Last week, the latest event in our “Fall in love with…” series took place at Microsoft’s towering Paddington offices. At this month’s Modern Workplace event we focussed on the evolution of our working environment and approaches, encompassing topics including intranet best practice, with a particular focus on teamwork using Teams and the ‘Power Platform’ of Forms, PowerBl, Flow and Power apps.
With the host of apps available to enterprises through Office 365, companies are able to maximise productivity, increase efficiency and solidify a workplace culture across departments and even multiple locations. Discussing the most effective use of collaborative services, WM Reply partner Richard Acreman highlighted key WM products such as the Intranet Accelerator, with its huge potential cost savings, and referenced some shining examples of great intranets from the likes of ARM, Abellio, Arriva and Centrica, and shared some key hints and tips for the attendees.
With teamwork within the workplace remaining one of the important factors in success in any business, Teams’ ability to create a productive shared space for groups of employees is invaluable. The day therefore saw an insightful review of the app, more specifically its advanced functionality capabilities, complete with a demo and a contemplation on what we predict for the vital teamwork tool in the future.
The audience were then taken through a review of the ‘Power Platform’ of apps. The audience were further engaged through an interactive Twitter poll, which took centre stage as a demonstration of the ease with which snapshots of the thoughts and opinions of employees, colleagues and stakeholders can be obtained through the Flow app.
The preceding topics were further expanded upon by the first guest speakers of the day, SolidSoft. As award-winning specialists in Microsoft hardware, they stressed the importance of businesses not only engaging with software updates but the infrastructure needed to maximise their full potential. Ignoring this seemingly obvious aspect of IT modernisation could leave any business playing catch-up with their competitors who planned more astutely.
Arguably the highlight of the day came following this, as representatives from the world-renowned car manufacturer Rolls Royce took the stage. Their insightful talk shed light on their own intranet journey, with a particular emphasis on the need for IT and internal comms to work seamlessly together in order to achieve success. Notably, they pointed to the key role planning plays prior to the launch of a new platform in this – often nuanced – process to ensure widespread adoption and engagement with the tools available to those working within the company.
Finally, the day concluded with a Q&A session with a panel featuring Jaci Neal, Ray Harrison, Richard Acreman, Neal Slater and Alex Gibson, covering topics such as practical aspects of Teams’ usability, to more strategic topics like how to get genuine IT buy-in and how to convince a business to move to the cloud.
Even in focusing on these select topics, it is clear the workplace today has changed immeasurably and will continue to do so on a constant basis. If you’re interested in finding out more about the topics covered and how they might apply to your business, or to be kept in the loop about our next “Fall in Love with…” event get in touch with our team today.