TSG’s Microsoft Teams onboarding and adoption, also known as “the modern workplace”, has fast become one of the most sought-after solutions across the housing industry. It’s clear to see why, with its ability to drive value to businesses via reductions in meeting costs and email traffic, improved information sharing and collaboration with both internal and external parties.
Following our recent project with Cartrefi Cymunedol Gwynedd (CCG), l I had the pleasure of interviewing Alun Hugh, CCG’s Business Systems Developer. Alun talks about CCG’s journey including the implementation process, how CCG has embraced Microsoft Teams across the business and how it has benefitted the organisation.
Having worked on Microsoft Teams myself, I feel it is truly a pioneering software with a diverse set of features which bolsters organisation communication. But don’t just take my word for it, find out about CCG’s experience below:
Kerry: What challenges did CCG face before the implementation of Microsoft Teams?
Alun: The main challenge was the siloed working. We also had 100-1000s of files saved on our network drives with multiple duplications, so searching for the latest document proved to be a pain point. There was also no consistent or efficient way to collaborate on individual documents. For example, some users would share a link to a document shared on a network drive to get feedback from co-workers, co-workers would then email their responses, which meant the added task of collating all responses before updating the master copy.
Kerry: Why did you choose TSG as your partner?
Alun: We already had an Office 365 licence within the business and were ready to start using the stack of features beyond the typical Office applications. CCG was fully aware of the benefits of leveraging all of these applications. We were looking for an IT partner who had an aligned vision with ourselves and was at the forefront of the Office 365 technology.
From the first meeting we had with Tony, Kirsty and Shez, we felt that TSG truly understood where we wanted to be and we were positive TSG could be that critical friend we were looking for to help us roll out Microsoft Teams and gain adoption reynoldsproperties.
Kerry: How did TSG fit into the rollout plans for Microsoft Teams?
Alun: From working with our IT team on developing the design, governance and adoption documents to setting up behind-the-scenes automatic metadata tagging, which provides users with the ability to simply drop a file into a location and all the correct meta tags are applied so search results can be sorted by either department, location or security so the user does not need to do any at all. TSG was also involved in the initial champions training and has worked with our team here at CCG so we now have the skills to run these sessions ourselves.
Kerry: How has Teams been received within the business?
Alun: We are much further along than we envisioned being at this point in the project. There’s no denying it’s a different way of working to the traditional methods. It enables our users to work more efficiently and effectively. Colleagues are quickly finding their feet by moving some of the simpler tasks into Teams first, for example certain departments have embraced the use of Planner to assign and manage tasks.
If you would like to find ourt more about Microsoft Teams and how housing associations are using its features, you can find out more in our blog: How housing associations are using Office 365 and Microsoft Teams to supercharge their efficiency.