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The turbulent business environment of the past 5 months has likely left business owners feeling stressed and exhausted. The Covid-19 pandemic has presented an ever-evolving business landscape that has required businesses to continually adapt their offering and operations in response to ever-changing restrictions on working life.
For many businesses this has resulted in a compromised service offering.  Factors such as unfamiliar new ways of working and a reduced workforce have threatened operational capacity. As a result, it’s more important than ever that businesses level-up their productivity in order to maintain their service, remain competitive and even countenance the prospect of growth despite a difficult environment.Â
Let’s assume that you now have the basics of remote-working sorted; your team are comfortable working from home, have access to the resources and equipment they need and you’re confident that your data is secure. It’s now time to look at the tools that will let you extract every last drop of value from the working day. Working flexibly has been on the rise for a number of years now, so thankfully the platforms that enable effective collaboration and workflow management have been a long time in development. In this article, we will look at a few of such offerings available through Microsoft 365. These affordable, accessible and intuitive platforms will act as a springboard to your business’ productivity aims while requiring little investment in terms of time or money.
Innovate, perform, deliver – make you’re working week more fruitful with Collaboration and Task management solutions from Microsoft 365
Microsoft’s workplace communication focal point, Teams is popular with remote and office-based workforces alike.  If you are already a Microsoft 365 customer or if your team use the Office apps daily, then you really don’t have to look any further than Teams for your communication needs.
Available with many Microsoft 365 subscriptions or as a standalone product discover why Teams is one of the world’s most popular collaboration platforms today!
There are several workflow management tools within the MS 365 landscape. Microsoft Project offers the most in-depth, feature-rich experience and at the other end of the scale you’ll find ‘To-Do,’ a more basic application that’s great for managing straightforward work tasks and personal errands. ‘Planner’ is situated between these 2 offerings and offers a good balance of features and ease-of-use; offering more features and greater insights than To-Do and while avoiding the learning-curve that comes with the more complex Microsoft Project.
Available to Premium, Business and Educational subscribers to MS365, you may already have planner available to you if you’re a 365 customer. Take this intuitive tool for a spin today and see if it could help you simplify your task management challenges.
Streamline scheduling with ‘Bookings,’ improve engagement with ‘Forms’ and keep the conversation going with ‘Yammer’
With so many peripheral apps complementing the ‘core’ services in the Microsoft environment you’re bound to find a solution to some of your business challenges with a little digging….
‘Bookings’ is an invaluable scheduling tool that takes the time-consuming legwork out of meeting scheduling. It lets you publish your timetable so attendees can select a time that suits, thus avoiding the tedium of lengthy email threads that arranging meetings can involve.
‘Forms’ is a simple survey generation application that lets you create and publish surveys, quizzes and polls. A great way to gauge customer satisfaction, test employee knowledge, drive engagement and much more.
‘Yammer’ Without the hubbub and camaraderie of the office environment, keeping spirits high and employees engaged while working remotely can be more of a challenge. Yammer functions as social networking site for businesses; a great way to help employees connect and share news and updates.
As part of the government’s economic response to the Covid-19 pandemic, packages of grant funding are to be announced to help businesses make efficiency transitions.  These grants of between £1000 and £5000 could help your business innovate and optimise its IT system, to drive efficiency and productivity gains using some of the ideas we’ve discussed above.
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With 16 years’ experience and an impressive track record of providing a full suite of IT services to SMEs across the southeast, we take pride in providing outcome-focused, realistic and cost-effective solutions that address the individual operational challenges of the businesses we work with.
So why not turn this difficult time into a period of business transformation and reinvention?
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Book a no-obligation discovery call with a member of our team today by calling 0207 993 9035 or hello@netplatforms.wmtemp.com