Key Benefits of Using MS Teams for Employee Collaboration

Today’s businesses use an array of tools for communication and collaboration, and it’s not uncommon to find different departments in the same company use different tools.  Microsoft Teams addresses that issue. Teams is a collaborative tool that can be deployed company-wide to brings together employees, their conversations and their content for a more productive way of working. Here are a few different ways that Teams could benefit your business:

1. Company-wide Chat - A main value-add of Teams is the chat functionality. The app lets you have threaded conversations, so everything is recorded in one, easy to find place. There’s no more digging through your inbox looking for emails or even the bombardment of emails as group conversations take place. Your conversations can take place as a team discussion or you can chat privately. There is also the ability to integrate Skype to have audio and video conversations.

2. Full Integration with your Business Apps- Teams brings all your commonly used tools together for a seamless working experience. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Planner, SharePoint and more are all integrated with Teams.  If you’re all reviewing a Word document at once you can have the document sitting in the chat as you talk.

3. Customized Workspace - Every team is different, and Microsoft Teams understands that. Teams is customizable, you can even integrate with third parties. For example, the marketing team would be able to receive updates from Twitter which would be just as important to them as updates from your CMO.

4. Communicate in Real Time - Being able to chat in real time rather than bouncing emails back and forth, which could take hours to be read and responded to, could kill productivity. High priority initiatives might get pushed back because an email hasn’t been answered, while instant messaging allows an ease and fluidity that enables productivity to thrive.

5. Everyone is on the Same Page - You send an email to everyone giving them update. They reply to you but not to all. Then someone else replies to you. Suddenly the conversation is splitting out into seven separate conversations with everyone’s ideas being directed at one person when it should be a group discussion. With Teams this doesn’t happen. Everyone knows what the status of the discussion is, keeping the productivity flowing.

These are just a few of the high-level benefits inherent with Teams. If you are interested in harnessing the power of Microsoft Teams or Office 365 please contact us.