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The new way to collaborate: Integrated working with Microsoft Teams
Digital transformation: It's a concept that's been being called out by the big giants, like Microsoft, for a long time now. We at Schouw are also working on this, just think of our Foodware 365 apps. But now that we're facing a global challenge with all the measures taken to contain the Corona virus, this digital transformation suddenly gets a very different, much more tangible feeling. As part of Office 365, Microsoft Teams is a tool that now shows great added value. And I'd like to tell you more about that.
Written by Martijn van Gink, AGF consultant at Schouw Informatisering
From face-to-face to online communication
A large part of my working time is focused on communication: with colleagues and customers. From a meeting with colleagues to set out the broad outlines of a project, to quickly showing something you're doing to get feedback, or clarifying described concepts to a developer who is in the process of creating a functional design. In short: Communication is an essential part of our work. And what we’re seeing, is that the usual accessible, fast communication with colleagues is a lot more difficult to implement now that we’re all working from home. And that’s where Microsoft Teams comes in. In no time, it has shown me that it’s a good and above all easy tool to bring colleagues together, share documents and collaborate. Teams is not "just" a chat application - it's a fully-fledged part of the Microsoft 365 platform, and brings together different parts of it.
Working integrated with Microsoft Teams
For customer projects I'm currently working on, I've set up a 'team' and linked the existing SharePoint site to it so that we can easily share files. A document that we work with a lot as a project team has been added to the team as a direct tab and can be accessed with the touch of a button (and edited!). By making all of this available in Microsoft Teams, it's also very easy to communicate about documents: one push of a button, and I can work on the project with the project.
Digital transformation is an absolute added value
It is precisely through the integration into the platform and the simplicity with which communication can be set up that Teams is used frequently and efficiently during these special times. Of course, it's not a substitute for the face-to-face communication that is so essential to our work. However, I dare to call Teams "the next best thing". However, now that we have to work with what we’ve got, we could have done much worse. So, digital transformation: A calamity suddenly makes this phrase, which has been used by Microsoft for a long time, tangible and practical and an absolute added value compared to the 'old'. As far as I'm concerned, it's also more than just a paperless office. It is the integration of multiple sources of information into one platform supported by communication.
Need some help?
Would your food company also want to use Microsoft Teams to work through this unpleasant period as well as possible? You can, Microsoft has made Teams available for free for at least the next 6 months. For questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch! We’re organizing a webinar on productivity and digital collaboration on April 1st, where Teams will of course also be discussed.
