Building the foundations for success
How to excel in a digital world
“That’s the way we have always done things”, is the phrase that holds your business back – assumes there is no need or opportunity to improve, restricts your agility and damages your profitability. Too commonly is it assumed that there is no better way of doing what you do every day, that progress in technological advancements haven’t been made to tighten up and smooth line processes.
The need to achieve more with less has been thrust upon us all as a result of the challenges faced this year. But, generally, as a concept, driving efficiencies within our businesses is a good thing – regardless of the climate.
Being more accessible, cost-effective and more capable than ever before, technology is the main driver for a revolution of change within your business.
Not all change is a bad change
There is often the perception that change can be an unnecessary or painful process, resulting in little transformational progress or achieved efficiency. In the past, it’s probable that some of those thoughts may well have been true; for too long had systems and technology platforms dictated to their users how they must be used, forcing a compromise. This is thankfully no longer the case.
In this digital age, the level of competitiveness between software and technology providers has increased the flexibility and features offered to users, while driving down price and the complexity of integrating new tools.
It is now less the case of, “that’s just the way the system works” and more a case of “the system is personalised to work the way we want to work”.
Making the most of the digital world
What can be achieved?
Providing your team with effective tools that are personalised to the processes you need to enforce as a business while remaining flexible to the different ways your team members prefer to work, is now within reach.
By digitising otherwise manual processes and replacing legacy IT tools & services, you will:
- Unify your team’s access to resources and data to one central location
- Achieve access anywhere, at any time on any device
- Automate some repetitive administrative tasks
- The cut margin for human error or process deviation
- Better utilise your manpower
How can this be achieved?
The perfect recipe will likely differ for each business, dependent on your individual circumstances. There are however some fundamental components that make up our recommendations for how to excel in a digital world, centred around Microsoft’s flagship Office 365 suite.
As Microsoft’s solution to collaboration, communication and productivity, Office 365 (also referred to as Microsoft 365), sits as a unified cloud-based platform delivering all the core modern work resources your team needs. Encompassing features such as file storage & sharing, email, voice/video conferencing, right alongside familiar Office applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint; Office 365 is the single answer for the modern office ‘on the go’.
The Office 365 suits include tools and services including:
As a central file repository, OneDrive acts as your cloud-based file server – storing all of your documents and folders. Files can be accessed from any internet-connected device, on mobile and even synchronised offline locally for access whenever you can’t get online.
As Microsoft’s answer to the ‘intranet’, SharePoint provides an online private web portal for structuring your file data, providing shared access to policies & processes, and sharing access to other centralised resources such as calendars, contact lists and mailboxes. SharePoint goes above and beyond the limitations of other file storage services, such as process-driven step by step file handling processes and structured permission-based controls.
Sitting now as the centralised go-to app for most day to day work, Teams arms your staff with access (from any device) to features such as; instant messaging, voice/video conferencing, file access and team ‘post’ channels (acting as a social media-esque screen for sharing information and tagging relevant colleagues).
All of your familiar Office applications are available (at their most up to date release version) for use on your computer just as they always have been, in addition to their web-based counterparts for those times when you’re working from a device without Office installed locally.
Professional email, contacts and calendars are driven from Microsoft’s elite Exchange service. Benefit from the ability to run shared mailboxes and distribution groups, while also being able to sync your inbox, folders and sent items across all of your devices in real-time.
Adoption is the key
To drive the aforementioned benefits within your business found in new-age digital tools, you must ensure you achieve full user adoption; as without it, your operations will be in limbo and no one will know how to work effectively.
A number of typical adoption challenges include:
- Misaligned to business processes
- A lack of training & support
- Over-complication
If the new tools you are looking to deploy are not tailored to the way your business needs to work, are difficult to comprehend for your team or are disjointed in the way they work; you’ll rarely achieve adoption and the whole project will have been for nothing.
By selecting the right partner to integrate your technology, you can predict and overcome any migration and adoption challenges before they arise. Key components to consider in the selection of the right partner to help you ingrate new technology include:
- Do they take a customer-driven approach in tailoring solutions to your business?
- Is there team able to consult with customers and not just implement the technology?
Do they have the capacity to effectively document, handover, train and support your users to make the most of their tools?
We're Datek Solutions
Since 1998 we have been managing IT support, solutions and strategy for a range of clients. We have won awards for our excellent customer service and pride ourselves on being transparent. What you see, is what you get.
What makes us different? We don’t use a one-size fit all approach. We get to know your business and everyone in it, what it needs and how we can support you to give the best solutions at the best possible prices.
Above all this, we are committed to keeping it simple for you. If there’s a solution that your company needs, or you already have and it’s essential we support it, we make sure we know everything there is to know about it.
Contact us on 01753 540000 or email us at contactus@datek.co.uk.
