How You Can Get A High Performing Workforce.

With hybrid working in full force for many companies and especially those without any kind of productivity suite, companies are finding themselves and their teams resorting to using legacy applications in order to carry out their work.

Although these legacy applications have good reputation of themselves, they are inclined to form data silos within business environments. This can and will drastically burden the productivity of your workforce.

A huge issue and one that is not welcomed by modern working companies, is the occurrences of data silos happening, when data is held by a single user, or department and is inaccessible by others.

Using a productivity suite like Office 365, provides your employees with reliable cloud solutions. All your data from the associated applications can be shared instantly with anybody in your company. Access to these apps can be granted to work on any device enabling your employees to easily and safely continue working seamlessly from home, as if they were right there in the office together.

What is a productivity suite exactly?

You will of heard about or even use daily and are relatively familiar with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. These are two of the largest productivity suites around today.

Basic Characteristics are:

· Cloud storage, space to collaborate and large amounts of personal storage space for individual users.

· Compatibility with the majority of software’s and desktops to allow for easy file imports and exports.

· Advanced security features (such as two-factor authentication.)

· Task management systems.

· Office applications for document, spreadsheet and presentation creation.

· Email often with customisable email domains and shared calendar services.

· Business communication tools including software enabling online meetings, video conferencing and messaging.

Over come many challenges faced, by using a productivity suite.

It allows you to share instantly with anyone in your company, all your data from associated applications. Omit the woes of trying to share a file that is too large for an email attachment when you simply have no other means to transfer a file and therefore resort unwillingly to a USB key. Not ideal.

No more using Facebook messenger or WhatsApp when needing to get in touch with colleagues. Productivity suites cut down massively on communication inefficiency and rapidly improve how a company collaborates within its teams.

Communication apps bring your workforce together making them equally as important. In recent years Microsofts Teams app has become one of the popular apps primarily used by many companies young and old in their development. Efficiently helping employees complete work tasks. The industry term for this type of app is Unified Communications-as-a-Service, or UCaaS.

The use and access of apps like teams can be carried out from anywhere and on any authorised device, so it doesn’t matter if your team are, office based or not.

Productivity Suites are indispensable for modern day business, bringing flexibility to your workforce no matter where they are in the world.

Ease of operations as colleagues can easily access aps, files and documents and

employees can communicate and collaborate effectively and efficiently with one another in real time.

Great features that define a Productivity Suite are:

• Consistent interface with app consolidation.
• Never have out of date software with automatic updates.
• No one-time purchase as your chosen suite operates on a subscription basis.
• Cloud data is backed up.
• Agreed user allocated amounts of storage.

Criteria you can choose for your Productivity Suite.

Scalability. Your suite should grow with you. Select one that offers you a license with flexibility and adaptability to meet your needs, with the option to acquire more benefits as and when needed.

Applications adapt to your future needs. The suite should provide you with tools that your company finds useful. Know what you want to achieve from your suite.

Security. Offering at least authentication in multiple locations or environments, protection from external attacks, back up and data protection.

Storage. Is unlimited storage a necessity? Consider the volume of data you will be handling.

Updates and improvements. You want to choose a suite that offers tools that are not just good for now, but will evolve and adapt to any future needs.

Using a productivity suite can enhance your company’s efficiency and with centralised control, mobility and the simplicity overall you and your teams can get on with the job.