yammer. There’s been a clear shift toward single colours—apart from white, that is—and an overall cleaner look. It’s certainly the first impression that you have when you visit the new Yammer. Fluent design influences are apparent in the much more organized look. Everything that you could possibly need is on display.

For one, there’s the much clearer company branding that includes your company logo and business name. There’s a prominent search bar as well as all the basic application controls and settings on the top. All these make it much easier to get to anything that you would like to change and customise in terms of your overall experience using the program. You even have easy access to your Office 365 profile card—changes to which will apply across the entire network.

Fluent Design Prioritises Engagement

When you move to the social cards themselves, you’ll find that Fluent design has ensured that engagement is a clear priority. Images and media content are prominent and eye-catching, but the real gem is in the comment section. Much like many other social media, there are the requisite reaction, comment, and share options. Conversations are tiered to keep threads in order. It’s clear, however, that Yammer intends to take advantage of a strong Office 365 integration.

There’s a dedicated button that allows you to share documents and files from everywhere in your company’s Office 365 network—from SharePoint to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more. From an employee standpoint, this makes collaboration significantly easier. From a comms standpoint, it will allow you to share content relevant to an employee post for clarity and support—without having to needlessly trawl through your own files.

AI and Guided Discovery in Fluent Design

AI is a big deal nowadays and features in everything from bots to even assisted search, and its presence can be strongly felt in the new Fluent design version of Yammer. For one thing, your discovery feed itself is curated to show you what matters to you. Depending on your job role, your prior search queries, and other little bits of detail that is sourced from your interaction with Office 365’s other applications, the AI learns what’s important and pushes it front and centre.

This is also applied to your search experience in general where you can easily find what matters to you at the moment. Perhaps the best applications of this machine learning have to do with the aforementioned ability to attach files. AI guides this behaviour and suggests the files that are most relevant to a particular post or conversation. It’s an easy way to have all activities flow more naturally for users in your company.

Fluent Design Guides Building Communities

One great update with Yammer is the focus on stronger community support. The communities within Yammer allowed one to create spaces to build camaraderie, cooperation, and collaboration. All three are reinforced by the ability to better brand internally within communities. Cover photos can be handily replaced with team or departmental logos or even guidelines and infographics that communities want to bring to the fore.

The expansiveness of Fluent Design can be seen in the ease by which communities can be managed via smartphone. The interface has been simplified for ease-of-use. Simpler, some have argued, than Workplace from Facebook’s interface which has become cluttered of late as more features are added into the mix. Posting is an easy and fluid experience as is, again, attaching relevant files from anywhere in your Office 365 network into a post.

One area of mobile where Fluent Design really shines is in video capture. Tools are in place to make the process of capturing, editing, and publishing a breeze. This is perfect for highly mobile comms or remote setups where high production value videos might not be easy to undertake. There are many great internal comms opportunities to be had with this improvement: from direct CEO comms to their employees to even on-site community updates.

A Smoother Fluent Design Native Experience

Those who are most invested in Office 365’s full suite of enterprise products are the ones most likely to enjoy the benefits of Fluent Design. Outlook is one particular platform where Yammer shines in its new iteration. The Native mode integration makes each inbox a mini-Yammer. You interact with posts shared to you in much the same way that you would were you to view them in Yammer. While limited to the web version of Outlook for now, it has been verified that the desktop and mobile versions are soon to follow.

It’s pretty much the same story when it comes to the conversations web part of SharePoint. Again, you can add file attachments from your work network, set up robust question and answer sessions, and share rich text content. All of this with the same level of coherence with the original Yammer platform. It breathes new life into a platform many often consider ‘yet another’ that they have to contend with—presenting a truly vibrant platform for communications.

The Power of Integration

If Microsoft and its adoption of Fluent Design across its platform prove anything, it’s that investing in a fully integrated suite of enterprise solutions is a worthwhile one. With Microsoft Yammer, you leverage the power of social media to enhance your communications across your company and its communities. There are a lot of exciting design changes being pushed out and more down the line to be explored. It shows that Microsoft is starting to listen to what its customers want the most.

The post Fluent Design: Microsoft Yammer Explored appeared first on ICPlan.

Office 365 at a Glance

One of the best things about Office 365 is that a lot of the software is available under standard licenses. This lets users explore and experiment ahead of committing time and resources to fully embracing tools and associated ways of working. Exploration is a great way to test the waters and is recommended as you might uncover a particular bit of functionality that helps when it comes to communication, collaboration, and integration. Here is all you need to know about the very best Office 365 products out there.

Yammer

Yammer is social media for companies and their employees – also known as an Enterprise Social Network (ESN). Built around communities, its layout mimics the usability features of social media platforms we use outside the workplace, and users are free to share anything from short messages, rich media content and more. While predominantly for employees within a company, Yammer also allows you to open up select parts of your ESN to select partners, customers, and other stakeholders. It also comes with its own built-in messaging platform for wider conversations.

By leveraging a phenomenon that’s already popular globally, Yammer offers opportunities for increased collaboration across your entire company base. 2020 has seen a new version released with additional exciting features, making it the perfect platform for letting communications spread beyond just the team level. Many companies have used the platform to communicate both company-wide and to groups of employees by using the improved broadcast functionality. Yammer also benefits from built-in surveying and feedback tools, making it a strong pick in every companies communication arsenal.

Teams

If you’ve ever used Skype, Microsoft Teams operates in pretty much the same vein. You have your video call and conferencing capabilities that are supported by chat functionality and the ability to create as many unique chat groups as necessary to your needs. You also have the ability to tag people as needed, as well as share screens quickly should it be required. Where Teams differs from Skype – and even the enterprise version Skype for Business – is in the depth of its enterprise functionality.

For one thing, you can easily add in certain external applications into a Teams chat as needed. You can add YouTube or Stream (see below) to make it easy to search for relevant video content to share. It’s much easier to schedule meetings within Teams as you can do this from a chat, a group, or even any number of scheduling applications that can be integrated within Teams. Lastly, there’s seamless integration with all other enterprise applications that makes it easier to share files—via SharePoint, for instance.

SharePoint

Many people find SharePoint a little bit confusing. After all, it’s billed as an enterprise intranet and functions as such with the ability to create an employee-facing page for news and updates. At its core, however, SharePoint is a collaborative file-sharing platform. If you’re familiar with Google Drive, it’s the enterprise equivalent where employees and teams can share all manner of files and content with each other. These can be easily organized into folders and are protected by a range of security options that can limit access as well as meet security policies.

There are many useful applications of SharePoint that go beyond just file aggregation and sharing. For example, content can be prepared, laid out, and scheduled to be published on your websites. Search functionality is also beefed up to make it easier for employees to search for anything they need based off a more comprehensive list of parameters. Lastly, SharePoint allows for simplification of data presentation by adjusting what is presented based on your employees’ job roles or needs.

Power BI

The chances are that companies that owe their success to the successful aggregation, analysis, and application of data benefit greatly from the use of Power BI. This cloud-based business intelligence tool lets companies consolidate data from multiple sources into singular, organized sets. These data sets can then be utilized for visualization and analysis. The subsequent output—be it reports, dashboards, and apps can then be easily shared within an organization for utilization in business decisions.

The range of visualizations offered by Power BI covers many different use cases—allowing relevant data to be communicated in the simplest, most understandable means available. Just as wide-spanning are the data sources that Power BI can draw from which ranges from simple text/CSV files and Excel sheets all the way up to SQL servers, MySQL databases, and beyond. You also have a range of options to present your data—from vibrant dashboards to printable/shareable reports.

Stream

Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text, which may explain why Microsoft Stream is such a popular part of Office 365. Microsoft Stream allows you to leverage all the advantages of video for the benefit of your employees. Users can share recordings of company broadcasts, training sessions, recordings of meetings, presentations, and other video content with one another or with the company as a whole. Like YouTube, comments allow for reaction and the platform makes it easy to refer to specific time points within a video for highlighting and discussion. Autogenerated captions are also another popular feature with English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish languages available.

Security is one of the biggest appeals of the platform. You can restrict access to videos as the situation warrants, making it appealing should you need to share sensitive video content with specific audiences. Equally advantageous are how the content can be organized, with it being easy to create channels and groups as needed. With full integration with other 365 applications, it’s just as easy to share video content with your employees and their departments and teams via other Office 365 tools including Yammer, Teams and even PowerPoint.

PowerApps

The basic premise behind PowerApps is allowing teams within companies to create functional, usable apps in the shortest span of time available. Power company TransAlta, for example, used the platform to build an internal resource planning app to be used by their teams for internal decision making. Its main appeal lies in its ease-of-use. Even those without backgrounds in coding and IT can use the relatively simple interface to push out a functioning app in a short timeframe.

That being said, PowerApps opens itself up to further refinement and development by developers to improve and enhance its functionality. As with all Microsoft applications, PowerApps can easily integrate with other Office 365 products to expand their utility and function—it can even connect to popular applications beyond the 365 Suite like Gmail, Wunderlist, Slack, Drive, and many others. For companies that want to utilize the mobility of apps for their day-to-day without being straddled by long development times, it’s the perfect solution.

Flow

Automation, as it relates to business process management, is gaining a lot of traction within workplaces as they become busier and busier. Flow is another cloud-based platform that lets you automate workflows within your business to save you time and effort. For example, you can use it to automate data collection and its organization from your feedback channels. The only thing you need to do is to activate the Flow and collect the end results after.

The strength of the platform lies in its built-in templates that cover most use cases you can think of from saving email attachments into a specific folder in SharePoint to triggering text notifications on your smartphone when emails from specific people come in. With integrations to a wide range of popular applications inside and outside of Microsoft’s suite of enterprise products, the possibilities are endless.  This allows you to automate tasks that might otherwise be monotonous and repetitive.

OneDrive for Business

Microsoft OneDrive is the company’s cloud storage platform. It’s the equivalent of Google Drive and functions in essentially the same manner with a similarly simple drag-and-drop interface, sharing capabilities, and organization options. It can be easily integrated on any desktop to act essentially like the My Documents folder. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all have OneDrive integration built-in and often offers to save work from those platforms into the cloud as a default.

For those wondering, it does function exactly like SharePoint does minus a few of the more robust collaboration tools offered by that platform. If you’re deeply invested in Microsoft’s productivity products, OneDrive is a great choice because documents, spreadsheets, and presentations are accessible to everyone via the platform. OneDrive is offered as a part of many Office 365 packages—with a ‘For Business’ version in the enterprise option—and is often sufficient should you not want to upgrade to SharePoint for sole sharing of files (not intranet).

Sway

Billed as a ‘digital storytelling application’, Sway is designed to enable the creation of reports, updates, and presentations. It differs from PowerPoint—which has a similar remit—in that it is optimized for the presentation of content to individuals. This is best reflected in its mobile-friendly design sensibilities. Presentations can be optimized for smaller screens as well as for touch navigation, making it ideal for quick sales presentations at points-of-sale or even trade show presentations.

One strength of this 365 product is that it’s relatively easy to cook up a beautiful, engaging piece of content without a design background. Sway has a number of eye-catching templates to choose from that are intuitive when it comes to customization. It even features accessibility options to aid those with pre-existing conditions like dyslexia and other adaptive functions for those who might find viewing content on a smaller screen challenging. All of these combine to make it a powerful tool for mobile executives and sales teams.

Outlook

Microsoft Outlook has gone through many changes since its earliest days as solely a desktop email client. While it still functions to this end, it has undergone modernization in terms of looks and has even gone online into the cloud. Outlook is almost always installed on personal computers upon purchase—making for a relatively quick setup. Throw in its mobile application on both Android and iOS platforms, and it’s really become very ubiquitous.

The biggest advantage of Outlook is its integration with all of Microsoft’s other enterprise products. This allows seamless sharing of files through OneDrive or SharePoint, setting up and coordination of meetings on Teams, collaboration on Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and even native interaction with Yammer content. If your business heavily leans on Microsoft’s enterprise suite, Outlook rounds out the package as a dependable, integrated email platform.

Office 365 Round-Up

For every business need, there’s sure to be a Office 365 enterprise solution out there. The Redwood based firm has leveraged decades of experience in the field to come out with innovative programs and platforms to enable better communication, collaboration, and sharing.

And it is only to get better with more applications using their new user experience, meaning that the user gets a native too experience regardless of what tool they are using e.g. being able to interact with Yammer content in Outlook and Teams without leaving the application.

While the sheer amount of choices can be intimidating, the key is to carefully study and get a deep understanding of what each has to offer. Doing so will allow you to zero in on the right mix of products to meet your company’s specific needs.

The post Office 365: A Definitive Guide to Microsoft’s Enterprise Offerings appeared first on ICPlan.