Looking back on this past year seems an odious task, and in doing so I am not aiming to brush over the harrowing struggles that many individuals and organisations have faced. However, I am hoping to note where the unprecedented state of the past working year has transformed the way in which we work. 2020 brought with it a tide of changing regulations and working conditions, forcing organisations to adapt their operations and embrace working in the cloud. In this column I want to look at the digital transformation trends I have noted over the past year and the ways in which we can prepare our businesses for continued instability.
Bringing teams together
The most obvious digital transformation news from the past year is the mass uptake of Microsoft Teams, with Microsoft Teams seeing more than 75 million daily active users earlier this year. We noticed in many of the webinars that we ran across the year that in the early stages of mass remote working, organisations were looking to simply get users set up and comfortable collaborating from home.
The importance of Teams as a hub for teamwork has been noted and developed upon throughout the year, with modern intranet specialists, Valo, launching Valo Connect. Valo Connect offers a complementary experience to Modern SharePoint, integrating natively with Microsoft Teams to marry the capabilities of an intranet with the daily operations of Teams. This tool sits inside Microsoft Teams to augment its capabilities, enhancing search, accumulating news and connecting employees.
Importance of on-the-go processes
This year has highlighted our reliance on paperbased, outdated or inefficient processes. From this we see the importance of an on-the-go processes, in which operations can be kept in flow from anywhere and any device. One of the key players in process excellence is Nintex. Nintex offer a variety of easy-to-use automation tools that can support keeping operations running smoothly. These tools include e-signature, mobile applications, digital forms, and advanced workflow to name a few. Such tools have been popular in the past year as they allow organisations to maintain the seamless operation of processes even as working locations alter.
Security
Finally, due to many moving their processes and information to the cloud, there has been a large focus on the importance of cloud security. For some this may be achieved through the security capabilities of Microsoft 365 but for others may involve a third-party addition or a managed service solution.
