It is common that for a digital transformation to take full effect in the workplace, it needs fully upgraded IT systems as well as a complete overhaul of all business process. In a highly digitized business environment, it is only through these changes that employees can indeed serve customers to the best of their abilities. Be it finance, healthcare, manufacturing, nonprofits, or anything else in between, all sectors of the economy are heavily impacted.
Gartner indicates that by 2020, roughly a third of all businesses will draw their competitive advantage from their employees' knowledge, understanding, and efficient use of the digital technologies they employ. There are three main elements to consider when looking at the future of the digital workplace. These are the emerging technologies, the global marketplace, and workforce dynamics.
In what can only describe as a positive feedback cycle, these three factors will influence each other, completely changing the shape of the modern workplace. In turn, this will guide businesses on how to reshape job roles, processes, business models, and best practices. Artificial and human intelligence will complement each other like never before, solving many business problems and significantly increasing efficiency.
The whole point behind a digital workplace is simplicity and intuitiveness, resulting in greater agility and productivity. Below are some of the hallmarks that work to create this simplicity in the workplace.
Shadow IT stands for all information technology systems used within an organization without its explicit approval. Most employees will follow the path of least resistance when it comes to their work and this, of course, applies to the technology they use.
Traditionally, CIOs were utterly opposed to the use of shadow IT, and sometimes with good reason. Their security and integration concerns are entirely justified. Nevertheless, instead of standing against this technology, CIOs should embrace and exploit these technologies, and work to integrate them into their systems.
Changing your workplace into a digital and more agile one will require a great deal of adjustment in terms of departmental structure, internal processes, skill sets, etc. Change management leaders will be needed for such a considerable undertaking so they can set guidelines, oversee the transition, as well as anticipate and mitigate any issues before they can turn into real trouble.
With a change, however, it's not uncommon for employees to experience increased stress levels. It usually stems from a fear of the unknown and a lack of comprehensive skill when operating the new technologies. To ease this transition, it's wise to train and reskill your employees continually. Hire a team of professionals, if need be.
This transition ultimately boils down to the technology you will use. To that end, ensure easy file-sharing capabilities, mobile access, and real-time synchronization. Similarly, virtual assistants can be a great asset in helping with the transition period, offering employees decision support, contextualized content recommendations, and advice where needed.
Do, however, keep in mind that all of these systems need to have a cohesive architecture and not a haphazard patchwork of technologies that will only add to the complexity of day-to-day operations and processes. Lastly, you should encourage employees to bring their input here, rather than imposing new systems on them.
To help you with this transition, Managed Solution is at your service. Contact us today and find out what we can do for you and your digital workplace.
SharePoint is a web-based collaboration platform, used by staff members across all levels of the organization. It functions on the company's intranet. The platform acts as a secure place where users can share, store, organize, and access data from numerous mobile devices. It facilitates and streamlines team and cross-departmental collaboration, as well as document storage and retrieval, all within the confines of enterprise-grade security and compliance.
Thanks to its easy-to-use features and low maintenance requirements, SharePoint has become a go-to platform for diverse organizations around the world. With various customizable capabilities, SharePoint offers an almost unmatched level of flexibility to those that use it, which allows for easy scalability, and an increase of productivity, in the process.
Nevertheless, it has a high degree of customization, and many organizations aren't fully aware of all its features or what SharePoint can do for them or use the platform to its full capacity. Since every company is, more or less, unique, each can use and customize SharePoint to best suit their needs. That said, here are some ways it can help you increase productivity across your organization.
Thanks to its new app, SharePoint can be accessed by users even when they're not in the office. So, if your businesses have employees that work remotely or are usually in the field, they can still use SharePoint to work with the same level of coordination as those who would, otherwise, be all located in the same office.
When companies start using SharePoint, they usually do so by first utilizing its basic features. But as time goes on and users become accustomed to the platform, they can personalize it as the business develops. Similarly, they can tailor the platform's features so that it best suits the organization's processes and means of operation.
Having too many unnecessary features or access to unnecessary files and data can at times overwhelm and distract the users, decreasing their overall productivity. SharePoint does take this factor into account, allowing organizations to tailor the interface for every level, department, or each employee.
Some fear that SharePoint will only add another level of complexity to their already intricate TechStack. Luckily, however, this is not the case with SharePoint. It was specifically designed to integrate with a wide variety of other software, web applications, RSS, WSRPs, email, and all sorts of commercial software and cloud applications. It implies that there are far fewer technical glitches, less downtime, and more productivity.
Collecting, storing, and sharing data is all fine and good, but as long as you are not adequately analyzing it, that information is next to useless. By making use of SharePoint's analytics tools, you can investigate and discover any potential issues that may be affecting the productivity of a given department, problems in collaboration, etc. You can use that information to generate the best possible solutions to fix those problems.
SharePoint is a great tool to improve a company's productivity. It all depends on how well you know how to use it and how best you customize it to fit your organization's needs. If you need any help in optimizing your company's performance, Managed Solution is at your service. Our professional consultants will answer any questions that you may have. Contact us today!
For those of us that don't know, SharePoint is a web-based system used for collaboration. It makes use of list databases, workflow applications, and other features as a means of enabling teams to work better together. SharePoint also gives businesses the ability to control access to information and automate various workflow processes.
SharePoint can increase productivity and visibility for IT workers across all levels of the organization. Features center around the company's private network, allowing for secure sharing, workflow collaboration, and content management, among other such features.
Due to its easy maintenance and use, SharePoint is a favorite with many businesses, big and small. Similarly, the platform also offers a high degree of flexibility and scalability, allowing companies to increase productivity and get a high ROI, based on their individual needs.
Also, SharePoint Online, which is the Microsoft Cloud version of the platform, has additional integration capabilities with other cloud applications such as Microsoft 365 or Office 365.
SharePoint truly shines when employees work together on ad-hoc projects or when they want to establish standard business processes regarding data sharing, data recording, or document publishing. It's many features that also include co-authoring, versioning, or security controls, allow users to do more work on only a fraction of the time, all the while maintaining the quality of their product.
On a similar note, SharePoint makes it easy to add metadata so that users can quickly and easily understand the origins and purpose of a document without having to open it. Likewise, it also allows for the easy creation of custom databases, as well as the recording of numerous documents, which can them be integrated into business processes and workflows.
Once the metadata and content are on the platform, SharePoint can automate specific workflows such as the processing of end-user information, enabling record disposition through content lifecycle tools, and the disposal of data based on various business policies.
When it comes to uploading documents, users can either share it with other users or utilize OneDrive as personal storage where nobody else has access to. They can later share that document with others by granting them access. These workflow features, as well as others, can control how documents are being shared between them, as well as how they use that information within the organization.
When you start using SharePoint, it's always better to learn a few basic tasks that will help you familiarize yourself with the platform and form some foundational skills. It's essential to remember that SharePoint holds a central role in a Microsoft-dominated environment, streamlining operations for everyone from the C-suite, all the way to customer service.
The best way to learn SharePoint is to start using it simply. The more practice you have with its essential features, the easier it will be to navigate. Some training courses will help you solidify the platform's fundamental principles and tasks. Even though the platform is intuitive and easy to use, it's numerous features that allow for more flexibility also increase its complexity. It means that, after you've mastered the basics, there remain many other ways to utilize it. Only with practice and use, will you take full advantage of what it has to offer.
Don't let this discourage you, however, since the benefits are well worth the effort. Most Fortune 500 companies have used SharePoint and for a good reason. If you want to learn more about SharePoint and how to use it, feel free to visit our website or contact us directly.
Traditionally, collaboration tools divide into numerous silos, based mostly on the type of communication which they are involved. When it comes to the Microsoft environment, for instance, Skype for Business is for real-time communication; Outlook is for messaging; SharePoint is for document and data sharing. All of these tools provide for all the communication an organization needs to function correctly.
The problem, however, is that all of them are separate programs that need to run independently and you continually have to flip between them. Likewise, the information is organized differently with each of them. Emails, for instance, are arranged by date, Skype messages are by person, while SharePoint is by teams or projects.
Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, manages to align all of these tools under one roof. It becomes particularly useful when it comes to team communication.
When it comes to SharePoint and Teams, they both organize team sites based on project, topic, or organization. Microsoft Teams has SharePoint team sites associated with it. It means that every channel in Teams is related to a folder in the SharePoint document library. Also, every document sent outside of Teams is also stored in the sender's OneDrive business folder.
There are several advantages to storing your Teams documents in SharePoint and OneDrive. For starters, it's easy to sync all files for a Team on OneDrive since it works for both Windows and Mac. Also, SharePoint allows previews for more than 300 file types, which can also display in the Teams file tab.
SharePoint has a series of comprehensive data governance and compliance features such as automatic classification and labeling, data loss prevention, document retention policies, etc. These are also transferred to Teams documents when used together. What's more, users don't necessarily have to leave Teams to work on their SharePoint files since these will appear in their Files tab.
When you add SharePoint pages as tabs in Teams, you will have a much easier time when building a custom website than you would with your typical approach. It is because all of the information that's on a team site home page will also appear here, making it the best of both SharePoint and Teams on the same interface.
You can also put an entire document in a tab, which can prove useful when you share a presentation or want to track information in a spreadsheet that available to the whole team. Similarly, you can use SharePoint Framework web parts as tabs in Teams. It allows for their seamless reuse and allows SharePoint developers to be in easy reach of Teams tab development.
Say, you are at a new stage of a project, or you want to emphasize a particular piece of news. Most often, this type of information will be misplaced in the Teams conversation thread, and people will lose track of them. To counteract this, you can use the News web part on a SharePoint page to make sure that this doesn't happen. SharePoint sites will include a publishing system for news pages. These appear on the web parts, Hub sites, the home page, the SharePoint app, and in Teams.
These are some of the best practices when leveraging SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. If, however, you need help, our consulting services team is at the ready. Sign up for our webinar to learn hands-on how you can best leverage these tools.
Let's face it, a lot of doctors hate their computers. After reading through the article published by the New Yorker, I couldn't help but notice a lot of similarities in the various stories of different health professionals (nurses, health admins, neurosurgeons, etc) that are struggling with the adoption of new technologies in their fields. There seemed to be quite a few similar themes and patterns with each story. More and more organizations are adopting various technologies, and those technologies are rapidly advancing and always changing, so it can definitely be hard to keep up. However, instead of getting frustrated as an end user or forcing technology onto your organization "because it's the next greatest thing" as a leader -- you should have a strategy in place as well as an open mind.
Technology is a powerful thing and if implemented or used improperly, it can have adverse effects. However, when done the right way, it can be life-changing, especially in the field of health and medicine. I've compiled a list of health professional's generalized complaints and frustrations, and how embracing technology can actually help solve the very problems the users seem to be encountering.
Listen, no one wants an 11.5 work day. No one wants to have to do monotonous tasks that seem trivial or repetitive. That's not what technology is here to do. One of technology's main roles in your organization should be to automate and essentially increase productivity. For this, it starts at the top. The new technologies need to be rolled out properly by the organization's leaders. When introducing a new technology to your company, make sure there is significant training beforehand and deploy the technology in small groups. Start with one department and learn about their challenges and successes and build from there. Make sure there are plenty of resources and a support team for them to reference once completely immersed into using this technology on a regular basis. For example, one thing Managed Solution does for new Office 365 users is offer a Customer Immersion Experience (CIE). This is a hands-on discovery of the Microsoft Office tools. It's not a demo. It's not a presentation. We allow the new users to use dummy devices with real-life scenarios built into the devices and they experience it as if it was their own. We also only do this in groups of up to 12 users for one-on-one interaction. With this kind of implementation, we see user adoption increase incredibly versus those who don't. Oftentimes, when migrating and not opting for a CIE, we have customers come back and ask for it months later to ensure their teams are using the tools correctly.
Now that is a whole lot of support tickets! How could this have been prevented? Again, it begins with the training and deployment of the new systems, services, and tools. I can't emphasize enough to take things slowly and adopt one shiny new toy at a time. Migrate your data and information in phases. Test, test, test and then test again before rolling new software out to an entire organization or even an entire department, depending on the size. Start with small groups. As a leader of an organization or department, it's important to get feedback from those actually using the new software. How they use it in their day to day is going to be vastly different than a VP or CEO or someone in another department. That said, as a leader be sure to get input and consistently check in for feedback. As a user, make your challenges known as early as possible to reduce the probability of others running into the same one. At the end of the day, this technology should increase the users' productivity, not become a burden so it's important to communicate both challenges (and successes) to share with others.
There might not be anything more frustrating than doing your work and having someone else completely override it, whether intentionally (no matter if it was good intentions) or accidentally. There's no good in having to do the same work twice, especially when it's taking up hours of your time. To avoid this, you need to make sure you have identity management implemented. Identity management determines whether a user has access to systems, but also sets the level of access and permissions a user has on a particular system. For instance, a user may be authorized to access a system but be restricted from some of its components. Another example is that your administrative assistant could have access to view certain documents or files, but only you can edit them. There becomes a chain of hierarchy and roles that allow for certain rights and access. Lastly, any modifications or changes should be backed up and stored somewhere in an archive that is easily referenceable to those who would need it.
Employees getting burnt out by technology is no surprise but shouldn't be so common. Doctors and other healthcare professionals are spending too much time trying to input data or find the right data, and not enough time with their patients, family or friends. With the work they are doing, if anyone deserves a work/life balance, it's them. We need to make sure we're equipping them with the right training, the right deployment schedule, the right resources and support throughout the technology adoption. This could all start with building out the right technology roadmap. A technology roadmap or an IT roadmap can look one year or even three years ahead to plan for the adoption of new infrastructure, systems, and technologies. It outlines budget, timeline, adoption phases and more. Having this all outlined in paper and agreed upon by leadership helps to ensure success in the long run.
While in the short-term, there will be many headaches, especially for generations who didn't grow up using email, AOL Instant Messenger or Facebook. However, aren't most things challenging when we first start them? Change is never easy - it's not supposed to be. We need change. We thrive on change. Albert Einstein once said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results." Without acceptance for change, there cannot be growth. What would happen if we always gave up when things were hard?
It comes down to focusing on the long game. Create a deployment schedule. Implement training. Have multiple training sessions. Roll out things in small doses. Just like some doctors have to wean some patients off medication, they need to be slowly introduced onto technology and increase their technology dosage. Little by little, increase the functionality, increase the availability of new software and they can more easily adapt.
Lastly, I'd like to end on a positive note. Instead of looking at all the negative that these technological advancements may be bringing to the world of healthcare, let's look at positives: You can now remotely check vital signs of a patient recovering from surgery who's still at the hospital while you're on the go.
Technology is a mighty powerful thing, but technology is empowered by people. Make sure you're empowering your people to leverage the right technologies and offering the right resources to digitally transform your business, leading to growth and success.
There's somewhat of a misconception circulating, in regards to the modern workplace. Some are under the impression that the new changes that are happening in the office are somehow affecting only those in IT, but they are not aware of how the modern workplace affects everyone. Even though most of the change that is happening originates from digital technology, the repercussions and chain reactions that it brings, extend to everyone from every department, not only those in IT.
It is safe to say that almost every activity within the workplace, from the very mundane to the most complex and specific, can be affected in one way or the other by technology. No industry remains unaffected by this technological change, be it finance, manufacturing, healthcare, or even nonprofit organizations. It also applies to the departments within these institutions.
In other words, IT is not only affecting the nature of the work, itself, but it also has an impact on how organizations function regarding internal divisions of labor. The implementation of IT alone is not enough to drive productivity. These new technologies must also be accompanied by organizational changes in structure and HR practices.
The modern workplace needs to meet current employee expectations, better connect a more widely-distributed workforce, and it has to provide all the tools necessary for employees to design, create, and innovate. They need to work together and solve both company and customer problems, and technology will help them achieve that. Put differently; a modern workplace has to bring the best in every employee by creating a company culture where ingenuity, innovation, and action are encouraged at every level of the organization.
As most of us know, necessity is the mother of invention. As a consequence, businesses need to adapt and tailor their company culture to better fit with these new technological innovations.
Telecommuting - With a sharp increase in mobility and cloud technology, employees can now work across multiple devices and locations. This higher degree of flexibility will help increase morale and productivity by allowing employees to choose their hours or from where to conduct their business. Nevertheless, with greater flexibility, there is also the increasing issue of data security, which needs to be addressed.
Cross-departmental teams - As modern technology eliminates much of the tedious grunt work, employees have more time to dedicate themselves to other tasks that do require their expertise. This trend has led to the formation of cross-departmental teams. As their name would suggest, these teams include people from various departments such as HR, finance, marketing, sales, etc., and from different levels of the organization.
These teams have the purpose of finding new and innovative solutions that will help streamline operations within the company by calling on input and expertise from numerous departments. Innovation is, after all, a leading competitive advantage in today's fast-paced business world, and cross-departmental teams can drive it through a more creative collaboration process. This trend, however, requires that the right collaboration tools and real-time insights need to be provided to get the job done.
Employee Digital Skills - As digital technology makes its way in every department of an organization, employees need the necessary skills to leverage those technologies and drive productivity. As time goes on and a company adopts more and more of these technologies, the skills required to use them will become more critical.
Surveys indicate that 29% of employees believe that their skill set will become obsolete over the coming years, while half of all companies think that the digital talent gap is hampering their digital transformation. Over the coming years, soft digital skills will prove to be as important as the traditional skills, themselves.
How is technology changing the shape of your business? Our Consulting Services can help provide insight on how to best leverage the right technology for your business.
Today's modern workplace is not as it used to be. Instead of those cramped cubicles, we now have wide open spaces. Instead of those dusky archives, we now have the cloud. And instead of that strict 9-to-5 schedule, we now have flexibility. While these examples here are by no means exhaustive, they do, however, paint an entirely different picture about today's office, as opposed to what we were used to several decades ago. This is how to make your business a modern workplace.
One such modern workplace has plenty of advantages, yet many are still using the traditional model. Nevertheless, it's important to remember that the modern workplace is still going through a transition period, meaning that it hasn't reached a final form. It also says that there is no one-size-fits-all approach and every business has to create its workplace, based on their needs and respective industry.
In any case, here are some guidelines.
It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that the changing face of the modern workplace is driven in large part by digital technology and automation. It's pretty much the same trend, but to a much larger degree, to what happened when the PC arrived during the mid-1980's.
Today, however, with various automation software for multiple industries, cloud computing, and social technologies, the way people work is no longer the same. Known as the Internet of Things (IoT), these technologies and the devices they use, are creating a much more efficient, intelligent, and connected workforce.
Another critical ingredient for the modern workplace is flexibility. It refers mainly to employee working schedules and can take numerous forms, depending on the type of business you have. For instance, flexibility in the workplace can imply full or partially remote work.
It can also mean a so-called flex schedule where employees can create their schedules, as long as they make their 40 hours per week. Likewise, flexibility can also take the shape of a Results Only Work Environment (ROWE), where results take center stage, not hours worked, or it can even imply unlimited vacation days, among other such examples.
With increased flexibility in the workplace, the need for good communication and collaboration could not be higher. When creating your modern workplace, the discussion needs special consideration, otherwise, risk everything falling apart.
When not all of your employees are under the same roof, at the same time, some may be excluded from meaningful conversations. It can lead to increased suspicion and worry, which, in turn, may result in decreased employee happiness and productivity and a higher turnover rate. Regular internal newsletters and employee feedback can help mediate this situation. Making frequent use of social technologies such as Skype is yet another.
Under the traditional model, performance reviews were given roughly once per year. But in today's fast-paced business environment, this model is not only obsolete but can also be counterproductive. For a whole year, an employee could be thinking that they're doing a good job, and then faced with a barrage of negative feedback and reviews.
Like with the point above, once-per-year performance reviews will do no one any favors. With more and more employees working off-site, monthly or weekly checkups will better help clarify objectives, improve efficiency, and morale, and will also keep these employees in the loop.
These are some of the core elements that define the modern workplace. But as mentioned before, each business needs to create its system that will best fit its individual needs. But by focusing on leveraging automation technologies and providing your employees with flexibility and better communication, you are driving modernization.
Are you ready to take the next step for a Modern Workplace? Managed Solution can come on-site for a Microsoft Customer Immersion Experience (CIE) and provide a hands-on demo of productivity tools that help promote a flexible and collaborative work environment. Learn more about CIEs here.
Many employers around the world have realized that the traditional way of running a business no longer works with the present-day trends and changing face of the modern workplace. The old way, not only reduced the overall efficiency of a company but it wasn't able to meet the new challenges that accompany the so-called Internet of Things.
Long are the days of the cubicle. Today, more and more people are conducting their work from remote locations, either from their home or another place that has an internet connection. Under the traditional workplace and with the rigid practices that it involved, employees could not effectively communicate with each other over long distances. Modern companies use social and collaborative software such as Skype, Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Docs to break any distance barriers and work together in real time and across borders, in many cases.
Today's rapid technological evolution has led to much experimentation in the area. Some businesses, for instance, went on to adopt a sort of shared workspace. It implies an office where the common equipment shares among all staff members that need it. So, instead of having five desks with five computers, and with five of everything for each of the five employees, this shared business model could use only three of everything for those five employees. We don't live in the Age of Efficiency for nothing, after all.
Other companies, however, go for the work-life integration approach as a means of providing an engaging environment for both employees and future recruits. Unlike the more common work-life balance, work-life integration does not aim to make a clear divide between one's personal and professional life.
It, instead, focuses on mixing the two throughout the day so that people can achieve both. With work-life integration, employees can, for instance, come a bit later to work, do some tasks for an hour or two, go to lunch with friends, come back to work for several more hours, go to their child's recital, and finish up work at home, later in the evening. This schedule is more in tune with what digital technology already provides us as opposed to a strict 9-to-5 schedule.
But the changes don't stop here. Some organizations such as Google, among others, are hosting various innovators and start-up right on their premises. Known as a community or coworking spaces, these provide ample benefits for all involved. On the one hand, these start-ups have the opportunity to take part in many events, seminars, or training offered, while Google provides its employees to interact with other experts in their field, while at the same time, they can keep an eye out for top talent that may be present.
In other instances, companies encourage their employees to go off-site and work from various hubs or remote locations that freelancers usually frequent. Like before, it allows the company's staff to get an outside perspective, maybe get some new ideas which can also be implemented by the company, itself.
There's no denying the fact that the world is currently going through a transition phase. This transition affects everything, including how modern offices operate. Now, whether these initiatives presented above will stick over the long-term or not - it's probably too early to tell. What's for sure, however, is that we will never return to the traditional way of doing things.
Read more about the modern workplace in our blog, "The New Look of the Modern Workplace".
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