The biggest challenge with the coexistence of collaboration and communication tools is rather ironic, in that their success has often meant that people can’t effectively talk to each other. The use of communication platforms sometimes evolves in silos, resulting in slow decision-making, decreased productivity and increased inefficiencies across the business.

That’s not to say organisations should always standardise collaboration across just one application. In some cases, having different tools for different uses can work. Some are more suited for certain geo-regions with unique use cases and workflows. On the other hand, if every team is collaborating in its own way, then the need for application support grows, chaos reigns and costs can escalate.

Consideration also needs to be given to the whole portfolio of applications and tools a business may use. Phones for example are an additional hardware cost for the business to factor in. Additionally, the employee likely manages multiple devices and applications too, leading to greater inefficiencies in their role. More time than necessary is spent on managing the device, rather than its intended use.

The staff ability to communicate and collaborate effectively has huge consequences for the organisation’s ability to boost productivity and drive better experiences. It is for this reason why so many new tools and applications have been developed, downloaded, installed and embedded into your organisation by a range of staff seeking to improve collaboration, share content and connect via multiple channels. This challenge has typically been known as shadow IT.

Streamline your collaboration with MS Teams

Like many other mid-market businesses in the same position, the use of multiple tools is counterproductive to the very thing they were implemented to do. And of course, you would like to be using them to their full potential! You can pretty much run your organisation’s entire communication platform through an application like Teams.

“…if you’re struggling with the plethora of productivity and user applications being used across your business, then this development is a great way of taking back control.”

Chris Shannon MS Teams Product Development Manager at 5GN

You simply need someone to help guide you along the way – which is where the value of a passionate partner can pay huge dividends. They can help you discover and take advantage of the capabilities you may not have realised existed. Through an understanding of your business, they can marry up your goals with the in-depth knowledge and expertise they have of products like Microsoft Teams. Often providing unique enhancements to fit with the capabilities you require.

For example, one of the more innovative developments with Microsoft Teams functionality, is the ability to include outbound or inbound PSTN calls through a partner. This means you can effectively manage your entire voice system from Office 365 via a broadband service. As such, you can retire any legacy telephony and ISDN systems, meaning on-premise equipment or separate voice lines are a headache you don’t need to have. Not only does this streamline your communications for improved productivity, but Teams can help remove out of date hardware costs from your business.

Through a managed partner like 5G Networks, Microsoft Teams can act as a single platform for collaboration across your business, dramatically improving productivity among your workforce. For example, connect your internal workforce and external partners seamlessly via persistent chat, PSTN calls, voice & video conference, shared presence and SaaS integration. And, employees can also take advantage of the device flexibility capability, by making calls from IP phones, conference rooms, headsets, PCs, Mac, tablets and other mobile devices.

There are also additional measures such as built-in security, linking phone numbers to secure Microsoft Office 365 user identities for example, helping prevent any form of user identity theft. And, analyse performance through reports to review calls, sessions, users, devices and other call activities – giving you the information you need to better plan around peak volumes for example.

If you’re interested to understand how you can take better advantage of your workforce collaboration applications like Teams, have a chat to us about Voice Bridge One or learn more here.

Take control and empower your people with Teams

Making life easier for you and your workforce, means making life easier for your customers. The simplicity of a single platform like Teams for collaboration means not having to manage multiple applications or devices; and it offers an unparallel level of device flexibility, no matter where people choose to work. This means your customer queries, orders and support dealt with in the fastest, most efficient manner possible.

Not only do the right collaboration applications facilitate greater productivity, they help with decreasing employee turnover, solve problems faster, create better places to work and improve business operations:

• An effective communication system decreases employee turnover by 50 percent
• Eighty-six percent of business owners and staff attribute workplace problems with inadequate or siloed communications
• Thirty-three percent of Millennials prefer to work in companies with effective collaborative workspaces
• Eighty percent of businesses employ social collaboration apps to improve business operations

Any successful implementation has to have people at its core. As a direct interface between your business and your customers, employees are at the centre of the customer experience. Both on and offline. Failure to empower the employee with the correct application creates a break a in the chain, placing business goals at the risk of being missed.