This article was written by Finian Nally, Head of Microsoft Cloud Solutions at ActionPoint.
It’s 11.15am on a snowy November morning. It was raining nonstop overnight and with the temperature now at 0 degrees the snow is starting to stick. Since 7am this morning I’ve been hearing reports of gridlock on our major motorways with accidents a plenty across the country.
I’m booked up with meetings this morning with clients and our teams in both Dublin and Limerick. In addition I’ll also need to check in with the Los Angeles sales team later today. This used to be a stressful and costly scenario with a guaranteed 2 – 3 extra hours in the car on top of the normal commute. (Not to mention the drama of getting conference numbers set up)
The 10 second commute
But today and everyday I work in the ‘new normal.’ My commute took a grand total of 10 seconds. I was caught up with all our team’s activities by 8am without speaking a word, sending an e-mail or prompting someone for information. I’ve had 2 scheduled meetings and 2 on-the-fly meetings – all with minimum effort, and all from the comfort of my home office. Nice and snug as the snow falls outside my window. No traffic, no gridlock. A productive start.
Productivity can exist outside the workplace
I’ve accessed and updated business critical information, helped our sales team move client engagements forward, updated key financial information and sent a grand total of…6 e-mails. And this is the key: not once have I been bogged down in e-mail or had to wade through countless ‘Reply-All’ mails to see if they’re even relevant to me. The old questions of ‘Where is that file?,’ ‘Is someone available for a call?,’ ‘How did the meeting with the client go?’ don’t apply any more as all the information I need is right in front of me.
How have I done this? Quite easily, and with a toasty cup of tea in front of me. By leveraging Microsoft Office 365 and modern work practices, I’m able to access our global team at the push of a button, access business critical information easily and safely on any device, from any location.
My tools so far today:
Outlook + Skype for Business + Microsoft SharePoint Online + Microsoft Teams
It’s difficult to fully count the additional time I’ve gained today. But I can easily say I’ve added 3 productive hours to my working day. But I’m just one member in a core team of 80 people. Factor this out over the team and over the year. This demonstrates how we continually save countless hours of lost time that many businesses simply absorb.
At ActionPoint we practice what we preach. If you want to discuss how your business can operate in the new normal get in touch with our team today.
