2020 brought new group-working challenges to small businesses in all sectors. With the rapid growth of remote working, teleconferencing, video calls, and collaborative projects, demand for apps and suites that could handle it all skyrocketed. Enter Microsoft Teams…
Microsoft Teams is Microsoft's premier cloud-powered productivity-boosting, remote conferencing, and joint office work suite. It's currently available for PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones running Windows, iOS, and Android.
Launched in 2017, early 2020 saw Team's popularity explode worldwide due to millions of SMEs switching to remote work. With a peak of seventy-five million simultaneous users, Microsoft has called Teams the fastest growing app in it's long history. Now fully integrated with Office 365 and taking on the functions of Skype For Business (which is being phased out and merged with Teams), Teams offers businesses a fantastic way to keep in touch, stay productive, and host meetings without needing a single employee to come into the office. Dashboard managerial controls, Outlook integration and OneDrive cloud storage allow admins to assign work, marshal remote workers across vast distances, and distribute briefings and documents with ease.
Why does Microsoft Teams leave its competitors standing in the dust? The answer lies in the sheer number of things it can do - and do well.
With Teams, you can:
Host managed video and audio calls and webchats between up to 250 simultaneous users.
Create open chatrooms for pre-set employee lists and workgroups.
Use telemarketing features and B2B telecoms capability.
Work on Office 365 documents, spreadsheets, and PowerPoints remotely with many other users.
Use a shared OneDrive space to distribute work, materials, and uploaded files.
Import planners and calendars from Outlook, getting everyone on the same page as to their remote working timeline.
Use OneDrive auto-backups to prevent data loss and accidental deletion, saving time and hassle.
Add personalisation and custom backdrops with Microsoft's Together mode to aid morale and productivity.
Connect mailing lists and external apps (e.g. MailChimp) to manage marketing and public comms.
Use sophisticated admin and scheduling tools to manage employee privileges, groupings, and time assigned work.
Maintain a 24-7 virtual office environment.
TMB are specialists in Microsoft Teams and everything else on the cloud. We offer a range of tailored managed IT services to boost collaboration potential and help our customers succeed when working remotely. Get in touch today to learn more.