What’s your business’s motivation for implementing cloud collaboration solutions? The ones we hear most frequently are increased productivity, accelerated decision-making and improved sales. But here’s the surprise: According to the 2016 Connected Enterprise Report, one in four IT groups aren’t measuring cloud collaboration results by whether business goals were achieved. They’re not even checking whether users adopted the solution. They’re just measuring whether the tool was implemented.
But implementation isn’t a useful measure of success. Sure, it’s the prerequisite for effective collaboration, but it’s just the first step. Your enterprise can only see a full return on its investment in collaboration technologies when employees actually use the tools—so user adoption is the first measure to focus on.
Putting resources into ensuring adoption pays off. The same report shows that when businesses fully implemented and adopted collaboration technologies, they reported some exciting benefits:
Accelerated decision-making—85 percent say that using collaboration technology has met or exceeded their expectations.
More efficient business processes—79 percent say collaboration has met or exceeded their expectations.
Improved customer service—86 percent say collaboration has met or exceeded their expectations.
Three techniques to increase adoption
Want comparable benefits for your enterprise? Here are three techniques our customers have used to increase adoption of collaboration tools and get great business results. Each company’s story is a little different, but they’ve all improved productivity and agility.
Start with a familiar interface—For fashion group BCBGMAXAZRIAGROUP (BCBG), successful adoption was simpler because they started with a familiar interface.
After evaluating Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365, the IT team at BCBG was concerned that the unfamiliar Google interface would create a training and adoption challenge. “We needed something our employees could adopt now with minimum disruption to day-to-day business,” says Kent Fuller, director of IT Infrastructure Services at BCBG. “We have a lot of infrastructure transformation going on, and Google would have introduced new challenges.” With a familiar interface and credits for online training materials included with subscriptions, BCBG employees can easily adopt Office 365.
One of the main benefits has been productive collaboration. With an updated, advanced messaging and productivity environment, BCBG employees can send and receive email messages faster; have the right tools to produce better documents, spreadsheets and presentations; and collaborate more effectively with colleagues, customers, suppliers and other partners. “With Office 365, we can build a more effective, more comprehensive collaboration environment than we could have with Google Apps,” says Fuller.
Turn executives into enthusiasts—For the KCOM Group, a national communications and information services organization in the United Kingdom, the rollout of its collaboration solution started at the top.
The company originally chose 40 senior executives to evaluate the Office Communications Server 2007 instant messaging, but the number of early users expanded organically and rapidly. “The technology sells itself once you start to use it,” says Dean Branton, group CIO at the KCOM Group and director of customer operations. “The senior team members immediately decided they wanted their direct reports using it as well, and then their extended teams, and then their personal assistants. Before we knew it, we had rolled out by stealth.”
“Now,” says Bill Halbert, executive chairman of the KCOM Group, “We are more flexible, more agile, and we can make quicker decisions, because it is much easier to find the information we need.”
Let the experts help build your plan—The process of building an Office 365 adoption was a little different for Mott MacDonald, a global consulting company. The Microsoft FastTrack Team helped the company with its adoption plan by providing both self-service resources and expert advice. “The FastTrack adoption methodology is really beneficial,” says Simon Denton, the business architect responsible for Office 365 implementation at Mott MacDonald. “It sets out quite clearly the steps we needed to go through to define principles and scenarios. Once we did that, we knew adoption would come easily. We based our entire adoption plan on the FastTrack documentation. It gave us a really good foundation.”
For example, Mott MacDonald encouraged adoption of its new Yammer enterprise social network with a “30 Days of Yammer” campaign, which involved all the staff and more than doubled the number of active and engaged users. Employees started using it to break down barriers within the organization much more quickly than anyone had expected.
The most important step: Start!
As soon as you roll out your collaboration solution, start measuring and tracking user adoption, and move decisively to address any hitches in the process. Implementing a suite solution and preparing your IT team to get employees up and running can be a daunting task—but Office 365 lets you move at your own pace. With our suite of available tools, you decide whether to migrate employees over in groups or by program. The ability to implement a steady rollout enables your teams to work at their own pace, allows you to save costs, and increases productivity by helping your business adapt to new streamlined solutions over time. Additionally, FastTrack for Office 365 provides customers with hands-on support to drive deployment and adoption at their own speed.
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Why automation doubles IT outsourcing cost savings
New research analyzes automation’s impact on the IT outsourcing market, revealing double-digit productivity improvements and specific cost reductions between 14 percent and 28 percent.
Outsourcing consultancy and research firm Information Services Group (ISG) this week unveiled a new research report to quantify the cost savings and productivity gains from automating IT services.
The inaugural Automation Index shows improvements in productivity fueled by automation can more than double the cost savings typically derived from outsourcing IT. Total cost reduction ranged from 26 percent to 66 percent, depending on the service tower, with 14 to 28 percentage points of these savings directly attributable to automation, according to ISG. (The typical cost savings from labor arbitrage and process improvements alone range from 20 percent to 30 percent).
The report is based on cost and labor data from ISG’s database covering outsourcing agreements with an annual contract value of $10 million or more in which service automation is a core component. The index is one of the first to quantify the impact of automation on IT services. Automation-related technologies and platforms improve the productivity of employees by enabling them to do more with less and prevent problems before they arise, translating into lower costs for buyers by not only reducing the number of provider employees needed to perform the work but also by reducing the amount of work that needs to be performed.
The result, says Steve Hall, partner with ISG Digital Services, is a buyer’s market that’s putting tremendous pressure on services providers to deliver more and more savings to stay competitive. “As automation moves up the IT process value chain and into business processes, it will eliminate a significant amount of workthrough problem avoidance and self-healing, and with it, a significant amount of the headcount needed to deliver large-scale ITO services,” Hall said in a statement accompanying the report.
Where automation has the biggest impact
Automation is having the biggest impact on areas in which employees manage physical devices, such as network services. Most IT towers see an average 25 percent decrease in the number of resources required as a result of automation, but certain IT services experience a 50 percent headcount reduction, according to ISG. ISG found that network and voice costs are declining by 66 percent mostly due to the convergence of voice, video and data solutions built on highly standardized and virtualized capabilities, an environment ripe for leveraging automation. Service desk and end user support costs declined by 26 percent due to increased adoption of self help and remote support, the introduction of self-healing functionality, and significant automation of level one and two incidents.
Higher-order automation
Most of today’s automation is focused on computerizing repetitive tasks based on standard operating procedures but more complex automation is beginning to emerge that takes advantage of more advanced data mining and machine learning capabilities, says Stanton Jones, ISG director of research. That higher-order automation can make operational decisions with no human involvement.
In order to seize the benefits of increased automation and plummeting IT services costs, however, buyers will have to transform to more standardized technology stacks across the IT organization. “The more clients standardize things like operating system instances, application interfaces, ITIL processes, and network infrastructure, the easier it is to automate operations,” says Jones. “Standardization means less interfaces, less complexity and fewer decisions that need to be made, therefore, it becomes easier to automate.”
Buyers should also approach process automation tools with standardization in mind. “Service providers are driving increased productivity into their services by using data mining and machine learning to aggregate and correlate data and then improve the quality and timeliness of decision making for routine and repetitive tasks,” Jones says. “Clients can enable and execute these transformations by accepting standard processes and technologies providers bring to the table.”
According to a recent informal poll on Twitter, 41% of business owners think that team collaboration is the top benefit of the cloud.
While it may be an informal poll, it helps demonstrate the importance other business owners place on team collaboration.
But what’s behind that belief? Lots of good reasons.
Here are six reasons you should make team collaboration a major priority.
Drive More Efficiency
Team collaboration can help your business achieve more in less time by working from anywhere allowing you to be mobile while still having access to important tools and files. For example, say you’re at the airport on your way to an important meeting.
Without the proper tools, catching up with that extra work you had back at the office is out of the question and sitting around at the airport is just wasted time.
But what if you could access all those important files and work on them from your smartphone or tablet? They’re not sitting on your office computer. They’re in the cloud and can be accessed from anywhere.
Or say you’re filling in for a co-worker who’s out on vacation. You’re helping a few of her clients and without the cloud might not have access to their files. But with cloud technology those files are all available to anyone in your company, which makes jumping in a breeze.
Manage Employees
Hiring remote workers can help your business find the best employees because you’re not bound by geography. It also gives team members a level of flexibility many employees are looking for in a workplace today.
But if you’re not in the same office as someone on a day-to-day basis, managing and working together can be difficult.
Cloud collaboration tools can be absolutely vital with distributed teams — or even for people who work down the hall.
With team collaboration tools in the cloud like Microsoft Teams, the chat-based workspace for Office 365 and others, you can work on projects together, communicate back and forth, assign different tasks and check on your team’s progress.
Increase Profit for the Business
Team collaboration also allows you to potentially increase your business’s profits. Think about it – if you’re able to cut down on inefficiencies around your office and allow each of your team members to focus on what they do best, your business is likely to get more done. And when you’re not spending all that extra time on those tasks, you can focus on things that actually move your business forward.
For example, David Smith, Microsoft’s VP of worldwide SMB sales shared a case study about Holwick Constructors in a recent Twitter chat. According to Smith, the company was spending about 12 unnecessary hours on IT each week. But when it began utilizing the cloud for team collaboration, all that recouped time led to an estimated $2 million in additional business.
Improve Customer Satisfaction
When you’re able to increase efficiency among your employees, it can also lead to an improved experience for your customers. For example, if you have just a few employees who are in charge of customer service, they might not be able to dedicate as much time as they’d like to each customer or situation. However, if you have a team collaboration system in place like Outlook Customer Manager, it can streamline your team’s communication and spread out some of the tasks necessary in order to provide great service to every customer.
In fact, many businesses have already found that technology like cloud-based collaboration tools have helped them improve customer satisfaction. According to another tweet from Smith, 44 percent of small business owners surveyed said that cloud and mobile technology has led to increased satisfaction among their customers.
Streamline Your Communications
With a team collaboration system in place, your team members never have to wonder about how they should go about contacting you or another member of the team. In other cases, an employee with a question or idea might have to consider whether they should email you, set up an appointment or share their concerns in another way.
But if you have a system like Skype for Business in place, where everyone on your team can work together and stay in contact, it can make sharing ideas or concerns a lot easier for everyone. This can save everyone on your team time, both when they have questions or concerns and when they have to answer questions or concerns from others.
Make Employees More Satisfied
When your employees are able to work together seamlessly and do work that is well suited to their particular set of skills, it can make the whole experience a lot more enjoyable. And that can lead to increased job satisfaction throughout your team.
There are many tangible benefits to having happier employees. Those who are satisfied with their jobs are likely to be more productive and engaged at work. And they’re also likely to stick around for longer periods of time, meaning you can potentially even reduce employee turnover and save on HR costs. It’s a win-win!
The new Office.com gets first major update
By Tom Batcheler as written on blogs.office.com
Back in April, we started rolling out a new Office 365 home page experience that provided a redesigned environment for commercial, education and home users to collaborate and work across every device. The update also delivered improved access to recent files and folders and introduced a new platform for faster delivery of innovative features.
We’re now rolling out new changes that will greatly increase the ease of navigating apps and improve access to frequent and recently opened documents. These changes started rolling out in December and will continue through early 2017.
Get back to your online documents
We know that your best work can take time, so we improved access to your unfinished documents. Users will now see additional controls within the “Recent documents” list to let users filter by document type across Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Have a document that you go back to frequently? Pin it to the list so it’s always just a click away.
Know what’s coming up
We made it easier to see what’s coming up at a glance. Get an in-depth view of the day’s meetings and quickly respond to or join Skype for Business calls with one click. Enhanced people pictures help you build stronger connections with coworkers and help you keep track of your different teams and projects.
Stay on top of tasks
Create, view and complete tasks directly on Office.com that stay in sync across Outlook on all your devices. Need to add more details to a task? Double tap to open in Outlook Tasks to add additional details.
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How to maximize ROI by outsourcing or blending with a managed services provider
Managing IT is no easy task. Challenges with IT professionals include a lot of turnover of IT employees, difficulty supporting the necessary training, and the expense of continued education to keep employees at the top of the industry. Whether you completely outsource IT or create a Blended IT workforce, a managed service provider can save you time, money, and a whole lot of frustration. To get the best out of your MSP, check out these tips:
Communicate your needs
Make sure to follow up with your managed services provider. They are there to give you exactly what you need, and also what you want. Communicate your goals and ideas so they can execute and implement them into your business. MSPs can be so much more than an outside IT department, and can often serve as your virtual CIO. Take advantage of this by combining all of your skills with theirs to take your business to the next level.
Re-evaluate often
Meet up with your MSP on a regular basis. Consistently reviewing the overall state of your IT operations is important in resolving - and preventing - any issues. Also checking up on your last period's operations efficiency, such as how many tickets went through, the average time of resolution, etc, can help you see exactly how your MSP is performing. Your MSP should work with you to improve the functionality of your network by keeping up with reports.
Let them help you
MSPs are capable of providing valuable strategic advice, including planning future IT projects and upgrades, evaluating your network, systems, and workstations, and coming up with solutions to current or potential future IT problems. Come up with a clear, step-by-step backup and disaster recovery plan. Work with your MSP to make sure they know what you will need, and you will know exactly what they can do for you, as well as what you will need to do in case of a disaster. Test the backup process with your MSP to make sure the plan will work for both of you.
Our Managed Services Portfolio includes offerings that cover a wide range of technology’s – choose from one of our packaged offerings or pick and choose the specific services and applications that fit your business needs. The first step will be a Network Assessment with one of our infrastructure experts that will provide you a network inventory analysis, identify any and all network issues and correlate data collected to provide you extensive insight into your network and its performance.
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Getting Started with the OneNote Web Clipper
As written on support.office.com
Whenever you do online research with OneNote, you can use the OneNote Web Clipper to easily capture, edit, annotate, and share information. It’s free to use and it works with most modern Web browsers.
Install the OneNote Web Clipper
To set up the OneNote Web Clipper, do the following:
Follow the on-screen instructions that are displayed for the particular Web browser that you’re using.
If prompted, acknowledge any security messages to give OneNote Web Clipper permission to work with your browser.
To configure the OneNote Web Clipper, do the following:
In your browser, open any website, and then click the OneNote Web Clipper icon.
NOTE: The location of the OneNote Web Clipper depends on the browser you are using. For example, in Internet Explorer, it will appear on the Favorites bar.
In the purple popup window that appears, do one of the following:
Click Sign in with a Microsoft account if you want to use the OneNote Web Clipper with a personal account like Outlook.com, Live.com, or Hotmail.com. For best results, use the same account that you’re already using with OneNote.
Click Sign in with a work or school account if you want to use the OneNote Web Clipper with an account given to you by your work organization or school.
If prompted, confirm the requested application permissions for the OneNote Web Clipper. You can later change these application permissions at any time in your Account Settings.
Use the OneNote Web Clipper
The OneNote Web Clipper automatically detects the type of website content you want to capture — an article, a recipe, or a product page.
Open the page that contains what you want to clip to OneNote, and then click the OneNote Web Clipper icon.
In the small OneNote Web Clipper window, do any of the following (where available):
Click Full Page or Region if you want to capture the current Web page (or a selected region of it) to your notebook as a screenshot image. These options preserve the content you’re clipping in exactly the way it appears.
Click Article, Recipe, or Product if you want to save the current Web page to your notebook as editable text and images. When you select any of these options, you can use the buttons at the top of the preview window to highlight selected text, change between a serif and sans-serif font style, and increase or decrease the default text size.
Click the Location drop-down menu, and then select the notebook section where the clipped Web page should be saved. The list includes all notebooks that you have stored on your OneDrive account, including any shared notebooks. You can click to expand any notebook in the list to see its available sections.
Click Add a note if you want to give the captured information more context for later. This step is optional, but the additional note can be useful as a note or reminder to yourself (for example, “Follow up with Samantha about these product specs!"), or as a way to provide information to others who are reading it in a shared notebook (for example, "Hey everyone, check out this article I found!").
Click Clip to send the captured information to OneNote.
Ideas for using the OneNote Web Clipper
Not sure what to clip? Here are some ideas to get you started!
Travel — Clip all your travel research and trip planning from the Web, and add everything directly to OneNote.
Recipes — Gathering recipes for an upcoming party? Clip the best images and ingredient lists from your favorite recipe sites.
News — Capture import content from your favorite news sites to reference them later or to share them with friends.
Inspiration — Collect inspiring images and ideas from around the Web, and keep them in OneNote for easy lookup.
Research — Import relevant articles from the Web and save them to your research notebook for later reading.
Shopping — Make sure you always get the best deal when shopping online by clipping price lists and product pages.
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Relationship Goals:Our IT Department and Yours
Kimye is so 2016. This Valentine's Day, there's a new "IT" couple and it's called Blended IT. Blended IT is the perfect combination of mixing our IT resources with yours. A 24/7 help desk is probably the best valentine you can ask for. Don't take on more than you need to - Blended IT helps you get back to what you do best, without losing technology reliability. Work with us and you've finally found the perfect relationship.
Managed Services
Our Managed Services Portfolio includes service offerings that cover a wide range of technologies – choose from one of our packaged offerings or pick and choose the specific services and applications that fit your unique business needs.
Integration services which streamline applications and optimize enterprise wide resources. Our integration services include consulting,
mature governance framework and system integration in the following areas:
Backup & Compliance
93% of companies that lost their data for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster. Don't let this be you! Managed Solution offers a variety of Backup and Disaster Recovery solutions to tailor specifically to your business.
Mobile Workforce Solutions
Today’s employees want flexibility in where and when they work, access to the latest devices and technology… and they expect their employer to make it easy for them. To keep up with the pace of change and the speed of business, they need to access their work remotely, connect with their team, and meet with customers or partners in ways that support virtual teams.
The new Office.com gets first major update
