Look to the modern workplace to improve staff productivity, collaboration and engagement…

Tom Henson, Client Services Director at the technology outsourcing company First Solution, talks about how a modern workplace strategy can transform a business’s operation.

It is clear that technology has hugely impacted people’s personal lives enormously over the past 20 years. We are now able to communicate instantaneously with our family and friends across the world, have an encyclopaedia of information available at our fingertips, and even have the ability to control much of our environment by using only our voices. By some estimates, change is happening ten times faster and at 300 times the rate of the First Industrial Revolution. Many experts are calling this change the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

However, often these changes are not touching people’s business lives to the same degree. Many business working environments do not look that much different to what was being employed in the year 2000.

Tom Henson: ‘I talk to many businesses who haven’t changed the way they work much, if at all in the past 20 years. As much as they have tried to adapt to new technology, most of their staff working environments still consist of word processing, spreadsheets and email. I don’t think this is their fault, in my opinion the technology industry has done a bad job in helping them through the process.’

‘The good thing, however, is that the big technology providers have realised this and changed their approach. They have spent years, and millions of pounds developing technology and now they realise that’s not of much use unless businesses are using it’

‘Take for example Office 365. This has been a resounding success for Microsoft, at least in the fact that it’s had a very high adoption rate in business. But if you look at the elements of the service businesses are using, it’s a very small proportion of what the product can do – it is still generally Word, Excel and Outlook. However, Microsoft have realised this is a problem and are looking to address it.’

First Solution are working with Microsoft to help businesses adopt a Modern Workplace strategy. By fully utilising platforms such as the Microsoft 365 platform, a business can fundamentally change the way their staff work and give them the technology to make them more dynamic and productive.

‘We are saying to our customers – you are sitting on a goldmine. You have already got the technology in your business, ready to go. With First Solution’s expertise on how to employ this technology to solve your business challenges you can give your staff the tools to excel in their roles.’

“We’ve had some great results working with our customers on adopting a Modern Workplace strategy. By laying a solid foundation for their business operations using a technology like Office 365, businesses can do things they never thought imaginable, like automating processes within a couple of days, or enabling team working and collaboration overnight.” Tom Henson, Client Services Director First Solution Technologies

If you are an organisation who is looking to grow and are interested in how technology could potentially help you scale up then the team at First Solution are the people to talk to. Contact Tom Henson on 01242 335 549

www.firstsolution.co.uk