The coronavirus outbreak has led to a huge percentage of Texas employees working from home. Additionally, many small businesses in Texas are being adversely affected, leading to unwaged employees and even total shutdowns, in some cases.
However, there are many valuable tech tools that small and medium-sized businesses are striving to take advantage of to combat the negative effects caused by coronavirus. Businesses are seeking out collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams continue to service their current customers, facilitate remote work, and do whatever is necessary to keep their businesses running.
Here’s how collaboration tools within Microsoft Teams have been helping Texas small businesses and how they can help your company:
What is Microsoft Teams?
From Google Drive to Trello, there are hundreds of collaboration tools on the market. However, when it comes to a software solution that offers an all-in-one advantage, Microsoft Teams is ranked at the top.
Microsoft Teams is a software solution that helps small businesses perform several vital business operations remotely. When working remotely, your workers want to be able to communicate and collaborate in a way that is flexible, efficient, and quick. Microsoft Teams offers several features that make communicating from multiple devices simple, without the jeopardy of data silos or missed communication.
How Microsoft Teams Is Helping Small Businesses in Texas
Microsoft Teams is an optimal solution for small businesses because it is affordable, feature-rich, and easy to use. Here are some of the reasons these are great benefits for small businesses in Texas:
Reasonably Priced Remote Choices
Due to the coronavirus, Texas businesses are at risk of either instant or long-term threat of closure. Most small businesses are taking advantage of any opportunity to cut costs without hurting their business.
If you are operating a small business, the odds are that you want a platform that will allow collaboration and communication with people both inside and outside your company. But, with the global economy failing right now, you can’t afford to use pricey collaborations tools, such as Slack’s premium options. Microsoft Teams is a much more affordable solution that offers plenty of features for effective communication.
With the free Microsoft Teams, you get unrestricted chats, video and audio calls, 10GB of file storage for your entire team, and 2GB of individual storage for every worker. The full version of the Microsoft Teams has no user limit and gives you access to additional features such as Exchange email hosting, OneDrive, SharePoint, 1 TB of storage per user, enhanced security, and compliance features, and audio conferencing. These additional features make it a highly robust software at a fraction of the cost of other collaboration programs.
Features for Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity
Thanks to Microsoft Teams, employees can work much more efficiently when scheduling meetings, responding to email threads, and answering phone calls. Because of Teams, workers are becoming multifunctional, businesses are working optimally while remote, and roles are being adapted to cover more responsibilities.
Some of the numerous tools and communication features offered on Microsoft Teams include the following:
- A full, up-to-date conference experience that allows users to assess chats before meetings, share content during meetings, organize minutes confidentially, and give group notices to enable a seamless transition to a digital workplace.
- Integration of your current programs and apps on one digital platform.
- Unlimited chats, which allow you to communicate with your team round the clock.
Since achieving teamwork is key in a remote environment, Teams is an optimal solution for small businesses who need to develop a remote collaborative culture. The features of Teams can also result in more revenue and a more effective business model that can be adapted to either remote or onsite work, making it a great long-term solution for small Texas businesses.
Ease of Use
Microsoft Teams streamlines group work with its user-friendly networks for group chats. Multiple channels can be set up quickly in less than two clicks, chats are in a thread to enable easier following, and notifications can be set to come up on screen.
Teams has a reliable user interface that makes it easy to integrate other apps and manage them all in one platform. With easy-to-use features, Teams allows your workers to focus more on their job tasks rather than spend time becoming familiar with a new, complex software.
Bottom Line
Selecting Microsoft Teams as your platform for digital collaboration and communications can dramatically increase the productivity of Texas businesses who need now more than ever to optimize their remote workforces. Making sure you have the right Managed Service Provider to implement Microsoft Teams is also critical to ensuring you’re able to make the most out of your investment.
At Tolar Systems, we offer full Microsoft Teams integration and management to help your business run efficiently during the pandemic and in the future. Contact us today to learn more about our Microsoft 365 solutions for small Texas businesses.
