1The ultimate guide to chat-based tools

The ultimate guide to chat-based toolsFour ways that they empower your workforce

2The ultimate guide to chat-based tools

You've seen the impact that high-performing teams can have in business. But what if they could achieve even more? What if they had the space to be themselves and share ideas instantly and easily across geographies and generations while staying in sync with each other?

In a world where collaboration is how work gets done, all teams need to have workspaces and tools they're comfortable with. And it's up to businesses to make it easy for them to get both.

Businesses must recognise that there's never been a wider spectrum of work styles. There are more millennials in the workforce than ever before, remote working is commonplace and the tools used to get work done have expanded far beyond emails and phones. Businesses need to provide collaboration tools that suit different personalities and skill sets and meet varying needs.

Employees today expect their personal tools to be available at work. They've been using chat tools such as text messages and social media with ease for years. Transitioning to similar forms of communication in business is a natural next step in the mobile-first, cloud-first, instant communication-driven workforce.

But taking modern business conversations to chat only succeeds if your platform supports the needs of all teams. So, what is the right workspace for chat-based collaboration? It needs to be flexible enough to meet all of your teams' needs, become a hub for dispersing teamwork, be customisable and stay secure.

Such a workspace is possible. With scalability, app integration capabilities, ease of use and automation at the forefront of the tools you use, you can create better-performing teams.

Here are four ways that chat-based tools empower your teams:

Introduction

Jason WarnkeManaging Director, Internal ITAccenture

The thing that's challenging is making sure that there's a platform for collaboration. Teams are very liquid – we need to keep up with the way that our people like to work.

3The ultimate guide to chat-based tools

1. Invite the Group while Increasing the Efficiency

Matt CochranInformation Technology ManagerHendrick Motorsports

You have that constant thread of communication that you can go back in the history and see. It's all there in a single interface.

Today's workplace has seen a consistent and growing need to communicate in the moment and keep everyone in the know. Great ideas often start small, amongst a few people, then quickly grow to include a larger team that helps bring them to fruition. To keep that momentum going, fast communication is essential.

At such times, teams need to be able to communicate freely and scale up or down as needed. Additional team members must be able to enter the conversation, while keeping the larger team in the know in terms of activities. Conversations should be possible at a private or group level, and from devices and locations of their choice.

4The ultimate guide to chat-based tools

Microsoft Teams, the chat-based workspace in Office 365, lets you build a team environment dedicated to that project, campaign or department, enabling the team to communicate in real time, make fast decisions and share content as a group. The work that traditionally required an in-person meeting happens directly in the workspace – through instant messages, smaller group video conferences and shared files – faster than before and from virtually anywhere.

Bringing all of the conversations into one place also lets you reference them later or bring new members up to speed easily. Can't remember a decision made months earlier? A quick search reveals an entire record of the conversation. New members have just joined the team? Adding them will give them access to group conversations and files in one go.

Employees can see as much as a 35% reduction in time spent searching for company information when social messaging tools are used internally.1

35%

See group decision-making in actionFree interactive demo

5The ultimate guide to chat-based tools

When teams use disjointed applications, siloed information can make collaboration feel like a complex, time-consuming effort. They'll spend time locating files, remembering different logins or switching between apps.

Your team needs flexible tools to work with. When tools are integrated with the business applications teams are already using, work happens faster, allowing easy communication and collaboration.

We've designed Microsoft Teams so that employees can have access to chat, content, people and tools in one workspace, ultimately spending less time searching and more time making decisions. They can directly link to files, documents and emails for instant discussions within the app. It's also integrated with familiar tools such as SharePoint, OneNote and Planner, and works with Skype for Business to allow for instant chat and video or voice meetings.

What's more, an integrated solution can directly affect your bottom line. Last year, organisations that successfully adopted a unified communications system saw huge returns, compared with those that did not.

2. Be MoreProductive through Better Integration

The connection between unified communications systems and increased operating income:2

Successful adoption: +19.2% operating incomeUnsuccessful adoption: -32.7% operating profit

Review documents within your chatFree interactive demo

6The ultimate guide to chat-based tools

When your applications work together as well as your teams do, productivity soars. Consider this: new employees will only have to learn the interface of one new program, instead of six. With fewer passwords to remember and fewer blockers, your team won't be kept from doing what matters most: their work.

Ultimately, all teams should be able to collaborate across distances. Teamwork should be as easy online as it is in person. Sometimes, video conferencing will fill the gap when text communication just doesn't cut it.

Teams also allows for visual communication between teammates. Workers can easily share pictures and videos, whether for clarity, emphasis or simply a lighthearted response. Need some face-to-face contact? Through integrations with Skype for Business, users can launch a video call from a conversation in seconds.

Domnick ParrettaManaging Partner, Valorem

Because it's a part of the Office 365 set of collaboration tools, it's a part of what we already do. It's an essential hub where the conversations happen. It opens possibilities for connection and collaboration that we never thought were possible before.

Need to bring your team together? Schedule a meeting within Microsoft Teams and launch the video call directly from the app.

7The ultimate guide to chat-based tools

And no two teams work alike. Your marketing team may use instant messages to share updates on sales leads and website analytics, while your customer service department might rely on quick calls to resolve customer request tickets.

Your tools need to account for your team's unique needs, making workspaces customisable. Teams should be able to pull preferred tools into their workspace and have multiple conversations and work threads, with easy access to the files they commonly use. Automation, notification settings and chat bots can provide additional support to ensure that everyone has what they need.

Microsoft Teams enables threaded conversations within a channel to keep conversations organised and key stakeholders informed. Work that has traditionally required an in-person meeting happens in the channel instead.

3. Customise Features for Every Team

62% of global employees agree that artificial intelligence assistance could make their jobs easier.3

62%

8The ultimate guide to chat-based tools

It also allows users to customise and automate their chats with dozens of first-party chat bots and third-party app integrations.

Chat bots can instantaneously improve employee efficiency. Instead of relying on an employee to pull data or retrieve an alert or email, chat bots alert teams when an action is needed or a report is ready. Giving employees the ability to customise their chat bots and chat-based workspaces means that they can receive alerts and notifications as much as they want. Integration with third-party apps means that the work you used to set aside time to complete can come directly to you.

Jason Warnke, Managing Director, Internal ITAccenture

This is exactly what we've been waiting for. This is how we think the world of tomorrow will work.

See what chat bots can do for your businessFree interactive demo

9The ultimate guide to chat-based tools

Nearly 60% of IT pros believe that sensitive files or information should not be shared via group chat apps.4

60%When collaboration is needed, employees will find a way. Whether they're company-approved or not, they'll use instant chat solutions, shared document spaces and more, giving rise to security risks. Your IT managers are probably on the alert for tools that don't hold the same security and compliance standards as the rest of your business applications, but some unauthorised tools will still slip through.

But it's possible to provide secured solutions without putting an additional burden on your IT team. We've created Microsoft Teams with enterprise-level security in mind, providing data-encryption for at-rest and in-transit data in company cloud storage and emails. Broad compliance standards and multi-factored authentication help protect sensitive company information from multiple angles. Plus, because everything is from one vendor, IT won't have to worry about another set of security and compliance issues, or another possible breach point.

When it comes to keeping files and conversations private, allowing employees access to pertinent conversations means peace of mind for your IT team.

4. Provide Confidentiality You Can Trust

10The ultimate guide to chat-based tools

Once you know what to look for, choosing the right tool can reinvigorate your entire collaborative process. A Spiceworks study indicates that an additional 17% of organisations plan to adopt Microsoft Teams over the next two years.4

What to look for in your chat-based workspace:

Customisation for teams

Scalability and search for growing organisations

Business application integration

Automation

Ease of use for employees and IT

End-to-end security

Let's Chat

11The ultimate guide to chat-based tools

EXPERIENCE MICROSOFT TEAMS

Take a look at our free, interactive demo to see how chat-based workspaces lead to increased productivity for diverse teams:

What are you waiting for?

Microsoft Teams: all teams welcome.

12The ultimate guide to chat-based tools

Sources

"The Social Economy", 2012, McKinsey Global Institute

"Are workers ready for the workplace of the future?", 2016, Information Age

"Dell & Intel Future-Ready Workforce Study Global Report", 2016, Penn Schoen Berland

"Business Chat Apps in 2017: Top Players and Adoption Plans", 2017, Spiceworks

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