How to get a better ROI and save one day a week with Microsoft Teams
Giving access to the right tools is often not sufficient to build a successful digital workplace. Training, empowering, and supporting your staff is mandatory to ensure they succeed in the digital era. To add to the complexity, when numerous tools are adopted, security and compliance are more difficult to sustain.
The more, the merrier rule does not apply here; adopting a new collaboration tool should increase productivity and save time, not be another burden for your employees. Adopting numerous tools with similar functionalities can result in confusion and resistance towards change. Furthermore, adopting numerous tools is resulting in distraction by constant switching between the apps. Switching between the applications is not only a matter of losing time but also re-engagement.
A Forrester Total Economic Impact™ Study of Microsoft Teams, published in 2019, reported that information workers save 15 minutes per day by having features and information sources available within Teams. The latest Forrester study, published in July 2020, showed that by using Microsoft Teams and its unified communication and collaboration capabilities, employees can save 15 to 25 minutes a day. In other words, information workers can save between 1 and 2 hours a week by utilizing a hub for teamwork which allows them to integrate other apps.
Features like file collaboration and file sharing, online meetings, chat and search functionality in Microsoft Teams enable information workers to save 4 hours per week. Based on the Forrester report, by being able to access the important information and conversations from the shared workspace, decision-makers improve their time-to-decision by 17.7%. Across all information and firstline workers, the average downtime reduction is 14.6%.
What about the costs?
There are numerous tools to use when it comes to online meetings or chat. The key challenge arises when the requirements move from the scope of communication tool towards collaboration, which then requires an additional tool to supplement the existing tool, for example, to store and share files or to collaborate on them; get access to a task management tool, manage schedules, arrange online appointments. The organizations end up purchasing numerous licenses for a variety of products and adjusting subscriptions to the individual users, ending up with higher costs but no guarantees that the products will be used. When faced with a variety of similar tools or constant switching between the applications, the users often get confused and might decide to use the tools they are familiar with from their personal use, leading to risk and compliance issues.
By taking the full capacity of your existing Microsoft 365 subscription, you can dispose the costs of third party carrier expenses and fully utilize your current investment. Companies also reported reduced web conferencing, long-distance, mobile phone, and international phone calls, and on-premises telephony solutions cost by switching to Microsoft Teams. Finally, Teams help with cutting the travel expenses by replacing overnight trips with online meetings.
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Sources of information:
The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Teams: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/04/Total-Economic-Impact-Microsoft-Teams.pdf
New Technology: The Projected Total Economic Impact™ Of The Microsoft Teams Platform: https://8gportalvhdsf9v440s15hrt.blob.core.windows.net/lithium/Microsoft%20Teams/Forrester%20TEI_Microsoft%20Teams%20Platform_06%2026%202020%20FINAL.pdf