5 Ways to Optimize Remote Work Using Microsoft 365 Apps for Business

How important is productivity to your business? Is technology hindering or helping your employees to get their job done?  

With remote work becoming the new norm, it is increasingly challenging for businesses to enable productivity and collaboration among employees. This leads to wasted time, and ultimately money. Having the right tools to enable your users will solve this problem.

Fortunately for businesses, Microsoft 365 was designed with remote work in mind. Equipped with a number of powerful collaborative apps and services, Microsoft 365 has the potential to optimize remote work and enable a never-before-seen level of productivity among remote employees and teams. Some of these Microsoft 365 collaborative apps and services include:

• Outlook - Allows remote employees to send and receive email messages, update your calendar, manage contacts, and keep track of tasks. There are many "tips & tricks" that your employees can use to make Outlook a productivity hub. Check out 7 Cool Things You Didn't Know About Outlook. Since your email server is in the cloud with M365, your emails, calendar, contacts and tasks will be available even if your network goes down.
• Teams - Regarded as one of the most powerful Microsoft 365 collaboration tools, Microsoft Teams serves as a workspace for real-time collaboration and communication, meetings, files, and application sharing, and is accessible by remote employees whenever they need it. Teams can help keep email messages to a minimum and helps employees connect in real-time. Teams can also replace your legacy phone system allowing your users to communicate over a phone call anywhere they have internet connectivity. The best part is that they won't need any additional phone hardware to use their computer as a phone.
• OneDrive for Business - A file hosting service offered by Microsoft 365 that provides remote employees with a convenient and secure way to store documents in the cloud and access them wherever they are. OneDrive can replace the network drives that require a VPN or a system on the network for employees to access.
• SharePoint - A highly robust web-based platform that can be customized to do pretty much anything you need. To get started quickly, we recommend using SharePoint as a company intranet and host shared files for your departments. This can completely replace your premise-based file server.
• Planner - Designed to oversee everything from simple to-do lists to complex projects that require multiple team members, Planner allows businesses to easily initiate and assign tasks and track overall progress. With a very intuitive use interface, it can quickly transform anyone in your organization into stellar project managers for your next project.
• Stream - This video service offered by Microsoft 365 makes it easy for remote employees to create, share, and interact with other team members across your organization. Think of this as your own internal YouTube for your organization. Use it for training new employees by creating videos that can quickly onboard them to their role. Or, use it for building morale by posting a video of your annual company party. Stream also ties in with Microsoft Teams so you can automatically record any meetings for anyone that may have missed it.

How Microsoft 365 Apps Optimize Remote Work

Now that we’ve covered some of the apps and services provided by Microsoft 365, it’s time to take a closer look at how these applications can optimize remote work. There are five distinct capabilities of Microsoft 365 that can help your business achieve a seamless remote work experience for your employees. These capabilities include:

Connectivity

Remote workers need the ability to connect to their work easily. When using technology to achieve this, you can make that process simple or more complex depending on the route you choose for your business. With Microsoft 365, connectivity is easy and native to your employees and does not require using extra services like VPN.

Higher Productivity

A common concern that often surrounds remote work is the productivity and efficiency of employees. While this may be the case for some remote work scenarios, Microsoft 365 puts this concern to rest with its industry-leading business intelligence and analytics that enable remote workers to achieve higher levels of productivity than if they were working in the office. With tools like Workplace Analytics, business owners can strategically monitor their workplace productivity and highlight areas of improvement, without compromising the privacy of employees.

Safety & Security

Having a good cybersecurity strategy is a necessity for all businesses. When you choose to adopt Microsoft 365, your business is enabled with industry-leading security features offered by Microsoft. In other words, your business is provided with peace of mind knowing that the best security against data loss and malware is right at your fingertips with Microsoft’s built-in security features and multi-factor authentication.

Management

One of the key issues with remote work is that businesses may be uncertain of the best way to manage their devices, which can lead to security issues. With Microsoft 365, however, your business is enabled with the capability of managing your employees’ devices to help ensure a safe and secure network. Microsoft 365 is equipped with the capability to remotely manage, configure, and monitor your employee desktops and mobile devices.

Collaborative

Finally, your business is sure to gain a significant boost in productivity through the enhanced communication that Microsoft 365 offers. From optimizing online meetings and chats with Microsoft Teams, to SharePoint allowing your team to collaborate and share documents in the cloud, your remote employees will be able to work with their colleagues just as if they were on-premises.

Let Us Enable Your Business with Microsoft 365/Office 365

Here at Techmedics, we are dedicated to making sure your employees are empowered with the right solutions and support that you need to put your business ahead of the competition. We specialize in customizing Microsoft/Office 365 for your organization’s needs. So, if you are ready to start discussing how Microsoft 365 can optimize remote work for your business, we are ready to help. Click here to learn more about our services and schedule a consultation.