Do you know that the number one challenge facing modern organizations is ensuring collaboration in the new remote work model? Collaboration is key to managing teams, customer relationships, and even daily operations. This can lead to inefficient work processes and ultimately, harm the company’s interests. What we need today is a blended model of working thatenablesflexibilitywith accountability – thus allowing the entire team or business to work collectively as one entity towards their shared goals and responsibilities.
Microsoft Technology is an enabler for collaboration
The cloud and technology have played a key role in this global scenario, providing some relief from the highly unstable businesslandscape. Microsoftproducts like Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Microsoft Teams have allowed professionals from different departments and roles to communicate, collaborate, and connect across the organization.
Microsoft Dynamics 365is the most widely used ERP and CRM system. However, Microsoft Teams is the force behind collaboration within an organization.
Let’s examine how this deadly pair can drive growth and achieve business objectives for organizations, even in the face a pandemic.
Best Practices for Organizational Collaboration
Different business functions must be interconnected
Not only small work teams, but all functions and departments must be connected with each other. MS Dynamics 365 makes this possible by making the insights available to all functional departments within an organization. Every member of the organization must be able learn from the predictive data in Dynamics 365, regardless of whether they are in sales and marketing or operations & finance.
Another possibility is in the works. MS Dynamics users will soon be able to collaborate directly with a Teams user within the flow of a Microsoft Teams channel. This will allow for synergy between MS Dynamicsand MS Teams. This feature allows an organization’s workforce to directly and centrally contribute towards the task at hand without having to switch between data sources and applications.
Each member of the team should be able to connect at any time, anywhere, on any channel.
In the past, team members could work on a single issue at the workplace. This made their collaboration largely synchronous. Collaboration must now be asynchronous in the post-COVID age. This means that teams must be able to communicate with experts from the organization via live video chat.
Here’s an example of how Dynamics 365 + Team can be combined to help employees and managers with routine HR tasks. Using Dynamics 365 Human Resources, employees are able to submit leave requests, check leave balances, and get approvals from their managers all within the flow. This is done using Teams.
Collaboration must go beyond the workplace
Research shows that remote working increases communication between coworkers and teams, but decreases interactions with external stakeholders, such as customers or partners, and internal networks. Dynamics 365 and Teams work together to solve this problem. They bring every network closer, so that business problems can be solved by the right person at right time.
In retail stores, inventory management is crucial for daily operations. Dynamics 365 Commerceand Teams allows managers to create task lists, assign criteria and track status between the back office and store commerce. All this in real-time.
Personalization is the new order of work
Customer experiences are crucial in a highly competitive market. Collaboration should have the final objective to deliver more personalized experiences and customer delight. Customers expect a high level of personalization in interactions in an increasingly virtual world.
WithDynamics365and Teams, business users can now create, promote, and report on events hosted by Teams using Dynamics. They can export data relat