Essentials for Cross-Organisational Collaboration
Every industry is navigating the new world of hybrid working. Together, we’re building a blended model that enables more flexibility in when, where and how people work, and that model is here to stay.
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Organisations are now facing the challenge of not letting flexibility turn into separate, disjointed work efforts and they must enable the entire organisation to operate as one business, everywhere.
Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams are helping organisations achieve this goal, making it easier for people in any role or department to connect, communicate, and collaborate on business functions—no matter when, where, or how they’re working.
The essentials for cross-organisational collaboration
As business leaders shape their hybrid workplace strategy, they should consider the four “collaboration essentials” so they can work as one business, everywhere.
Connect Everyone, Across Every Business Function
In a world of hybrid working, digital collaboration should help broaden networks, not restrict them. That’s why Microsoft is making it easier for any Dynamics 365 user to seek out diverse perspectives, learnings and insights from anywhere within the organisation—between sales and engineering, marketing and finance, retail frontlines, and customer service.
Dynamics 365 users will soon be able to invite any Microsoft Teams user from across the organisation to view and collaborate on business records right within the flow of a Teams chat or channel. This enables everyone in the organisation to directly contribute to business activities at that moment, without needing to switch context across multiple apps and data sources.
Connect Everywhere, Anytime, on Every Channel
In the pre-pandemic world, collaboration was largely simultaneous with team members working on a problem at the same time, either in person or in a virtual meeting. But today, collaboration must be nonsimultaneous as well. In addition to the ability to meet live on video, employees also need the ability to share customer records, service cases or workflows in Dynamics 365, with any expert in the organisation, enabling them to add value at any time.
For example, with new chatbot capabilities in Dynamics 365 Human Resources, employees can view time-off balances and submit leave requests from within Teams, without having to visit a separate HR portal. Employees simply type in a few keywords, and a chatbot can easily help them find out their leave balance or request time off. Managers can just as easily review and approve time-off requests with just a few clicks. With this self-service experience, employees and managers can work together on simple HR tasks from anywhere all from within the flow of work with Teams.
Every organisation, large and small, needs to bring collaboration into the flow of work. With Dynamics 365 Business Central, small and medium businesses can also connect people, processes, insights and cross-functional team collaboration to make better decisions faster. Now in preview, Business Central users can paste a link to any Dynamics 365 record into a Microsoft Teams chat, and it will expand that into a compact card to share with coworkers. They can view card details, edit data, and take action without ever leaving Teams. In addition, users can look up business contacts, vendors, and customers that can be shared into chat, or used to bring up rich, actionable details in a window in Teams.
Collaboration Beyond the Office
Remote working has increased interactions with immediate teams and close networks, but dramatically diminished interactions with more distant networks. This is a worrying trend for business leaders, potentially leading to problems like employee isolation. Dynamics 365 and Teams help organisations bring every network closer together so that those closest to the problem can access the people and information they need to spur innovation, wherever they are located. For example, Dynamics 365 enables new ways for field technicians to stay connected to work orders, information, and experts in real-time, even from some of the most remote job sites—all with seamless integration between Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and Microsoft Teams.
Deliver more Personalised Experiences
In addition to improving the way people work together across the organisation, collaboration should improve how individuals and departments engage with end customers—enabling everyone to deliver more personalised experiences. In a world of hybrid work, it’s clear that virtual events will remain a key method for engaging with customers and customer expectations for a personalised experience continue to rise.
This year, marketers will be able to set up, promote and report on events hosted on Microsoft Teams from within Dynamics 365 Marketing. In a few simple steps, they can export attendee data and view customer segments created in Dynamics 365 Marketing based on audience attendance. Customer journeys, including follow-up emails, are also automatically created to nurture attendees. Users can then further customise the content and experiences for attendees based on how they engage and orchestrate personalised customer journeys.
Collaborate in the Flow of Work
As the definition of the workplace continues to evolve, every organisation needs to bring people, insights and business processes together in a collaborative space. These four essential capabilities—built into Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams—will help everyone across your business work together from anywhere in a more seamless and natural way.
Need Help
Book a consultation with Storm today to see how your organisation can connect, communicate and collaborate within Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams to drive business success.
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