Mobile and Remote Employees can put business data at risk.

Most businesses have employees that often work away from the office desk. Employees work from home, on the road or even roam the office/retail floor with mobile devices. Businesses also implement BYOD (Bring Your Own Devices) to give employees flexibility to work from anywhere. Unfortunately most businesses do not have a security strategy for their business mobility.

Without a secure business mobility strategy, business data and devices are at risk of theft. Businesses also need to provide a consistent work experience for employees in and out of the office. Employee productivity can be impacted when employees have to work with different applications outside the office.

Securely Enable Business Mobility with Office 365

Employees can use a mix of business and personal devices to access business applications such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook. It also provides consistent experience across Windows, iOS and Android desktops, laptops, phones and tablets

Office 365 Business Premium has built-in security features and fully installed versions of Office apps on employee’s choice of desktop, tablet, or phone. This provides improved collaboration across devices so teams in different locations can work together more efficiently. Employees can also hold “face-to-face” meetings from any location through Skype for Business, improving teamwork and boosting productivity.

Businesses can have more control of their data and devices by using Office 365 E3 and Enterprise Mobility Suite plans.

Office 365 Enterprise E3 includes everything in Business Premium and advanced capabilities for data protection and compliance tools. This helps businesses maintain regulatory compliance while employees work away from the office.

The Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) can protect company assets while enabling workers to stay productive from practically anywhere. It provides capabilities for securely managing mobile devices and applications.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business securely implement business mobility.

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Poor Collaboration and Communication Reduces Business Productivity

We have all worked on projects that missed deadlines due to lack of proper documentation and communications. The likelihood of this happening increases exponentially when teams are spread across multiple locations.

Lack of good communication tools impact employee productivity. Imagine employees walking across the hall to communicate with other employees. This can easily add up to hour of wasted productivity in a week.

When employees can easily work together and communicate with each other, their productivity increases.

Office 365 Provides Cloud tools to Improve Business Collaboration and Communication

Office 365 provide cloud tools to help employees work together better. The Office 365 Business Essential plan cost $5/user/month. This will help businesses make the most of their IT budget and resources.

This provides each user with Cloud Applications for better collaboration and communication.

• Exchange Online provides business-class email and calendaring.
  With OneDrive for Business, each user gets one terabyte of cloud storage for file storage and sharing.
• Businesses also get an intranet site through SharePoint Online so it can easily to host resources and documentation for your team to access and share.
• TeamSites provide employees with collaboration and communication tools that will enable them to connect to documents and information, collaborate on content with colleagues, and share files virtually anywhere, any time.
• Skype provide the ability to host online meeting and networking tools that will help employees connect and make decisions more quickly. It also includes instant messaging (IM), audio, video, or web conferencing. Employees can host virtual whiteboard with employees from across the world.
• To improve communication, businesses can adopt Yammer. This provides an internal social networking platform.

Businesses can upgrade Microsoft Office Applications to Office 365 Business Premium Plan for even better collaboration and communication. This provides features like Modern Attachments, which automatically updates emailed attachments. The plan also provides users with fully installed Office applications on up to 5 devices.

Contact us to find out how we can help your employees collaborate and communicate more effectively.

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Upgrade On-site Office to Office 365

This was an expensive experience for businesses because of the huge upfront investment for the purchase of the software, installation cost and business downtime.

Businesses were also stuck with current installation of Office software till the next purchase and installation. This meant they missed out on any new features that were added after the purchase was made.

Get the Latest Office Applications with Office 365

Office 365 is subscription based which means you only pay for what you need when you need it. Since it’s a cloud based software, users will regularly get the latest features regardless of whether they’re using desktop, mobile, or tablet devices.

Office 365 Business plan for $8.25/user/month provides users with full desktop version of Office on up to five PCs or Macs, as well as rights to use Office on virtually any device for up to five tablets and five phones.

This also includes OneDrive for Business to easily share and store documents. It also enables them to share, collaborate and edit files from a computer, tablet, or smartphone

Businesses can gradually move to the cloud by adopting Office 365 applications and keep email systems onsite. When ready, on-site email servers can also be moved to the cloud with Office 365 Business Premium Plans. This includes applications like Exchange Online, SharePoint, Skype for Business, and Yammer at no additional cost.

Users also get a single login for all applications and are able to transition between apps without having to log in with different accounts.

Office 365 enables employees to work more productively because it’s a one-stop shop–all their apps and tools are integrated into a single experience.

Contact us to find out how we can help upgrade on-site Office Applications to Office 365.

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Microsoft recently released a scheduling and collaboration tool called StaffHub. This tool is aimed at businesses with shift employers and/or employees without a permanent desk.

Businesses like retail, hospitality and healthcare can easily communicate shift schedules and important work files through the StaffHub app (IOS and Android) and the online site. Employees no longer have to go to the break room to check schedules or logon to computers to request time off. StaffHub provides a quick way to communicate with employees on their mobile devices. The tool is available with Office 365 business plans K1, E1, E3, and E5.

Brief overview of things You Can Do with StaffHub
All employees will need to have at least Office 365 K1 plan for access to StaffHub app and site. The K1 plan is $4/user/month, the plan also includes 2GB of Email and Office online access.
More details of K1 plan here: Office 365 K1 Plan

1 ) Create and Share Schedules: Managers can create employee schedules. StaffHub has a calendar type scheduling format that can be used for scheduling.

StaffHub Scheduling

2) View Schedule and Trade Shifts: Employees can view schedules and easily swap schedules with team members.

3) Request Time Off/Vacation: Managers can create various time off options and employees can use this for vacation, sick days and other time off requests.

StaffHub Time Off request setup.

4) Share Important Information to the Team: You can upload important team files like Employee HandBook, Team Goals and other important documents for easy employee access. You can also upload video and quick notification using this.

StaffHub Team Files

Microsoft StaffHub is a great tool for mobile communication with employees. As always better communication leads to better productivity in any business.

Contact Us for assistance in setting this up for your team.

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