By R2 Unified Technologies
As an IT professional, it’s up to you to deliver the solutions and the toolkit that helps both IT and the business achieve their desired results. These days, with the ongoing need for flexible and remote work arrangements, you need an always-connected workplace.
Office 365 and Microsoft Teams make it easier than ever for businesses to increase collaboration and productivity.
Most organizations are able to quickly deploy Microsoft Teams and drive user adoption. But if you're an Office 365 admin, IT pro, or business leader, you'll want to be sure you're getting the most from your investment.
R2 can help. Read on to learn:
- Why Microsoft Teams?
- The top places to look for increased productivity, ROI, and user satisfaction.
- How R2 can help you make the most of your Microsoft 365 investment.
Why Microsoft Teams?
Microsoft 365 is dominating the market. Are you falling behind?
Teams has seen strong growth since launching worldwide in March 2017, but that growth skyrocketed in 2020, with 115 million daily active users.
Teams is being called a Collaboration Powerhouse, quickly taking over other collaboration platforms. Here are just a few of the reasons:
- It bundles with Office 365 so it's highly available to customers, coming already installed and enabled.
- It integrates with all MS applications natively, including SharePoint, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more.
- It just works. It's so easy to use and seamless in the normal course of business that it's a self-adopting platform. People are realizing there are better solutions than email for internal communication and collaboration. Also, it's a great way to store and access data — files can be tied back to a project without a traditional folder structure.
- Adding voice and video takes Teams to another level.
However, not everyone is using Microsoft 365 to its highest potential.
Common frustrations with self-installing Teams — and how R2 can help
As a Microsoft Gold Partner, R2UT has seen many companies under-utilizing their platforms. While Microsoft 365 is definitely user-friendly and easily self-installed, it can cause various pain points when not integrated properly (or completely).
Here are some of the top opportunities where we see we can help our clients:
Problem 1: Less-than-seamless voice and video integration
Solution: Integrate your installation with Cisco and other digital voice platforms with DirectRouting.
R2 maximizes your ability to communicate with outside parties by making it easier to make and receive phone or videos calls. We can also integrate apps that give you a better workflow for accessing and sharing data. Teams is good out-of-the-box, but we can give it a major shot in the arm. You'll have a better, smoother experience communicating and sharing data with other parties.
Problem 2: Difficulties migrating phone numbers
Solution: Avoid frustrating patchwork solutions with Teams.
R2 can enable voice communications through Teams and help you integrate it with or completely replace your current on-prem voice system. This is one area where R2's project team really shines. We make this complex process simple.
Problem 3: Scrambling between meeting solutions
Solution: Create interoperability across platforms like Webex and Zoom so you can meet with vendors and partners with ease.
Teams works seamlessly with other organizations also using Teams, but when it comes to online conference rooms or companies using other tools, collaboration can be more difficult. R2 can make it as easy for you to join meetings hosted by others as it is for your internal people to connect via Teams. We enable interoperability with other platforms of your choice, like Webex and Zoom.
Problem 4: SharePoint workflow headaches
Solution: Leverage Teams to access and manage your unstructured data and provide a foundation that can scale.
Why leverage Teams for data sharing and storage? In a nutshell, Teams takes the pain away from working within SharePoint. It makes accessing files and securing folders effortless. Users never need to leave Teams to find or share files, internally or externally.
Problem 5: Inconsistent use of Teams
Solution: Encourage your users to adopt Teams for everyone or for only one.
If you'd like to encourage more of your users to adopt Teams, we can help. If for any reason, you'd like to roll Teams out to only a select group, you can do that as well — whether it's a single department or one person, who say, for example, needs to collaborate with a vendor or partner organization. R2 can completely customize Teams for your company's needs.
Problem 6: Security concerns (including upgrades)
Solution: Integrate your platform into existing security strategies or develop new ones to maintain compliance.
Security is never set up in a silo. You may have an existing security policy or you may want R2 to review your policy, upgrade it, and configure it properly. We can set up Teams to restrict access to potential threats while keeping it as user friendly as possible. We can also make sure that there are safe ways for individual users to set up Teams without needing to involve IT.
With the right Microsoft Partner, you can develop a strategic approach to implementing Teams quickly, securely, and effectively.
Interested? Here's how it works.
How R2UT helps
R2 takes the time to understand your organization, drawing on our deep expertise in Microsoft 365 to provide advice on optimal approaches for the adoption, implementation and ongoing support of Microsoft Teams.
Adoption plans for Teams can be simple to complex, depending on your environment. For large-scale deployments, R2 will guide your company to ensure your organization has a smooth transition to Teams.
In addition, we recommend Zero Trust: two superpower approaches to security.
The first: an integrated, end-to-end approach that covers all your business apps.
The second: incredible AI and automation. We use these two approaches together to tackle security from all angles, at scale in the cloud—combining security, compliance, identity, and management as an interdependent whole for total protection. Since you can’t stop what you can’t see, we put world-class artificial intelligence (AI) to work for you, analyzing more than eight trillion threat signals every single day to give you enhanced visibility and always-on vigilance that helps catch what others miss, including
- Co-authoring of documents protected with Microsoft Information Protection.
- Threat Analytics in Microsoft 365 Defender.
- Passwordless authentication.
What does an implementation engagement look like?
Our process involves 4 steps:
Step 1 - Envision
We'll help identify your pain points and find areas where you can achieve the greatest ROI.
Step 2 – Onboard
Next, we'll install apps, streamline your workflows, and make sure all your users are up and running, including training, if needed.
Step 3 - Secure
We'll review your security policies and implement the solution that will provide the best protection with the least disruption.
Step 4 - Drive Value
Often, R2 can deliver higher productivity gains and a greater ROI than our customers initially expect. We'll also fully support you going forward.
Results
As a value-added reseller, partnering with R2 will help your organization by
- Driving user adoption (not just installation), avoiding under-utilization of the platform.
- Providing managed/pro services with R2 having eyes on your business IT performance 24/7/365.
- Potential cost savings: Information workers save an average of four hours a week on Microsoft Teams thanks to improved information sharing and collaboration features. (Across industries, the potential savings is $14.3 million.)
- Finally, you won't be on your own. You'll have a consistent level of guidance with R2 in your corner and watching your back.
The bottom line? You can manage Microsoft Teams yourself or hire an expert. R2 has the expertise and we'll always find more value than you expect.
If you'd like to learn more, call R2 at 561-515-6800 for your free consultation.
