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Road realities—how to support your road warriors with tech
The road warrior travels from city to city, meets with potential clients and attends conferences and industry events. And their travel requirements don’t seem to be slowing down. According to the Global Business Travel Association, spending on business travel reached record-breaking levels of $1.2 trillion in 2015, and is expected to rise to $1.6 trillion by 2020.
Your road warriors bring your products and services into new markets, diversify clientele and strengthen existing relationships. They’re helping your business grow—now more than ever.
Doing their jobs from the road, however, can prove very difficult without the right productivity tools. So, how do you know if they have what they need?
Start by understanding the common challenges they face. Whether it is hosting meetings, collaborating with colleagues or meeting deadlines, you can make sure they are set up for success.
Here are four productivity fears that often strike business travelers while they’re on the road:
Did I forget to save files from the company server before traveling?
Secure file access shouldn’t be a privilege for in-office employees only. Being able to tap into the company server to access important resources is a basic requirement for most jobs. For employees who are on the move, it’s critical to have such access anywhere, anytime. Whether in a hotel lobby or a cafe, they should be able to connect to Wi-Fi and get their work done. When company documents are secured in the cloud, your employees can continue with business as usual, from virtually anywhere.
Will time away impact day-to-day communication?
For road warriors, productivity is dependent on seamless communication and collaboration with in-office teams. Without face-to-face interaction with colleagues, employees can sometimes feel disconnected—and the ability to connect in multiple ways can make all the difference. Secure video conferencing and messaging tools can bridge the communication gap, allowing business travelers to chat with team members and conduct online meetings on the fly.
Can we successfully collaborate while I’m in another location?
Teamwork is essential to business, whether your employees are on the road or huddled in a conference room. Business leaders must consider the value of technology that lets business travelers create, co-author and share documents in real-time. These abilities enable teams to accomplish tasks and meet deadlines together, from virtually anywhere. Now, with technology for sharing and collaborating remotely, it’s easier than ever.
What happens if I lose my connection to the internet?
Travel often happens during business hours. While on a train or 30,000 miles in the air, your road warrior still needs to email, build sales decks and meet deadlines. But sometimes technology falters and they could lose internet connectivity for minutes or even hours. At times like these, they can rely most on tools that save their work (documents, presentations and even email files) onto a hard-drive while offline and upload upon reconnection. While they’re offline, they can continue to read emails, compose drafts, edit files—and keep making work happen.
The productivity of your traveling employees is only as good as the technology that supports them. As a business leader, you have the power to provide technology that helps them do their jobs while on the road.
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Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management enrolls approximately 2,000 students, many of whom work full time. Connecting and engaging busy students can be challenging, so the business school took a page from Fortune 500 companies: it uses Yammer to foster collaboration, enhance learning, and forge tighter relationships among students, faculty, staff, and increasingly, alumni.
The Yammer Solution
In 2010, the school integrated Yammer into Graziadio’s Learning Environment and Network (GLEAN). Since then, Yammer has been virally adopted by most business school students, faculty, and staff.
“We knew students wanted broader engagement, but we did not anticipate how much they’d help each other with logistical questions, IT support, business contacts, professional advice, and moral support,” says Director of eLearning Susan Gautsch. “We also didn’t anticipate the social power of Yammer, which psychologically bridges online and face-to-face experiences. It creates a strong sense of community, regardless of students’ schedules or where they’re studying.”
Students from Graziadio’s Master of Science in Organizational Development program, who come from six countries and only meet five times over two years, stay engaged using Yammer: one class of 35 students has collectively posted 6,000 messages over an eight-month period.
One popular Yammer implementation is what the business school calls Peer Connection. “It’s student driven,” Gautsch explains. “They use it to get to know each other and set up affinity groups.” For instance, students join the Marketing group to network and swap ideas about industry news and course topics.
The school’s faculty also put Yammer to good use. Many have set up private Yammer groups to facilitate and deepen class discussions. Another popular program is Classrooms Across Borders, a way for faculty to share their expertise. Students can follow topics or professors, who post open questions or share articles to generate online discussion. “It’s a great way for faculty to have more of a presence, to get what they do out there to the wider student body,” Gautsch observes.
Yammer is also popular with staff. Academic advisors use it to communicate broadly, answering questions and sending out updates on everything from upcoming meetings to traffic snarls that may make it hard to get to campus. “Our deans are getting online more and more to engage with students and alumni, which they appreciate,” Gautsch observes. She adds that, “Alumni are a growing part of our network, since students who use Yammer want to keep using it to stay engaged with the university after they graduate.”
THE RESULTS
An end to communication silos. Yammer allows faculty, staff, and students to communicate across departments and campuses.
Deeper connections. Professors and staff use Yammer to expand on classroom discussions and tighten ties with students and each other.
New networking opportunities. Full- and part-time students make cross-program connections and network with alumni through topic-driven conversations.
An ever-growing data repository. Due to its search functionality and ease of contributing content, Yammer is a valuable living knowledge base.
ABOUT YAMMER
Yammer (https://about.yammer.com) is a best-in-class Enterprise Social Network (ESN) used by more than 500,000 organizations worldwide —including approximately 85 percent of the Fortune 500 —to connect and communicate. Yammer brings together employees, content, conversations, and business data in a single location. Founded in 2008, Yammer was acquired by Microsoft and is available with Office 365, to deliver a comprehensive, seamless social experience across the applications people already use.
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.
