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Throughout the pandemic businesses have shifted dramatically and are still adjusting to the resulting operational changes. And while these changes are reactionary with many challenges, they also bring new benefits.
Four disruptive changes businesses have had to make include improving customer experience, supporting a flexible workspace, evolving their variety of supporting applications, and facing an increase in data breaches.
Understanding how these changes pivot businesses is as important as identifying the integrated solutions that can help organizations overcome them.
CHANGES
Flexible Workspaces
Although many employees were forced to work from home in 2020, the ability to work from home versus being in the office full-time is becoming more of an option in late 2021. Even more challenging for businesses is there doesn’t seem to be one clear winner as to which arrangement is best.
Microsoft noted the top reason employees wanted to return to the office was collaboration and social interaction. While the top reason for working remotely is the benefit of avoiding a commute and maintaining a healthier work-life balance. Businesses will need to stay competitive and update their infrastructure to accommodate employees wanting to return the workplace full-time, working a hybrid work/office schedule, or remaining fully remote.
Application Management
The urgent need to adapt to pandemic-related circumstances prevented companies from conducting any formal planning on how to meet the needs of a remote workforce and engage customers in new ways. Companies may find redundancies among the multiple collaboration, email, meeting, and document sharing solutions they now must manage. These are valid solutions but managing a multitude of vendors and disconnected systems across redundant solutions is wasteful.
As companies have adjusted to this new normal, there’s an opportunity to take inventory of the new applications they may have acquired during the pandemic and look for ways to consolidate.
Data Security
In addition to the rapid adjustment to find multiple applications to meet these business challenges, data security has been one of the top initiatives of many companies. Employees may not realize they are sharing data in an unsecure manner, as they too were adjusting to a remote workplace.
And now that companies are integrating additional tools to collaborate remotely, ensuring those platforms are secure, and educating employees on proper security protocols will be instrumental moving forward. Additionally, understanding that disconnected applications may also lead to a loss of productivity as shared in our e-book.
EMBRACING CHANGE
There is now an opportunity to embrace these workplace changes which benefit both employers and employees. Businesses are no longer limited to hiring only local candidates, and employees can have an improved work-life balance.
Finding the right technology can enable your business to support remote workers, while still enabling productivity, promoting collaboration, and protecting confidential data. Empowering employees with connected-cloud email and productivity solutions, can reduce IT management requirements.
Microsoft® 365 supports businesses, regardless of where they are in their cloud journey, with tools such as identity and access management, including single-sign on capabilities and multi-factor authentication. Plus, Microsoft has added features within Microsoft Teams to promote collaboration and simplify the user-experience and offers solution for device management. These solutions not only enable employees to remain productive wherever they may be, but it also helps businesses protect their data and monitor against insider threats.
The team of Microsoft 365 engineers at Rackspace Technology can help your business identify and configure solutions to improve data security, reduce the number of applications needed to support a flexible workspace, and help users collaborate, regardless of where they’re located.
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