Microsoft Teams is the latest chat-based work environment within Office 365. In this blog I’ll explain why you want to use Microsoft Teams and how Microsoft Teams, as a company helps in the realization of your business strategy.
The business case:
A potential customer sends you a request for a quote that you as a company are eager to win. Together with the application, a number of attachments are sent.
This email, including attachments, is forwarded. Documents are stored locally or in a cloud environment. Comments are placed in documents and the email circus is about to begin.
Within a day or 2 all the application documents are stored umpteen times in various media and no one knows what the latest version is.
This is the classic example of what collaboration isn’t! An example that I encounter on a daily against basis.
The problem:
The above scenario is not efficient and mistakes will almost certain happen. This way of working costs your business not only money but it also reduces quality of your deliverables.
Good is not good enough!
To help solve the problem outlined above, many companies choose Office 365. A good plan. Office 365 integrates a huge range of tools for storage of documents and information and helps improve collaboration.
The management has embarked on a strategy to increase the profitability of the company. The architect has visualized the strategy as seen in the diagram below.
Figure 1 business strategy modeled in ArchiMate
The strategy describes the current problems:
- Quality of quotations is too low -there are apparently mistakes made in preparing a quote;
- Quotation realization takes too long – realizing a quote takes, according to the Executive Board, apparently too long.
Both problems have a negative impact on the business drivers:
- Increase profitability;
- Higher customer satisfaction.
The average customer is not very happy if he or she must wait long on a quote which is not correct.
What could be the cause of these problems?
We have Office 365 and that should help us with all of the problems mentioned above. We create project- or team sites in SharePoint Online. We email like madman using Outlook Online, we chat ourselves silly with Skype, Yammer every free minute of the day and planner is being used by project management. Still it’s not enough! Why?
That incredible set of tools is one of the drawbacks Office 365. SharePoint, Skype, Outlook, Power-BI all integrate seamlessly with each other but they are all separate tools.
Microsoft Office 365 makes Teams even better
Microsoft has acknowledged this problem and provided us with a solution: Microsoft Teams!………..What is Microsoft Teams?
Microsoft Teams is an app that can be used online (teams.microsoft.com) or as a downloadable application (desktop/mobile) and provides a productivity boost for working together in teams!
Office 365 offers all those tools that you can use in Microsoft Teams without even noticing it.
What are the activities that you perform as a team?
- Discuss
- Chat
- Talk
- Collaborate on files
- Plans
- Capture ideas
- Involve colleagues
And of course drink coffee … but that functionality isn’t included in Microsoft Teams (yet). May be something for the Microsoft Teams user voice?… but all these functionalities are already in Office 365!?..Yes! however the big difference is that you can all use these functionalities from within Microsoft Teams!… whereas In Office 365 these are all separate tools.
| Activity in the Team | Tool in Office 365 | Tool in Microsoft Teams |
| Consult | Skype; Yammer; News feed (yuk) | Microsoft Teams:
Conversations; Skype |
| Chat | Skype | Microsoft Teams: Skype |
| Talk | Skype | Microsoft Teams: Skype |
| Collaborate on files | SharePoint, Word, Excel, Skype etc. | Microsoft Teams: Sharepoint, Word, Excel, Skype |
| Plan | Planner | Microsoft Teams: Planner |
| Capture ideas | Wiki | Microsoft Teams: Wiki |
| Add team members | SharePoint | Microsoft Teams: Teams |
| Start new teams | SharePoint | Microsoft Teams: Teams |
| Schedule meetings | Outlook | Microsoft Teams: Meeting |
The above table shows that all the different tools from Microsoft Teams directly accessible without having to leave Teams.
Conclusion
The goal of our strategy was to increase profitability and achieve higher customer satisfaction. How does Microsoft Teams facilitate this?….The answer is very simple after reading this blog: Integration!
‘All’ Office 365 tools are integrated into a single tool: Microsoft Teams.
Because employees now have all the available tools and information in a single application at their disposal, it means they can see the big picture, so how else does this help?
- What contributes to a faster delivery! – All required information is available in clear tabs
- What contributes to a higher quality! – They work faster and more efficiently
- What contributes to a faster delivery! – They work with the available tools instead of the tools working against them
- What contributes to a faster delivery and higher quality! – There work is more enjoyable
What company wouldn’t want to save on costs and at the same time increasing the quality and overall happiness of their customers and employees?
So my advice: get started with Microsoft Teams. Perhaps a bit awkward at first, like any change, but I guarantee you will going to love Microsoft Teams!
Screenshots
The following screenshots are demo screenshots provided by Microsoft. They show that the complete user experience really in one tool.
Communicate with the marketing team
Marketing documents
Working with colleagues at the same time to a document
Schedule tracking
