Page 14 – Content Formula

10 benefits of an Azure cloud migration

Posted on 9 March 202131 January 2023 by Joe Perry

Many organisations and IT functions have chosen to migrate to the cloud, forming a backbone of IT strategy, business continuity, digital workplace and even digital transformation plans. There are myriad reasons to move over to the cloud, including reduced costs, increased flexibility, ease of management and the sheer power it can give even small organisations to produce game-changing solutions and exceptional digital workplaces.

Although there are different providers to consider when planning out a cloud migration, many organisations choose an Azure-based migration. For many of the customers we work with here at Content Formula, going down the Azure migration route is a no-brainer.

In this article, were going to explore ten key benefits of an Azure migration. Some of these relate to the general advantages of moving to the cloud, but most are specific to why we believe Azure is the best option for almost every organisation.

1 Azure is best-in-class

Make no mistake, Azure is a best-in-class option for cloud migrations. Microsoft has invested heavily in ensuring that Azure is leading-edge relating to both Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), providing excellent scalability, performance, controls and services for global enterprises and small companies alike. IT functions also have confidence and certainty that they are investing in a platform that will continue to be industry-leading.

2 Its a Microsoft platform

Whilst Microsoft as an organisation can provoke strong reactions in people, its undeniable that the company has played a major role in supporting the evolution of the cloud and the digital workplace. Many organisations and IT functions are attracted to Azure because it is a Microsoft platform and aligns with technology roadmaps and digital workplaces strategies that are already based on the Microsoft stack.

Microsoft also drives confidence among IT professionals who are already comfortable working with Microsoft technologies but also want to get solid experience of working with Azure; working on an Azure migration is transferable experience that supports career progression.

3 Business continuity

Business continuity has always been a key reason for migrating to the cloud. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has proved just how critical this is, ensuring that businesses were able to implement remote working at scale and speed through access to the right tools and cloud-based files. Of course, business continuity also covers elements such as extreme weather events, ransomware attacks and issues with on-premises installations. Here, Azure migrations have proved to be a successful pillar of thousands of business continuity strategies.

4 Digital workplace and digital employee experience strategy

Having a successful digital workplace and accompanying digital employee experience strategy is now a given for most organisations. Here, Microsoft 365 and Azure are at the centre of most organisations digital workplace strategies, providing world-class opportunities for communication, collaboration and digital transformation. As a key enabler of a successful Microsoft-driven digital workplace and digital employee experience strategy and roadmap, Azure migration is an option which opens up multiple possibilities to develop a digital workplace.

Theres also a future-proofing element here, as you can be confident that Microsoft will continue to improve and extend the power of Azure to meet future digital workplace needs.

5 Scalability

The scalability of Azure is an obvious area of strength. Both a small organisation with fewer than 50 people and a global mega-corporation with a six or even seven-figure workforce can scale-up and scale-down very quickly with the Azure platform. This scalability also ensures IT teams can plan and tightly control their migration with confidence.

Scalability is important. As the pandemic has shown, the world is highly unpredictable, and Azure can more than meet unexpected requirements as well as deal with more planned business restructures. Azure also has robust autoscaling capabilities that reflect daily changes in use which can occur, particularly in global organisations.

6 Costs

Costs are going to be a major driver for any cloud migration. With an Azure migration, there is the potential to massively reduce infrastructure costs for larger enterprises. At the same time, smaller enterprises get access to a platform and its related services, analytics and more at a fraction of the cost that would have previously been possible.

7 Security and compliance

Microsoft has invested heavily in security and compliance features to ensure that organisational data on Azure has robust, enterprise-grade security in place and that most of the complex compliance, legal and regulatory needs of global organisations can be met. This is reflected in everything from increasing flexibility in the territories in which data is technically stored, to good administration controls for Azure Active Directory (AAD), to tools to help you find personally identifiable information (PII) for GDPR-related compliance. There are also some industry-specific solutions, such as those relating to government institutions. Choosing Azure as your migration platform will give you access to the best security available as well as a strong ability to meet compliance needs.

8 Analytics

Another benefit from Azure is that it comes with some strong analytical and reporting features that can help with delivering insights, but also in monitoring the platform. For example, there are dashboards which can reveal insights from big data, give recommendations relating to security and also help with the general management of the platform. As hybrid patterns of work continue with increased use of the digital workplace, we think Azure-driven data insights will continue to grow in importance.

9 Services

Azure comes with some advanced services and frameworks that organisations can tap into to deliver a variety of digital workplace capabilities, including AI-driven solutions. These continue to grow in sophistication and include translation services, cognitive services with natural language understanding, big data processing and even facial recognition. Developers and increasingly low-code or no-code solutions can easily make instant API calls to these services to deliver sophisticated apps.

10 Integrations

The creation of apps is also supported by a library of out-of-the-box integrations in Azure. These cover both widely-used Microsoft tools and popular non-Microsoft applications like ServiceNow. To take full advantage of these integrations, developers can use Azure Logic Apps to build sophisticated workflows that work at scale and lightning speed, and again deliver strong digital workplace solutions. The library connectors also enable rapid development, shaving development time where in the past integrations were much harder and took longer to develop.

The power of Azure

Cloud migration is definitely the direction of travel for most organisations and IT functions. Azure cloud migration is, in our opinion, the best choice due to a wide variety of benefits. If youd like to discuss migrating to Azure, then get in touch!

Yammer versus Teams: which tool should I use?

Posted on 2 March 202131 January 2023 by John Scott

Microsoft 365 offers a suite of tools that gives digital workplace teams an enormous range of options with which to deliver world-class communication and collaboration platforms. The sheer flexibility, scalability and breadth of features is empowering, but having too much choice can be overwhelming; you can achieve excellent results using different tools, yet some capabilities overlap. Which tool to use when is not only a question that employees frequently ask, but also one that teams need to consider as they implement the Microsoft 365 platform.

Yammer vs Teams?

We are often asked when should we use Yammer and when should we use Teams?. At first glance, this seems quite a straightforward question, but the answer is not always so clear cut, and it may differ from organisation to organisation.

In this article, were going to explore when its best to use Yammer and when its best to use Teams, as well as the cases in which the answer is not necessarily so straightforward.

The inner loop and the outer loop

In the past, Microsoft has used a model involving inner loops and outer loops to explain the fundamental differences between using Yammer and Teams. This entails imagining the people you need to collaborate and communicate with as a series of loops. The inner loop is defined as people you work with regularly on core projects: this may be your immediate teams and colleagues, people on projects and others you work with closely. Microsoft recommends using Teams spaces to collaborate and communicate with the people within your inner loop.

Meanwhile, the outer loop is defined as the broader audience you might want to inform and engage with. This could be people more on the periphery of your network, members of a community you only have irregular contact with, or even people you dont know within your company. Microsoft recommends using Yammer with this circle.

The inner and outer loop model is still useful in illustrating the main difference between Yammer and Teams and their respective strengths; however, the increasing growth of Microsoft Teams as the entry and aggregation point for the wider digital workplace and as the centre of unified communications makes the loop model less clear. For example, you may now use Teams to call someone very much in the outer loop and even to engage in external collaboration.

When to use Yammer

Yammer is essentially a social networking platform that facilitates open and less formal discussion across larger numbers of employees, perhaps across a whole department, a particular community or even an entire organisation.

Its the place where conversations and discussions happen in which anybody is invited and encouraged to contribute, get involved or ask questions. Because the groups and conversations in Yammer tend to be open by default, its also a good tool to use when you have an ongoing group dedicated to a particular topic which you want people to discover and then join.

Its an ideal place for less formal and more social communication such as shout-outs and non-working groups, but internal communicators can also use it as a platform to boost more formal internal communications or remind people about events and things they need to do.

Use cases for Yammer include:

Getting wider feedback and opinions from people across the business on different initiatives
Establishing Professional Communities of Practice or Communities of Interest around different topics, from engineering to wellbeing
Setting up Employee Resource Groups (ERG) for discussions and support that help promote diversity and inclusion
Encouraging questions from people across the business and providing answers from experts
Implementing user support communities for different technologies where both IT teams and super-users can provide answers to questions
Creating non-work groups such as sports clubs or spaces for people with particular hobbies
Providing a place for people to share links and photos
Sharing employee shout-outs and thank-yous across a wide group of people
Spreading quick updates and informal reminders for a particular department or location.

When to use Teams

Teams is a real-time messaging, communication and collaboration platform ideally designed for smaller, closed teams with high volumes of communication. Teams is a fantastic platform that works best for teams of, say, less than 20 people who are all working closely together day-to-day on a particular project or as a working group with a specific aim. The focus here is on everyday work, sharing documents and messaging with people you probably already know using a far more efficient option than email.

Generally, a Teams space and its content will be restricted to only members of that space. It is not designed for those broader, community-based conversations that sit better in Yammer. It is also the place where you carry out messaging, audio calls and video meetings with individuals, smaller groups and even external collaborators.

A Teams space can include document libraries, discussions and additional functionality such as Planner tasks, bots and integrations with a range of other Microsoft 365 and non-Microsoft 365 tools.

With Teams proving to be so popular in recent month, with many people spending their working day constantly in and out of it, Microsoft and other technical providers are pushing more and more capabilities through Teams. For example, you can now organise online events through Teams, and the recently announced Microsoft Viva will be delivered through the platform too. You can even access a LiveTiles intranet through Teams.

Use cases for Teams can accommodate:

Smaller project teams and working groups
Close-knit and immediate teams working within specific functions for everyday document sharing and communication
Teams who work together to deliver a specific, repeatable process
A group whose work is often confidential and who require a space for private discussions and files, for example, a leadership team
A group who wants to exploit integrations, bots and other capabilities readily available within Teams.

When to use other tools

If you are considering when to use Yammer and when to use Teams, it is also worth defining when to use your other major digital communication and collaboration tools as well. This will give your employees and other communicators a more complete view of their digital workplace options. Here, a common tool is SharePoint and a SharePoint-based intranet. This is likely to be the platform to use for formal news and internal communications. You may also want to consider the role of Outlook, employee apps, digital signage, your HR portal and platforms like ServiceNow and Confluence.

When it gets blurry

We think the distinction between Teams and Yammer and their ideal uses is relatively clear. However, there are times when the decision between the two is not going to be clear cut. Here, some flexibility is usually sensible, allowing the site manager to make the choice or basing the decision on the preferences of the members.

These kinds of borderline cases typically include:

Where smaller, closed groups are engaging in a lot of ongoing discussions which might be better displayed in Yammer than in Teams
Where you are introducing Teams, but discussions are ongoing in Yammer and the existing platform is already working well (and vice versa)
Where a manager of a site has a strong personal preference.

The fact that you can view and interact with Yammer through Teams is an additional complicating factor. This may entail a harder position in deciding when to use Teams or Yammer in your messaging to employees.

When adoption of Teams is very high and people are spending much of their working day with it open, it can be tempting to push more usage of Teams because its what people are already using, even though a Yammer community might better suit some use cases. Again, there is not necessarily a right or wrong answer here, and taking a pragmatic view is the best option.

Yammer or Teams?

Yammer and Teams are both excellent tools with individual strengths. Whilst the distinction is broadly clear, there is always going to be overlap. If youd like to discuss either your Yammer or Teams strategy, then get in touch!

6 top features of a great pharmaceutical company intranet

Posted on 22 February 202131 January 2023 by John Scott

Here at Content Formula, we have a long and successful track record of working with pharmaceutical companies, helping them implement excellent intranets. Were proud that our clients have included Janssen, Pfizer, Astellas, Novartis and GSK.

The pharmaceutical sector has never been more important than it is today, and the incredible work being carried out to develop vaccines to help prevent COVID-19 is exceptional and inspiring.

Pharmaceutical companies are knowledge-intensive organisations with specialist needs in a highly regulated sector. They are also often global companies with complex structures and highly diverse workforces. Smooth communication and strong collaboration are exceptionally important; an intranet and the wider digital workplace can play a significant role in enabling and streamlining key organisational processes.

Although every pharma company is very different, there are some common intranet features that tend to assume great importance due to the specialist needs of the industry. Of course, many intranet features such as an engaging and informative homepage are important for every large organisation, but in this article, were going to explore the intranet and digital workplace capabilities that matter especially to pharma companies.

1 Finding and connecting with Subject Matter Experts

The success of pharmaceutical companies is dependent on highly specialised experts who not only have the scientific know-how to develop medicines, but also to move it through regulatory approval and support extremely complex manufacturing, supply and distribution logistics across global markets. An intranet helps connect people to Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and each other, allowing everybody to work in joined-up ways to ensure successful outcomes.

There are several intranet features that support connecting with SMEs, including:

Comprehensive people directories with powerful search capabilities that allow people to locate experts by specialism, market and more
Social Q&A facilities that allow employees to pose questions to experts
A strong search to establish the findability of highly technical expert content and knowledge, where there is also a related expert owner to contact
Providing a central, searchable directory of collaboration spaces, such as listing Yammer communities where experts can be located.

2 Providing access to highly technical and specialist knowledge

Pharmaceuticals is a very fast-moving industry, and an intranet can provide access to the highly technical and specialist knowledge needed across different therapeutic areas. Some of this may be external, for example, providing access to feeds from specialist journals and sources. In other cases, the knowledge might be internally generated and curated.

For example, we have recently worked with a large pharma company to develop spaces on their intranet which can be used by SMEs to curate collections of knowledge that are useful to drive current awareness and provide a highly valuable reference point for other experts to access. Here, a good intranet can make all the difference by making knowledge curation and sharing effortless, thus encouraging SMEs to be proactive in their knowledge-sharing.

Strong findability through search and good information architecture in an intranet also makes this knowledge more discoverable, while subscriptions and notification capabilities alert specialists when new items are added. Sharing knowledge supports the ability for organisations to repurpose, reuse and learn from translatable experiences and models.

3 Supporting professional Communities of Practice

A cornerstone of supporting specialist knowledge in large companies is through Communities of Practice, where experts, often from different disciplines, can come together to discuss different topics which are often very technical in nature. Communities of Practice play an important role in everything from developing expertise, to supporting knowledge transfer, to developing new ideas. They are crucial for big pharma companies.

A good intranet should support a strong Community of Practice programme. For example, companies using Yammer for Communities of Practice can integrate discussions into a SharePoint intranet with targeted feeds that provide context and discussions on documents. An intranet directory of communities can also encourage people to join different groups and initiate the joining process for new community members.

4 Promoting robust governance to support risk and compliance

Risk and compliance are always important in highly regulated markets, but even more so in pharmaceutical companies. The development, distribution and marketing of medicines is very tightly regulated, with considerable variance across different territories. Therefore, instructional and operational content that lets employees know how to get things done must be strongly controlled to make sure it is always up-to-date and accurate. Here, intranets play a vital role in providing access to such information, as well as supporting the underlying content governance processes that ensure it is up-to-date.

On a pharma intranet, it is absolutely essential that employees trust content and have complete certainty that it is up-to-date. An intranet can do this in various ways, including:

Providing owner and last-updated information on every page that encourages accountability
Providing a specialist central policy library facility with in-built version control
Providing appropriate workflow and approval publishing processes to ensure SMEs review items
Automating content reviews so that authors are forced to review content on a regular basis for accuracy
Providing good content owner dashboards showing which content needs to be reviewed and more.

5 Facilitating personalisation and localisation for global markets

Many pharmaceutical companies have global concerns and operate across a number of markets. Here, the capabilities of global intranets that provide access to location-specific information through personalisation based on role and geography, as well as multi-language content, can assume greater importance.

For example, critical operational information around marketing medicines that must be adhered to may differ across varying markets. Strong intranet personalisation that provides access to the right content as well as different translations is key.

6 Supporting external collaboration

The complex operations of pharmaceutical companies mean there can be a strong need to collaborate externally with suppliers, regulators, and even other pharmaceutical companies. Increasingly, this is being done via Microsoft Teams, but also through specialist extranets and supplier portals.

A good intranet is always a window to the wider digital workplace, and for pharma companies may provide an opportunity to integrate feeds or provide easier access to external collaboration channels, such as through a directory on Microsoft Teams. Here, an intranet integrates external collaboration more into the daily flow of work.

Need help with your pharma intranet? Get in touch!

Were proud of our past and ongoing work with the pharmaceutical industry. If you need help with your pharma intranet, get in touch!

What is Digital Employee Experience? Seven definitions

Posted on 15 February 202131 January 2023 by Steve Bynghall

Employee experience and digital employee experience are terms that are being used increasingly commonly across the digital workplace industry by people including:

Practitioners who are finding the term useful to describe their activities
Industry thought-leaders like James Robertson, Sam Marshall and Josh Bersin
Tech providers who are launching employee experience platforms.

Generally, digital employee experience is a useful term and concept that:

Helps illustrate the value of digital workplace tools
Considers technology from the employee standpoint
Can be used in conversations with stakeholders
Ties the experience of the digital workplace to wider strategic goals.

What is digital employee experience?

Just like the term digital workplace, there is no consensus about the exact definition of digital employee experience (DEX). Although there are different interpretations of the term, there is broad agreement that it concerns the way employees experience workplace technology, and that it takes in a more a holistic and strategic way of thinking about the role of technology at work.

Weve identified seven overlapping but distinct definitions of digital employee experience, all of which are explored below.

1 A counterpoint to digital customer experience (DCX)

One way to define digital employee experience is as an inward-facing equivalent to the outward-facing digital customer experience. Customer experience is often portrayed as covering all the touchpoints a brand has with its customers, with digital customer experience covering those touchpoints which occur digitally. This covers media such as emails, apps, websites, surveys, e-commerce and more, even encompassing digital experiences in retail outlets.

With customer experience being a well-recognised term and concept used by senior stakeholders, they are quick to understand that DEX is the employee equivalent of DCX, and that both hold great value. Interestingly, there are strong arguments to show that good employee experience leads to better customer experience, and stakeholders are receptive to this.

2 One of three components of employee experience

Employee experience is a concept that has a lot of traction with HR functions. Positioning digital employee experience as a major component within the overall employee experience helps to emphasise the importance of the contribution of digital tools and channels to wider strategic objectives.

Sometimes, digital employee experience can be seen as one of three components of employee experience, with the second being the physical workplace and the third being organisational culture, incorporating policies, processes, leadership, values and more.

3 An outcome of the digital workplace

Some people tend to use digital employee experience and digital workplace interchangeably. However, in our view, they are quite different terms.

If youre already using the term digital workplace, one way to contemplate digital employee experience is as the way in which employees experience the digital workplace. We agree with Sam Marshall when he argues that DEX is an outcome of the digital workplace, saying: We shouldnt conflate DEX with digital workplace. The experience is an important outcome of the DW design, but things like productivity, security, and continuity are also important elements of a DW but may be neutral in terms of the employee experience.

4 The total of all digital interactions including peers and beyond

James Robertson has helped to popularise the DEX term across the global intranet and digital workplace community with the following definition:

Digital employee experience (DEX) is the sum total of digital interactions within the work environment (v2)

Whilst this mirrors the idea of the total touchpoints in customer experience, Robertsons definition is useful because it considers the wider reality of the everyday digital employee experience beyond just the experience of core digital workplace tools.

His definition also covers the wider digital interactions which colleagues experience using social and collaboration tools. Many employees digital interactions may involve use of unauthorised applications (shadow IT), and the experience of these can be covered in this this definition.

5 Employee experience platforms

Digital employee experience can be viewed from a technology or a tool angle. Recently, there has been growth in the number of applications that are being marketed as Employee Experience Platforms (EXP), mirroring a rising trend for Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) which are usually focused on external customers.

The positioning of the new Microsoft Viva tool as an EXP is a notable example. Generally, the hijacking of a term like digital workplace or employee experience by software vendors is not helpful, as it can distort the valuable ideas behind the concepts and terms.

6 The HR lifecycle

Another very useful angle is to look at digital employee experience through the lens of the employee lifecycle, covering the time from when a person is recruited to a company to when they leave, with an emphasis on ensuring there is a strong experience for all the moments that matter during that time. This is a popular angle with HR functions, and means that digital employee experience covers areas such as employee onboarding, career development, employee feedback, learning and even employee offboarding.

The brand-new Microsoft Viva solution certainly takes this approach, with much greater emphasis on bringing learning into the digital workplace. Widely respected HR tech and employee experience guru Josh Bersin has argued: Employee Experience is a Journey, not a Solution. This could easily be interpreted in two ways, covering both the concept of the employee lifecycle and an iterative approach to supporting an employee experience that continuously improves over time.

7 The experience of remote or distributed work

With the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is still a huge focus on remote and distributed work. We see potentially some commentators using the term digital employee experience as a way to describe how employee experience remote work away from the physical workplace.

Still confused? Get in touch!

When it comes to defining digital employee experience, it is quite easy to get lost in a semantic maze! If youd like to discuss which definition works best for your needs or want some input into your DEX approach and strategy, then get in touch!

What is Microsoft Viva and how will it help my business?

Posted on 5 February 202117 November 2023 by Dan Hawtrey

The announcement of Microsoft Viva, a new Employee Experience Platform (EXP) from Microsoft, looks set to be another exciting development in the digital workplace.

As with the evolution of the Microsoft 365 platform, the launch of Microsoft Teams and the move to modern SharePoint, we think this has the potential to be a gamechanger in the way organisations create experiences for their employees. Many organisations now have a digital workplace based on Microsoft 365, an intranet based on SharePoint and use Teams for real-time communication and collaboration. Microsoft Viva will be a popular addition to add to that channel mix.

Obviously, its still very early days, with the (digital) ink hardly dry on the press release. However, even from the light details we have, this feels significant.

In this post were going to explain what Microsoft Viva is and some of our initial thoughts on why this looks exciting.

What is Microsoft Viva?

Microsoft Viva is a bundling together of new and existing Microsoft 365 capabilities that support employee experience. It will appeal to HR functions and Internal Communications and addresses a number of organisational priorities around people, defined by Microsoft as:

Engagement
Learning
Well-being
Knowledge

Viva is experienced through Microsoft Teams, although there are also references to elements of it being experienced through Outlook.

Initially, Microsoft Viva is presented as four different apps:

Viva Connections: A gateway to internal communications and company resources, including policies and HR information, as well as the ability to participate in different social communities.

Viva Insights: Personalized analytics and related insights for individuals, managers and leaders that support well-being, collaboration, productivity and more, with additional analytics at the organisational level for example from LinkedIn Glint, an employee feedback mechanism. Here data privacy is protected, with also the ability to plug-in data from popular HR platforms like SAP Success Factors.

Viva Learning: A learning hub that aggregates learning resources from a variety of different resources including LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, popular third-party providers and a companys own learning content. Our own partner, LMS365 is also looking to integrate with this.

Viva Topics: A knowledge discovery platform that uses AI to source resources and experts on different topics from Microsoft 365 tools as well as knowledgebases from platforms such as ServiceNow and Salesforce. These are presented in different topic cards which include documents, discussion threads, videos and people.

The roadmaps for these four apps are at slightly different stages of release during 2021. For example, Viva Learning and Viva Insights are now available for private preview, while Viva Topics is already available via some commercial plans. Viva Connections will be released in the first half of the year, with an app to follow later.

The commercials around licensing are also unclear at the moment.

Eight initial thoughts about Microsoft Viva

Microsoft Viva sees Microsofts direct entry into the XP market, a significant event in itself, and opens up more capabilities to smaller and medium-sized companies that will have been harder to implement in the past. However, we still havent seen details of the associated costs.

Here are eight of our initial thoughts about Microsoft Viva.

1 Viva is partly a branding exercise

The level of investment in Microsoft 365 and also Microsoft Teams and its continual evolution with new apps, features and capabilities always impresses. These four new apps are being brought together under the Microsoft Viva brand, signifying that they are focused on employee experience, but without the Viva umbrella they could have easily been released as separate apps within Microsoft 365. It seems very likely that other employee experience and HR-focused apps will be released under the Viva brand going forward.

2 Viva is aimed at the HR market

Microsoft Viva unambiguously focuses itself on employee experience and is designed to appeal to HR functions. References to the HR agenda are all over the marketing material, from the inclusion of Wellbeing and Learning as key pillars, to the calling out of the involvement of key HR platforms and providers. It also mentions the employee lifecycle in passing, and we can see there being new apps here to address areas such as employee onboarding.

Appealing to the HR market can only be a good thing, helping to sell the power of the 365 platform to a critical stakeholder group who do not always partner up with IT as closely as they could do.

3 Viva looks towards the hybrid workplace

Inevitably any EXP is going to be suited for remote and distributed working; one launched during a pandemic even more so. Microsoft Viva has its eyes on future patterns of hybrid working; tellingly, one of the promotional videos shows the delivery of an important remote presentation to a boardroom from home, while another positions Viva addressing some of the challenges of hybrid work. The areas Viva focuses on learning, knowledge, wellbeing and communications all have specific challenges with remote working. The emphasis on analytics is also shifting and it will be interesting to see how Viva Insights evolves.

4 Viva Topics is an output from Project Cortex

Viva Topics is clearly another long-awaited output from Microsofts Project Cortex, using AI and automation to support knowledge management (KM) and related activities. We think this is exciting, making KM more achievable for smaller organisations that dont have KM resources to manually organise information. The question here will be the extent to which it works and is actually useful – we think this is going to be very interesting to watch. There could be a challenge to match high customer expectations, however we can expect significant improvements over the next few months as the platform matures and organisations get to grips with how best to deploy it. We cant help thinking that a hybrid approach would be a good thing some features that allows organisations to benefit from AI gathered knowledge whilst also allowing them to curate knowledge manually.

5 The inclusion of learning is significant

In the past two years weve seen increasing interest in how to bring learning and development into the heart of the digital workplace, in particular with seamless integration with Microsoft 365. Many customers have been asking us about LMS365, the Learning Platform that slots in effortlessly into the 365 toolset.

Its great to see Microsoft directly addressing training and development needs with Viva Learning, and also recognising the trend towards social and blended learning with the ability to combine both internal and external content. Ultimately this will help put training in the hands of learners and reinforce it as an activity that employees want to do rather than have to do. We can also see how Viva Learning and LMS365 could be an extremely powerful combination to drive a learning culture in any organisation.

6 Wellbeing runs as a thread throughout Microsoft Viva

Health and wellbeing were already high on the corporate agenda, but theyve come into even greater focus due to the impact of coronavirus and the newly discovered pressures of home working. There are some interesting elements to watch including wellbeing analytics and the ability to integrate Headspace, the mindfulness and meditation app. Concerns around data privacy also appear to be met.

7 Viva Connections could bring an intranet experience into Teams

Weve seen many customers interested in bringing the ability to view intranet content within Teams, for example through the ability to view a LiveTiles intranet within Teams. Viva Connections looks like it could bring an intranet-like experience into Teams pulling in communications, social feeds and providing access to central documents. We think this could likely complement and enhance an intranet rather than necessarily replace it.

8 Microsoft continues to view Teams as the centre of the digital workplace

Viva is a set of experiences that are primarily delivered through Teams, at least for knowledge workers. This confirms that Microsoft continues to view Teams as the centre of the digital workplace and the place where work happens. On more than one occasion in the promotional material refers to Viva being accessed in the flow of work. This link with Teams is a good idea though there are still questions about the suitability of Teams as a tool for frontline workers. Perhaps Microsoft has plans in this area an integration with Kaizala perhaps?

Want more information? Get in touch!

Microsoft Viva is an exciting development for every organisation with a Microsoft 365 digital workplace. If you want to discuss Microsoft Viva, then get in touch!

Should I take a Teams-first approach to my mobile intranet?

Posted on 1 February 202131 January 2023 by John Scott

As the Microsoft Teams app continues to gain adoption and deliver a broad range of capabilities and features, some clients are asking us whether they can deliver a mobile intranet or employee communications app via the Microsoft Teams app. In this article, we explore the question in detail.

Can Teams deliver you intranet?

For some organisations and their employees, Microsoft Teams has become the focal point for their working day. With the possible exception of Outlook, it is the place where they spend the most time, consuming and accessing most of the information they need through shared documents, updates from other applications and even news.

The ability to integrate other applications into Teams, as well as its high adoption rate, had led some organisations to consider whether Microsoft Teams can deliver their intranet or equivalent capabilities too. Its a question that clients keep asking us, and one weve explored in detail. The answer is not a simple yes or no, as it depends on various factors, but the ability to view an intranet like LiveTiles through Teams certainly increases your options in this area.

Can the Microsoft Teams app deliver my mobile intranet?

Clients are asking whether the Microsoft Teams app can deliver their mobile intranet, employee communications app experience or equivalent capabilities. Again, the answer here is yes and no, depending on the functionality you want in scope and the kind of experience you wish to deliver to employees.

If you are implementing a mobile intranet app, the Microsoft Teams app is definitely an option you should consider. Here at Content Formula, we are currently working with a major client for whom the Microsoft Teams app will be their primary mobile app, delivering employee communications to a diverse workforce that includes global locations and frontline workers. It will be enabled on both corporate and employee-owned devices. With the app, employees will be accessing Teams functionality, but because they can view their new LiveTiles intranet through Teams, they can also view content through the Teams app.

Can Teams deliver the functionality that I need?

We recently looked at the eight essential ingredients of a mobile intranet app. These included capabilities around strong news delivery, social collaboration and community, access to the employee directory, access to an event calendar, reference content pages, integrations from other applications and more. The question of whether the Microsoft Teams app can tick all these boxes for your organisation or not relies on both the native functionality of Teams and the integrations that you choose to deliver through it.

Social collaboration and community elements of a mobile intranet might be met by the Teams app and other elements such as profiles, events, reference content and internal communications which are all potentially viewable through Teams, but may be dependent on integrations. Integrations with other applications can also be delivered through chatbots that deliver mobile-friendly experiences. a question to consider here is whether the Teams app will deliver the kind of engagement-led or custom experience that you may want to deliver to employees.

Should I take a Teams-first approach to mobile?

Taking a Teams-first approach to mobile and delivering digital communications and services through the Teams app has some advantages and disadvantages. Lets explore the upsides first.

Teams adoption is high

At the moment, the adoption of Teams is very high across many organisations due to the pandemic increasing the need to work remotely; many employees are now comfortable working with Teams due to this new requirement. IT functions will relish the opportunity to extend Teams capabilities, building on the work they have already done to increase adoption.

One app for everything

Information and application overload are common employee pain points and lead to inefficiency, confusion, frustration and a poor digital employee experience. Employees simply dont want to have to deal with too many applications when viewing all the information they need or trying to get things done. A mobile Teams app provides a single, convenient place to meet many everyday information and communication needs, and reduces the number of apps employees need to have on their device.

Employee choice

One of the advantages of the Microsoft Teams app is that it doesnt stop employees using other dedicated apps for the various applications and capabilities that are integrated into Microsoft Teams. For example, even if employees are accessing Yammer conversations through the Microsoft Teams mobile app, there is nothing stopping them using the Yammer app too if you allow its use. It is possible that these dedicated apps offer deeper capabilities and richer experiences that employees prefer but only need from time to time, or are a must-have for particular groups. The good news is that the Teams app can leave employees with a choice.

Leveraging Microsoft investment in the Teams app

Microsoft Teams has been a huge success and adoption is still growing, thus Microsoft will continue to invest in Teams and the dedicated mobile app. The advantage of this is that Microsoft will almost certainly ensure that it keeps on improving and working across all devices and operating systems; it is also distributed through the iOS app store and Google Play. This means you can be very confident that the app will continue to work effectively across all devices now and in the future; this is not always the case with some enterprise mobile apps.

Taking advantage of bot capabilities

One of the real advantages of the Teams app is that it can leverage bot capabilities with a mature conversational UI that works very well on a mobile device and takes advantage of native device capabilities, such as sending urgent messages to your lock screen or leveraging a devices voice activation to interact with the bot. This means the Teams app can work effectively to deliver urgent communications, updates and reminders from multiple integrated applications, and even perform simple transactions – an approach particularly useful for frontline employees. This positions Teams as a simple digital assistant that can really make a difference to the employee experience.

Aggregating apps going forward

Microsoft will keep on investing in the mobile Teams app, and new capabilities that are added to Microsoft 365 will likely also be available within Teams. Moreover, many other tech providers will build versions of their applications that are designed to be consumed in Teams as well as the corresponding app. In this way, the Teams app can be a useful resource through which digital workplace teams can integrate applications into Teams and make information available to employees on mobile devices quickly; they dont necessarily have to manage and launch a new dedicated app. The Teams app acts as an aggregator of information and communication that can evolve with future needs.

Disadvantages

There are, however, some potential disadvantages to taking a Teams-first approach to your mobile intranet experience.

Licensing and cost

The most critical issue is whether your Microsoft licensing agreement gives access to all employees who would need to use the app. For example, not all frontline employees may have the necessary access or even Microsoft IDs and Active Directory profiles, and costs may be prohibitive. In these cases, you might need to look to an alternative mobile intranet app such as LiveTiles Reach.

Customised experiences

Sometimes organisations are looking to deliver more customised and branded experiences, particularly when the main aim of an app is to engage employees. The Teams app experience may not necessarily tick all your boxes.

Deeper app capabilities

You can do a lot in Teams and the related app, but employees might not be able to do everything they need. Sometimes, a dedicated mobile app for a different application may need to be delivered with richer and broader features available.

You need to be on top of Teams

Teams has a rich set of capabilities, not all of which can be turned off. If you are considering rolling out the Microsoft Teams app across all your employees, you will need to consider how it is going to be used and the related governance and support measures you may have to put in place.

Other dependencies

For some of the intranet capabilities you want Microsoft Teams to deliver, there may be other dependencies you need such as good Active Directory data and an additional audience targeting engine to deliver intranet personalisation. Before you go ahead and take a Teams-first approach to mobile, you need to ensure everything you need is in place.

Taking a Team-first approach to mobile

Launching the Teams app to deliver intranet-style functionality has enormous potential value, but there are advantages and disadvantages. It is undoubtably an approach to consider. If youd like to discuss the Microsoft Teams app or your mobile intranet strategy, then get in touch!

9 must have features for employee engagement app

Posted on 25 January 20218 November 2023 by Dan Hawtrey

Employee engagement remains a key objective for organisations. Fostering a happier and engaged workforce has a range of benefits that ultimately impact the bottom line: better productivity, lower employee turnover and more focused customer service are just some of the potential outcomes that flow from a satisfied and motivated workforce. For HR and internal communications professionals, engagement is also often a core aim of what they do.

Technology can play a part in creating the digital channels which support employee engagement. Of course, this ultimately depends on what you do with the technology, but having strong digital communications that can be delivered to all your employees is a cornerstone of many organisations efforts to drive a more engaged workforce. Here, a mobile employee engagement app that includes communication and engagement features is a definite plus, particularly in companies where there are a high proportion of firstline, mobile and deskless workers.

We recently covered the eight essential features that every mobile intranet app or mobile employee communication app should have. In this post, were going to look in more detail at nine features in an enterprise app that help improve employee engagement, and how they are delivered. We have seen some of these features working well in LiveTiles employee engagement app Reach, a mobile app that we work with which is making a real difference in supporting employee engagement across organisations, especially in these challenging times.

Heres our view of nine enterprise app features that improve employee engagement.

1 Social and collaborative features that give employees a voice

A good employee app includes social and collaboration features such as the ability to post updates, comment on news and even create blogs. For example, LiveTiles Reach enables bottom-up and peer-to-peer communication, as well as facilitating two-way communication and dialogue. The app gives all employees a voice and cuts through layers of hierarchy, meaning the CEO and the trainee shop assistant can have a direct conversation. This sends an important message that employees are trusted and their opinions matter; providing this kind of level playing field shifts an organisational culture in a way that supports strong foundations to build better engagement. It also has a striking impact where deskless workers have previously had no access to digital communications.

2 News to keep everybody informed and engaged

News updates and stories are an important part of any employee app, keeping everybody informed while also driving better engagement. These communications not only support a healthy culture of transparency, but can also prompt messaging that helps employees see how their contribution fits into the bigger picture, as well as highlight organisational purpose and values.

3 Authentic leadership communications with video

A common observation is that the pandemic has changed the way leaders communicate, supporting more authentic and personal communications and often featuring video. It has also led to more dialogue, with leaders asking for feedback and input from employees to get insights on ideas and listen to issues. This trend has many positives – engaged employees have more respect for their leaders; an employee app that delivers messages on video and allows for commenting and rating helps all staff get to know the real person behind the CEO job title.

4 Polls, surveys and other analytics

Polls and surveys are a good engagement feature of an employee app and reinforce the message that employees are being listened to. More importantly, polls allow IC and HR teams to check the pulse on employee opinion and wellbeing, as well as get a sense of any issues that are impacting them; this gives rapid insights for management so they can act quickly to support engagement. Similarly, a good engagement app has strong analytics into user interaction with content; for example, LiveTiles Reach has robust analytics that gives IC teams insight into the performance of individual communications.

5 Learning

Personal development and growth are also an essential part of employee engagement. Opportunities to learn are key, especially when learning is placed in the hands of the employee. A good mobile enterprise engagement app should offer opportunities to learn, like providing training videos and other course content. Providing access to learning through a mobile device allows employees to decide when they learn, such as in down time when it is more convenient and without the need to travel, again putting learning in their hands and supporting better engagement.

6 Events

Events are usually a core part of a good engagement and communication strategy; these can be everything from town halls , to fun initiatives, to events that focus on health and wellbeing. A traditional problem with corporate events is that they tend to be focused on knowledge workers at HQ, but a mobile app gives the potential for everybody to participate in an event, including those on the frontline. The LiveTiles Reach app has a good events capability, covering everything from registration, to information about the event, to gathering post-event feedback.

7 Shout outs

The social and collaboration tools on an employee engagement app allow for shout outs that can celebrate the success of individuals and teams, highlight actions that demonstrate company values and provide thanks. These updates – which can be provided both by management and peers – can be highly motivating, resulting in an engaging stream of content that reflects and celebrates what is best about a companys culture.

8 Social communities

One of the most valuable social tools on a mobile employee app are those that support communities for employees with common interests, relating to both work and non-work. These features can play a surprisingly important role in aspects of engagement. A group that covers hobbies and interests such as sport, photography, books or recipes is a great way to drive community, connection and even add a little levity to the day. And yes, they can be used for cat videos! Community functionality calls also support Employee Resource Groups that play an important role in advancing Diversity & Inclusion in many organisations. LiveTiles Reach has strong community features that can support a range of interests and bring employees closer to each other.

9 Access for all

An underlying principle for good engagement is making sure everybody has access to information and feels connected. A good engagement app, therefore, must provide access to all your employees. For example, LiveTiles Reach can be made available on all devices, both corporate and employee-owned, iOS or Apple, and regardless of whether an employee has a corporate email address or is on the Active Directory. Engagement must be for all staff, including frontline, deskless and previously disconnected employees.

Need more information? Get in touch!

An employee mobile app can be used to help engage your employees, particularly your frontline workforce. There are a variety of features which enable engagement that we have covered in this article. If youd like to discuss a mobile app, your employee engagement strategy or would like to arrange a demo of the LiveTiles Reach app, then get in touch!

9 SharePoint integrations that deliver business value

Posted on 11 January 202131 January 2023 by Joe Perry

For anyone using SharePoint as the base technology for their intranet or digital workplace, integrating different tools, applications and platforms into SharePoint is a must. Integrations can bring value to your SharePoint sites or intranet in various ways, including by:

Helping employees to get tasks done, including completing simple transactions without even having to visit some of the applications in question
Making it easier for employees to reach core applications across the enterprise, with SharePoint acting as the point of entry to different tools and applications
Helping employees find important information that might be hidden, lost or siloed within different applications, including when not all staff have licenses
Supporting process improvement and workflow that involves more than one application, driving efficiency and productivity gains
Supporting adoption and use of individual tools.

Integrations have moved from difficult to doable

Over the past year, we have seen more and more customers come to us with questions and requests relating to SharePoint integrations. This is partly because many digital workplace teams are realising the value of integrations as a key part of digital employee experience, particularly with the increase in remote and hybrid working due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, its also because integrating applications within SharePoint is now easier, faster and cheaper, thanks to:

The effortless integrations between Microsoft 365 tools that already take place, often with SharePoint or Microsoft Teams as the centre of the digital workplace experience
Microsofts support for an extensive library of connectors out-of-the-box for popular enterprise applications such as Salesforce and ServiceNow
Better APIs and support for Single Sign-On via AAD as a prerequisite across different products
Some integrations now being achievable through configuration rather than customisation, supported by Microsoft.

This has effectively flipped the notion of SharePoint integrations from being an expensive process prone to errors in which highly specialised developers have to do all the heavy lifting, to one in which highly effective integrations are now a core objective of good SharePoint implementation. While it is still important to involve experienced people for an enterprise-wide integration, views have shifted from SharePoint integrations being complicated and difficult, to being far more accessible.

Nine popular SharePoint integrations

There are a number of common integrations with SharePoint that deliver value for both employees and organisations. Here are nine key ones to consider.

1 Microsoft Teams

The explosion into heavy usage of Microsoft Teams across many enterprises in recent months continues to be quite remarkable. In terms of SharePoint and Teams integration, as both applications are core pillars of Microsoft 365, the two are already integrated in some respects a Team will have a SharePoint library, for example.

In terms of a SharePoint intranet or communication or hub site, a very useful Teams integration to consider is to provide a central directory of Teams spaces which users can browse through, find spaces of value and then apply to join them, using workflow to notify the administrator of particular Teams. This also brings visibility to Teams spaces and supports governance in areas such as reducing duplication of sites.

Another valuable SharePoint integration is providing a personalised list of Teams which an individual person is a member of with links to each space; this is very effective for those users who are not in Teams everyday and dont have the application open by default, so might not be able to find the link to the space they need immediately.

2 Yammer

Yammer is perhaps the most extensive integration with SharePoint to date, providing activity feeds and powering conversations within SharePoint sites and intranets. With Yammer being the key tool to drive social collaboration, professional communities and enterprise-wide conversations, the benefits of Yammer integration with SharePoint to bring content, discussions and collaboration together are pretty clear.

Typical SharePoint integrations involving Yammer include:

Using Yammer as the commenting engine for news and updates
Giving users oversight on Yammer discussions through an embedded feed on a SharePoint intranet homepage
Inviting discussions on broader topics where content and conversations provide important context for each other
Creating support pages for services or applications where an embedded Yammer community allows users to direct questions to specialists.

3 Dynamics and Salesforce: CRM and marketing platforms

Salesforce and Dynamics tend to be the core Customer Relationship Management platforms used by organisations to both store customer data and drive sales and marketing processes. This information is not only critical for sales and marketing staff, but is also likely to be used by any customer-facing staff; therefore, integration with a wider SharePoint environment such as an intranet can be extremely useful. Although Dynamics may be more closely integrated because it is a Microsoft product, Salesforce integrations with SharePoint are increasingly common.

The kind of SharePoint integrations that make sense can be:

Allowing all users to search for customer data or sales collateral within the core intranet or enterprise search
Providing one source of truth for any information that relies on showing customer data, for example, generating a list of clients available on the intranet that might link to other project data
Providing updates that alert staff, such as new opportunities that are logged on Salesforce or Dynamics and need to be reviewed for conflicts of interest
Triggering workflows that might involve SharePoint and Salesforce, for example, automatically creating a SharePoint page for information about a client or project, or creating a form on SharePoint that updates information on Salesforce.

4 Workday, SAP and Oracle: HR and ERP systems

A staple integration on SharePoint sites and intranets is that of HR and ERP systems that drive employee self-service, easing the pressure on busy HR teams, and saving time for employees and their managers. SharePoint is often the most convenient platform for employees to carry out simple transactions and view data in a way that means they dont have to visit the core system in question; it can also provide a better user interface. Here, synchronisation between HR data on a system like Workday or SAP and Active Directory is important to underpin these integrations.

Typical integrations with HR and ERP systems such as Workday, SAP and Oracle (as well as other HR-related technology solutions) include the ability for employees and managers to:

View and book annual leave
Approve annual leave
View a payslip
Update core HR and personal information
View and amend benefits information
Carry out performance review related tasks.

5 ServiceNow, Jira or Zendesk: IT and HR support

Just as HR system integrations with SharePoint relieve pressure on busy HR professionals by supporting employee self-service, SharePoint integrations with ticketing and support platforms like ServiceNow, Jira and Zendesk also aid helpdesk teams in IT and HR through self-serve approaches. Here, an integration with ServiceNow or Zendesk can drive access to content and allow users to carry out tasks through:

Viewing FAQs and Knowledge Base data to answer queries
Logging support tickets, saving time for both employee and support teams with pre-populated information on forms or guiding users to give the right information
Allowing users to track progress on support tickets without having to contact the helpdesk.

6 Condeco and other meeting room booking systems

Another core integration with a SharePoint environment that delivers value is with meeting room booking systems such as Condeco; these can also provide wider desk-booking systems. Here, a SharePoint integration can allow users to view and book a meeting room or desk through a central SharePoint site or intranet; we see this becoming more important in the new era of hybrid working that is likely to develop in the aftermath of the pandemic.

7 PowerApps and the Power Platform

The Microsoft 365 Power Platform (PowerApps, Power Automate, Power BI, Virtual Power Agents) is already driving the creation of powerful business apps, workflows and data visualisations that help to improve a range of different business processes. Integrations between SharePoint and Power Platform tools can be hugely valuable and are used frequently, either to power some of the content and data behind the process through a SharePoint list, or to provide a user interface for accessing or submitting information.

If you are creating a Power App, embedding it into SharePoint is often the best way to create a desktop view or interface for the app, helping to drive adoption and use. If you are using Power BI, embedding reporting into SharePoint can also open it up for everybody, for example, in surfacing important sales data or enterprise KPIs in real time on an intranet homepage.

8 Bots

Chatbots and conversational user interfaces are increasingly common across the digital workplace landscape, helping users to find information and complete tasks. Bots are often accessed through Microsoft Teams, but it also make sense for them to be accessed within SharePoint as users are often logged on there to find information and complete tasks. Any team deploying a chatbot should consider a SharePoint integration.

9 LMSs and Learning Platforms

An area where we are seeing significant levels of interest is SharePoint integrations with Learning Platforms or Learning Management Systems. This brings learning into the heart of the digital workplace by:

Providing more visibility of courses and course material
Allowing users to carry out mandatory training and keep track of what needs to be completed
Allowing users and managers to view their training records
Supporting employee onboarding processes involving training.

For example, we are seeing a lot of interest in LMS365, which can be seamlessly integrated with SharePoint straight out-of-the-box.

We love SharePoint integrations!

Here at Content Formula, we love SharePoint integrations because we know the value they bring to our clients. If youd like to discuss your integration strategy, what to integrate into your SharePoint intranet or have any general questions, then get in touch!

Nine critical digital workplace priorities for 2021

Posted on 7 January 202131 January 2023 by Dan Hawtrey

2020 was a pivotal year for the digital workplace. Communication and collaboration tools provided the backbone of business continuity for many organisations navigating the challenges of the pandemic. By dramatically scaling up remote working, COVID-19 acted as a catalyst in accelerating digital workplace trends that were already in motion. Our recent survey on digital workplace strategy reveals the true extent of the impact of COVID-19, indicating a strong influence on strategy, adoption levels, digital workplace maturity and even organisational culture.

As we welcome a new year, many digital workplace teams are considering their plans for 2021. The continuing threat and impact of COVID-19, the associated fragile global economy and the increase in digital workplace maturity we saw in 2020 will all strongly influence plans for the new year.

Heres our view of some of the key priorities that digital workplace and intranet teams should consider for 2021.

1 Optimise the digital workplace for hybrid working patterns

Our recent survey on digital workplace strategy shows that the pandemic has changed digital workplace plans for 64% of organisations, mostly around enabling greater support for the remote working required during lockdown. This was reflected in other survey results such as the 61% of organisations who reported a significant increase in the adoption of real-time communication and collaboration tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

A common observation is that going forward, higher levels of remote work will continue and workforces which are predominantly office-based will now fall into a pattern of hybrid work with most employees working both remotely and in an office. A 2021 priority for digital workplace teams is therefore to optimise the digital workplace for hybrid work, with not only a short- to medium-term view, but also one for the longer term.

Above and beyond the scaling-up of remote work that was characteristic of 2020, we see 2021 bringing opportunities to better support hybrid work through a process of optimisation employing various approaches including:

Aligning digital workplace practices with new HR policies on remote working
Adding a layer of governance to collaboration platforms to ensure better usage and findability
Adding more advanced online collaboration capabilities, such as whiteboarding
Harmonising digital and physical workplaces
Implementing targeted training and support to drive more sophisticated usage and substantiate specific business processes.

2 Make it as safe as possible to return to the physical office

Most of us are glad to see the back of 2020, and while the situation with the pandemic remains fraught, volatile and highly challenging, we hope that a vaccination programme will spell a partial return to some kind of normality in the latter half of the year.

If and when this happens, we think digital workplace teams can play a significant role in helping employees make a safe return to the physical office using a variety of tools, channels and approaches. When we say a safe return, we envisage there still being the need for some forms of social distancing, probably with fewer people coming into an office at any one time to reflect ongoing hybrid working patterns.

Digital workplace teams can play a significant role in helping employees return safely and confidently to the office by:

Providing reliable and up-to-date safety and procedural information about returning to the office through digital communication channels
Providing access to desk-booking and scheduling systems to allow people to book coordinate their visits with colleagues
Providing check-in and check-out services to help any track-and-trace practices
Supporting online collaboration and communication tools so employees in the office can work seamlessly with colleagues who are working at home
Working with Real Estate functions to optimise buildings with more touchless solutions where possible.

3 Build on new styles of empathetic communications and dialogue

Our recent survey shows that COVID-19 has changed organisational culture, with 64% telling us their organisation has become more empathetic and human-centred as a result of the years challenges. Over the past few months, we have observed this cultural shift reflected in internal communications, content and practices. Leadership communications now tend to be more informal, personal and less corporate; communication formats also include an emphasis on dialogue and listening, taking on board employee feedback and using it to influence decision-making.

In 2021, we believe there is a real opportunity for digital comms professionals to build upon this culture shift and strengthen digital capabilities and communication channels that make it easier for leaders to communicate informally, enable dialogue and feedback loops, open up communication to a wider audience and present more compelling and impactful messaging. Intranets, live events, video platforms, social networks and mobile apps all have the potential to be optimised to better reflect a more empathetic culture.

4 Get better ROI with Microsoft 365 by exploring further capabilities

COVID-19 has hit businesses hard – in our recent survey, nearly half (47%) of all respondents reported a negative impact on business. Although other responses show that many digital workplace teams have not been impacted as much as may have been thought in terms of budget and headcount, when respondents were asked to choose their top three biggest challenges for 2021, the top answer (51%) was constrained budgets.

Inevitably, difficult market conditions will have an impact on the scope of digital workplace projects in 2021. However, the good news is that organisations which have already invested in Microsoft 365 have enormous potential to explore the capabilities within the platform they are paying for, arguably achieving better ROI and delivering solutions with a relatively modest outlay.

Our survey indicates that there are a variety of capabilities such as video (Stream), automation (Power Platform) and data visualisation (Power BI) where adoption and maturity still have room to grow. If investment opportunities are limited, exploring and leveraging the powerful capabilities of the full range of Microsoft 365 tools can achieve significant results without breaking the bank.

5 Move forward with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robot Process Automation

Sometimes, the hype that comes with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its reputation as a technology of the future can act as a distraction to its real value; actually, Artificial Intelligence and Robot Process Automation are technologies that can deliver results today. In 2021, digital workplace teams should consider how they can use and support AI and automation to deliver apps, solutions and bots that will drive real value.

Many digital workplace teams agree with us. Our survey suggests that Digitisation and automation is regarded as the second most important digital workplace priority for 2021, with 60% considering it Very Important.

We think the Microsoft 365 Power Platform, which is currently under-used, presents exceptional potential to improve efficiencies and drive innovation in organisations, both of which would be welcome in the post-pandemic climate. In particular, Power Virtual Agents significantly lowers the barriers for organisations to create, launch and manage enterprise-level chatbots, and may help 2021 be the year AI and automation truly go mainstream.

6 Nurture your citizen developers

Increasingly, AI and automation are being delivered by no-code and low-code solutions, including Power Virtual Agents and Power Automate within Microsoft 365. This is now providing previously unattainable opportunities for citizen developers and power-uses across different enterprise functions to build specific solutions, apps and workflows that can transform and automate local process and tasks with less involvement from IT professionals.

As part of an effort to move forward with AI and automation, IT and digital workplace teams should seize the opportunity to nurture this potential army of citizen developers by providing some structure and cohesion to their activity, offering training, support, governance and community management to seize these opportunities and, to a lesser extent, minimise some of the risks associated with citizen developers.

7 Extend the digital employee experience of deskless and frontline workers

One of the significant leaps forward during 2020 was the extension of the digital workplace and digital communication channels to deskless and frontline workers primarily through mobile-friendly apps, sometimes for the very first time. This was a welcome step given that the digital workplace experience of frontline workers formerly tended to lag behind that of knowledge workers.

We see a digital workplace priority for 2021 being to build on this and extend the value of these apps and channels, primarily by increasing capabilities. Here, there are many options such as enabling HR self-service, providing access to more operational information, supporting health and wellbeing, providing mobile-friendly learning and extending collaboration tools.

8 Ensure learning is at the centre of the digital workplace

Learning and development is a key part of employee experience, yet it has not always been at the centre of the digital workplace experience. Too many organisations have a Learning Management System (LMS) that has a poor or dated user experience, is not available through Single Sign-On and sits outside the main flow of work. This has impacted adoption and undermines a good digital employee experience.

In the past eighteen months, weve seen a flood of organisations interested in bringing learning right into the heart of the digital workplace. There are a number of reasons for this: as more organisations develop a Microsoft 365 digital workplace, integrating learning into it makes sense, and there are now Learning Platforms such as LMS365 that provide that seamless integration.

The pandemic has heightened the need for learning how to adopt new ways of working. The subsequent increased access to digital services for the whole workforce creates the potential to provide access to learning for all. In 2021, we think a key priority for digital workplace teams will be to bring learning into the centre of the digital workplace.

9 Support innovation for business survival

We think that innovation will be a significant theme for 2021. The pandemic has seen many organisations show great adaptability, flexibility and imagination in pivoting to new digital service delivery models. The continuing emphasis on new ways of working, economic pressure, and a more adaptable mindset makes the conditions right for organisations to innovate.

Digital workplace teams can play their part, supporting teams with digital workplace tools that can be used to carry out processes in more productive ways and drive new solutions. More specifically, collaboration, ideation and social tools can help everybody contribute great ideas, while digital workplace teams can set an example by innovating themselves.

Heres to 2021

2021 isnt going to be easy, but were sure we can get through the difficult times ahead and make it a better year than the last one. We think digital workplace teams have a significant role to play yet again. If youd like to discuss digital workplace plans and strategies for 2021, then get in touch!

10 digital workplace trends from the Digital Workplace Strategy 2021 survey

Posted on 14 December 202021 July 2022 by Dan Hawtrey

You dont need us to tell you what a pivotal year 2020 has been for the digital workplace. Many organisations have found that the investment they have made in tools such as Microsoft Teams and platforms like Microsoft 365 have been critical for business continuity, as well as keeping employees informed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This rapid acceleration of digital workplace maturity means that digital workplace teams will be starting 2021 in a very different way to 2020. The wider business and working climate will be very different, with the ongoing pandemic meaning a highly fragile economy and scaled-up patterns of hybrid working are set to continue.

With such a period of intense change, we were keen to understand in more detail how the events of 2020 impacted digital workplace teams in the tools that they use and how they see the future. We decided to run a survey called Digital Workplace Strategy 2021 that asked various questions with a range of multiple-choice and free text questions. We ran the survey for a few weeks in late 2020, and received responses from digital workplace professionals in nearly 60 organisations

Here are ten of the key takeaways from the survey.

1 The digital workplace is maturing

In the past, digital workplace surveys have suggested that the collective maturity of the digital workplace has been at a relatively early stage, although investment in Microsoft 365, collaboration tools and awareness of the digital workplace concept has seen some advancement.

Our survey suggests that one of the impacts of 2020 is a significant advance in the maturity of the digital workplace. 56% of organisations told us their digital workplace was either growing or fully embedded, and had reached maturity. Only 17% described their maturity level as basic or early. While we dont have a truly comparable set of data for 2019, our strong impression is that the needle has moved on maturity.

2 COVID-19 has changed the plans of digital workplace teams

With COVID-19 having a tangible effect on the digital workplace, it has also inevitably influenced the corresponding plans and intended roadmaps of digital workplace teams. In our survey, we asked about the extent of the impact of COVID-19 on digital workplace strategy; only 3% of respondents told us that COVID-19 had had no impact, while 64% said that the pandemic had changed strategy a little or moderately. A third told us it had changed their digital workplace strategy a lot or a great deal. The vast majority of digital workplace strategies have been shaped by COVID-19 in some way.

3 2020 digital workplace priorities are 2021 priorities

With the pandemic changing digital workplace plans, we wanted to understand how that might translate into strategies for 2021. Here, the priorities that proved important during 2020 as pillars of business continuity robust digital communication channels and support for remote working look set to continue in 2021. Nearly 80% of organisations told us digital communication and content was a very important priority, the most popular answer, while support and scale of remote working was very important for 57% of organisations. Other very important areas were digitisation and automation (60%) and employee onboarding (57%).

4 Investment in digital skills is critical

With more and more digital interactions required because of remote working, we believe investment in digital literacy and skills is going to be increasingly important, particularly as sections of the workforce who previously had less access to digital workplace tools start to drive more sophisticated usage. In our survey, 54% of respondents said that improving digital skills was very important for their organisation; we believe this will be a focus going forward.

5 Company culture has become more empathetic

COVID-19 hasnt just impacted the digital workplace, its also changed organisational culture. While there have been many anecdotes of support for employees and customers, alongside inspirational stories about people helping each other out, our survey suggests there has been a deeper impact on organisations.

64% of respondents told us COVID-19 had made their organisational culture more empathetic and supportive, while 17% told us there had been no change. Perhaps surprisingly, 19% said their organisation was less empathetic and supportive, possibly a reflection of difficult choices made in the face of very tough trading conditions.

6 Digital workplace budgets and teams are still largely intact

We wanted to ascertain the impact of COVID-19 on investment in digital workplace tools and teams. Despite the economic fallout of the pandemic, investment appears not to have suffered as much as we may have anticipated; possibly, this is a reflection of the value that the digital workplace has brought to business continuity.

When we asked whether budgets had been impacted by COVID-19, 31% said there had been no impact and 28% indicated that their budget had increased, while 25% said it had decreased. In terms of team size, 75% had seen no change, while the number indicating headcount had been reduced (14%) was partially offset by those who had actually seen an increase (11%). This is despite the fact that many of the organisations who participated in the survey had been negatively impacted by COVID-19 – nearly half of respondents reported an overall negative impact on business.

7 But budget constraints may bite in 2021

Although budget cuts to the digital workplace were less significant than one might expect, there was less confidence about what lies ahead. We asked respondents to pick their top three challenges for 2021 from a number of choices. Here, constrained budgets are expected to bite in 2021 with 51% of organisations declaring it a top challenge; continuing uncertainty due to COVID-19 was the joint second most popular answer (40%).

8 Adoption of other tools has piggy-backed off real-time communication success

Everyone knows about the massive uptake in the adoption of real-time communication and collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, but what about other tools? We asked respondents about how adoption of a range of tools had fared during the pandemic. Being a Microsoft consultancy, we used the Office 365 suite of tools as a basis for constructing the list of tools from which respondents could choose.

Here, we found an increase in adoption of digital workplace tools across the board, clearly piggy-backing off the scale-up of Teams and equivalent technologies. While respondents reported the biggest rise in adoption was for collaboration and communication tools, every other tool also enjoyed some kind of reported rise in adoption. Use of streaming video, cloud documents, cloud drives, and CMS (e.g. SharePoint) all saw large increases in adoption.

9 There are multiple opportunities to drive value in the digital workplace

In terms of levels of adoption of different tools, whilst many organisations reported moderate adoption of important tools such as video platforms (42%), workflow and automation tools (39%) and dashboard and data visualisation capabilities (33%), far fewer attributed significant adoption levels to these tools. We believe this indicates there are considerable opportunities to drive value in tools that have a real potential to initiate transformation, such as in automating processes at-scale or opening up data to aid decision-making for all employees.

10 Everyone has had a different journey

2020 has been a rollercoaster ride, and organisations have had wildly different experiences down to a variety of factors including size, sector, business line, workforce demographics and the level of digital workplace maturity before the pandemic struck. The range of different journeys were evident in the variety of responses we got when we asked for any additional comments.

Some organisations had not been impacted greatly; in fact, one reported the biggest outcome was not having an in-person conference. For others, it has a been a harder journey – one respondent told us We were behind the curve and are still catching up. Other answers reflected on the factors that had made a difference, including the importance of digital workplace strategy.

Whats your digital workplace strategy?

Its clear that COVID-19 has had a profound impact on everything from digital workplace adoption through to organisational culture. The survey has provided some fascinating insights into digital workplace trends and the strategies that different teams are following. How has your digital workplace strategy been impacted? If youd like to discuss any of the results of the survey or the next steps for your digital workplace, then get in touch!

And the winner isâ€¦We promised to run a prize draw to win £100 of Amazon vouchers for people who completed the survey. The winner is from The Specialist Works.