Importance of Microsoft 365 adoption and using MS tools

Issued by Exponant
Johannesburg, 16 Nov 2022

Exponant’s solutions and service offerings cover the modern workplace: Microsoft 365, Teams and intranets, enterprise content management, cloud services with migration to Azure, integrated workplace management and facilities, finance and operations and security solutions. This puts us in an ideal position to ensure our clients’ smooth transition into the workplace of the future.

Although many tools support very specific functionalities within business today, choices are more limited when it comes to integrated tools that focus on the more generic functionalities. These generic functionalities deal with the life cycle of information/content, from creation to disposal, and become the glue that binds all types of business processes together. Because of the close integration required between business processes, it also requires collaboration between the various actors.

The business landscape is changing. Employees seek purpose and satisfaction. Employers aim to harness worker ingenuity. And a diverse, multi-generational workforce can now work anytime, anywhere. Success depends on your ability to collaborate and drive productivity within teams spread across the globe.

As a business user of Microsoft 365 solutions, you have many resources and tools available to help you achieve and deliver results for your daily work requirements. A new work culture is available and you are at the centre of driving its success.

How do we ensure the effective adoption of Microsoft 365? In short, only use a productivity tool if you have something tangible to produce. How do you learn your toolset if you do not know what the outcome would be?

Consider using the framework below to document business scenarios for each department

As someone in (team)
I want to (description of what you want to do)
Using (specific application of technology)
I’ll know this is successful when (solution success measure)

Some of the biggest misconceptions around Microsoft Adoption are:

Adoption happens naturally
Products over people
Adoption has an end date

Organisations must ensure their workforce gets inspired by these new modern features for collaboration.

Share
Co-author
Chat
Meet
Mobile

Ensure you have champions that help build, grow and sustain the Microsoft 365 roll-out and solutions by evangelising and helping their peers with modern technology.

Organisations should build their training strategy and take time to understand the groups that require training, topics and audience learning preferences.

Document key training considerations

Current productivity tools
Technology Literacy
Current change programmes
Training preferences

During implementations, we identified additional tools to support specific requirements such as design, migration, imaging (scanning), electronic signatures and integration. These tools assist with the adoption of using SharePoint as a content management platform.

Tools supporting adoption

ShortPoint

Exponant has partnered with ShortPoint, a web design extension tool, which enables our clients to design and improve the user experience of their SharePoint site, in minutes, without coding.

ShareGate

Sharegate enables complex migration and day-to-day security management.

GSCAN

A simple yet powerful and feature-rich scanning application that scales up from just a few documents to high-volume document batches. It allows you to scan and process both physical paper and digital electronic documents. GScan supports your document input life cycle through scanning, 1D and 2D bar code recognition, automatic document separation and classification, full-text OCR, form recognition, indexing, verification of recognised data and much more.

SigniFlow

SigniFlow uses advanced and trusted digital signature technologies. It provides workflow functionality and ease of distribution backed by the highest levels of security and authentication.

Harmon.IE

harmon.ie add-in for Outlook provides access to SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business directly from your Outlook App, Macs and in the Outlook Web App. Save e-mails and e-mail attachments to SharePoint and OneDrive for Business directly from the e-mail client. Specify metadata and required properties to accurately classify a document or e-mail so it can be found later.

Having stated the benefits of using supporting tools, the critical success factor still resides in the methods and people involved in the implementation. Exponant prides itself on having a balanced capability to support organisations in adopting Microsoft 365 technologies.