As a society, we use apps to manage, connect and augment our day-to-day lives. So, it’s understandable that when we go to work, we expect to have the same. Apps can help organisations modernise processes, create new innovations and uncover opportunities.

According to the IDC, this growing demand for digital solutions means that 500 million new applications will be built in the next five years. And with a shortfall of 4 million developers predicted by 2025, most organisations don’t have enough developers to create the apps they need. We call this the App Gap Challenge:

The gap between the number of software developers you have today and the number of software developers you need to build the next generation of apps.

So how can organisations solve this? Low/no code platforms like Microsoft Power Apps can help speed up app development and democratise it across the organisation.

Empower developers to innovate with low/no code

Low/no code solutions allows the rapid building of solutions that automate and streamline routine tasks. This allows developers to focus on more high-value, complex work. According to The Total Economic Impact™ Of Power Apps commissioned study by Forrester Consulting, Power Apps can reduce app development and costs by 74 percent.

It can also help organisations drive a growth mindset culture in development teams. They can use Power Apps to quickly prototype a new idea and deploy this capability rapidly.

Take, for example, AstraZeneca’s HealthyMind app. The biopharmaceutical company wanted to ensure their employees had convenient, secure access to mental health resources. It took the developer team just four months to build the solution on Power Apps.

“Key to the choice [of Power Apps] was its ease of use. It is low code, so it is quick to develop and deploy. This all meant that we were able to design and build HealthyMind very quickly,” says Matt O’Halloran, Head of Workplace and Enterprise Services at AstraZeneca.

A platform like Power Apps can also connect to hundreds of different data sources including Microsoft Dataverse. This brings all your business data together into a single source of truth. Your developers can easily customise and extend capabilities in Azure and leverage business data from your systems of record such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Surface through Microsoft 365.

“[HealthyMind’s] natural integration with the broader suite that we use enabled us to deliver the application within the context of Teams, which was another game-changing factor,” says O’Halloran.

Drive digitisation with citizen development

With low/no code, development is democratised throughout your organisation. It allows anyone to solve business problems themselves.

At Centrica, citizen developers have built over 1,000 apps.

“We’ve really embraced this technology in Centrica. We’ve made an effort to be on the front foot and use the latest technology first, rather than waiting for it to be embedded and then acting,” says James Boswell, Director, Design and Engineering at Centrica. “It was a conscious risk but it’s worked really well – it’s giving us some great benefits and rewards and we’re well on the way to ensuring all our employees are digital employees.” 

For the energy services and solutions company, Power Apps has changed perceptions and steered to business-led development. Take, their finance team for example, in a couple of months they built an app that simplified and automated coordinating tax returns across different regimes. 

Build fusion teams to digitise and innovate faster

What happens when you combine your pro developers and citizen developers? You build fusion teams and unlock the true value of low/no code. According to Gartner, 84 percent of companies already have a fusion team.

By bringing together people with different experiences and knowledge into a multi-disciplinary team, you’ll build more innovative, inclusive apps, faster.

In a fusion team, citizen developers, with the support of pro developers, can rapidly build more complex applications. Citizen developers can focus on the UI, whilst pro developers can create and manage the APIs needed to enrich the application with key data sources. This accelerates time-to-delivery. Fusion teams can deploy solutions up to two and a half times faster than traditional siloed teams.

Centrica used a fusion team to develop an app that matches Centrica volunteers with people from the Trussell Trust charity.

“We’ve got people from all over the business working together. Some are working on the development work, some on the UI, some acting as scrum masters to manage the project. It’s all being done by people who came to the clinics and volunteered. And it will be a huge help to the Trussell Trust,” says Roy Young, Global Head of Office 365.

Build a fusion team

1. Find your use case

Pick a relevant problem that needs solving quickly and when solved, provides a considerable impact.

• Assemble your team

Have a mixture of proactive employees from across many lines of business, such as customer service, developers, team leaders, business leads.

• Plan your roadmap

Determine how much time it’ll take to create, implement, and produce results. Make sure you have time to troubleshoot and determine which solutions work best.

• Accept mistakes along the way

By working in an agile environment, your team will constantly be testing and may have to be ready to pivot when necessary.

Drive digitalisation and innovation

Power Apps helps organisations increase agility by giving everyone the ability to rapidly build low-code apps that drive innovation, modernise processes and solve tough challenges.

Cara Barratt, Workplace Transformation Lead at AstraZeneca agrees, “…we’re really looking at how we can empower our colleagues across AstraZeneca so those that have great ideas can develop their own use cases.”

Find out more

Accelerate innovation with low-code

Microsoft Power Apps

Join a Power App Microsoft Training Day

Make app building easier

Take the Fusion Development Learning Path

Take a fusion development approach to building apps

About the author

As a Power Platform Technical Specialist at Microsoft, Simon takes great pride in helping companies solve their business problems and generate insight into data, providing rapid answers to business questions through use of the Power Platform (specifically Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, Dataverse and AI Builder). He enjoys working with the people in customer organisations who are helping to drive transformation using this technology and seeing the impact it has on their organisations and their careers.

The post How low/no code solutions can accelerate innovation and digitisation appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

But despite being so vital to a brand’s success, frontline employees are often the last to be reached by the technology that retailers invests in. Typically, we see C-Suite and head office getting all the latest tech, while it takes time to trickle down to the shop floor. This has two major impacts.

Firstly, the majority of frontline workers feel underappreciated by their employers. According to a recent Retail Trust survey, The Health of Retail report 2021, many feel insecure, undervalued and uncertain in relation to their careers. In fact, 84 percent say their mental health has deteriorated since early 2020. And while this is undoubtedly connected to the impact of the last few years on the high street, there is work to be done to bridge the gap between the different levels of retail organisations, from C-Suite to the shop floor.

The other major impact is on the customer experience. Without the right tools in place, the in-store experience can feel impersonal and disconnected. Especially when comparing it to the increasingly personalised online shopping space. Here, consumers have become accustomed to being served highly personalised recommendations.

For me, empowering employees means giving them the right tools to do their best work. And in retail, that means the people on the shop floor having the right technology at their fingertips to allow them to access every type of information that customers need and expect.

Here I want to talk about some of the ways that retailers can start to empower their employees with technology. And as a result, create better customer experiences and a happier, more productive workforce.

Meeting customer expectations in-store

Like every industry, retail is still navigating the new ways of the world. Within that context, there’s a lot of uncertainty about what the future of the industry looks like and where we all fit in that jigsaw puzzle.

But one thing that has been shown clearly is that consumers are itching to get back into shops. The question is: what do those shops now look like?

Up until now, in-person retail has retained quite a consistent format. You go into the shop, you pick the product you want, you go to the checkout, and you leave. And that’s been okay until the last few years, when suddenly consumers started wanting more personal experiences.

That’s the impact of online shopping. Consumers go to the website of their retailer of choice. They get recommendations based on the data the company collects over time. Or they’ll get it personally by email. The challenge is to match this kind of personalisation in-store. And there are great benefits for retailers who manage achieve it.

Research suggests that customers will purchase more from a retailer if they shop both on their digital and in-store spaces. It underscores the importance of omni-channel retail. It also outlines a clear agenda for retailers moving forward: Striving to achieve intelligent retail. One where you connect to customers, your employees, and then your data as well, so that you can have that personalised experience in the store.

We’re already seeing many established retailers making their high street stores more like experience centres. So if you wanted to buy a Surface, for example, there’s the Microsoft Experience Centre in London. Here, you can come in and see the different devices, learn how you can interact with them, and try out accessories in-person. You may not buy the device there; you’re actually more likely to go home and order it online. But we’re definitely starting to see a blend of those online and physical channels.

It’s going to take time for everyone to catch up, especially if you’re a retailer with hundreds of stores nationwide. But devices are a great place to start with the transformation to a more blended, omni-channel shopping experience.

The importance of devices to omni-channel retail

As a society, we’ve become more used to having things instantly available at the tips of our fingers. Whether that’s a smartphone, a tablet, or a laptop, devices are what have driven the expectation. This is now being translated into retail.

With this rising expectation, retailers who don’t empower their employees to respond quicky and accurately to customers in-store are going to suffer.

Frontline retail employees need to be able to do on-the-spot inventory checks, so they don’t have to go and rummage around in the store room or warehouse, looking physically on the shelves to try and find something that could have been checked in seconds on a handheld device on the shop floor. Without those devices, they often find themselves less well-informed than the customers coming into their stores.

Devices have benefits for retail employees beyond their interactions with customers too. Retail spaces are often large. Having a designated device for communication between team members who could be scattered across the building space, or even on different sites, will make the operation more integrated and seamless from an operational point of view too. They will enhance the connection between the different levels of an organisation, helping to bridge the gap between the C-Suite and shopfloor.

This will empower employees to feel more integral to the business. At the same time, leadership teams can make better decisions based on a more accurate understanding of stores, because they’re able to get feedback from them directly.

And then of course there are the sustainability benefits of devices. M&S is a great example of a UK retailer that has embraced devices, allowing it to achieve its goal of going paperless. This is just one of many benefits the company is now reaping from its push to integrate new technologies across its operations.

Devices designed for the hybrid retail space

The ultimate role of devices in the retail space is to help create a great experience for customers. Whether that’s ordering something in for a customer online, checking inventory levels, or even checking what shifts people on a team are working so managers can make sure that the shop floor is filled with the right people at the right time. All of it comes back to enhancing the in-store experience.

But there’s an increasing understanding that within every retail space, there are different types of workers, and they have different needs. Frontline workers don’t want to walk around the shop floor with a laptop, because it’s heavy and there’s a security risk in putting it down in a busy retail space. Similarly, an information worker in the back office isn’t going to want to use a foldable in-your-palm device.  

At Microsoft, we’ve packaged this understanding into a cohesive offering for retailers. We’ve got lightweight, on-the-go devices like the Surface Go that are designed specifically for frontline workers who don’t want to be tethered to a PC. We’ve got other Surface devices designed for information processing, as well as Surface Hubs that can help improve in-office and hybrid collaboration – meaning everyone feels included.

And because our devices are specifically made to complement the Microsoft software stack, it means that retailers get the best experience from things like Microsoft Teams and Power BI when using them on their Surface. It helps to keep our employees connected with each other, and empowers them serve customers quickly and efficiently.

I am confident that this empowerment will translate into the evolution of the role of frontline workers, who can be there to genuinely support people with disabilities or accessibility needs, becoming much more of a helping hand to customers in-store. There always will be a need for that kind of support, as we adapt to the new world we find ourselves in.

Find out more

Learn how to harness digital for the future of retail

Personalise your organisation’s customer experience strategy

Microsoft Cloud for Retail

Device Decisions – The future is hybrid – considerations for IT leaders in the changing workplace

Technology can help unlock a new future for frontline workers

About the author

Joseph runs the Product and Marketing Strategy of our Surface Devices and Accessories for our Small Medium & Corporate (SMC) customers in Microsoft UK.

The post Empowering retail employees: How to transform the frontline appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

When innovation becomes culture, we can solve old challenges and create new opportunities. Discover how to build strategies for your organisation that connect people, tools, and intelligence to bring ideas to life.

Tools to build an innovative culture

Power Apps

Build apps in hours, that easily connect to data with more than 400+ out of the box connectors. Use Excel-like expressions to add logic, drag and drop functionality for the UI, and run on the web, iOS, and Android devices.

Power Automate

Automate workflows and integrate them directly in your apps with a low-code approach that connects to hundreds of popular apps and services.

5 benefits of low-code and no-code apps for your business

1. Improve agility to respond to business needs

Rapidly build innovative web and mobile applications that meet the unique, evolving needs of your business.

• Infuse apps and processes with AI for deeper insights.
• Build apps in hours or days instead of months.

Connect to your data across your digital estate.

2. Empower your people to achieve more

Democratise app development across your organisation. Create opportunities for individuals and organisations alike to transform the way they work.

• Power Apps uses drag-and-drop simplicity so users can build apps quickly with no/low code.
• Use pre-built app templates to accelerate business processes.

3. Optimise budgets, time and resources to do more with less

The Forrester Total Economic Impact study for Power Apps and Power Automate, commissioned by Microsoft, concluded that organisations that adopt both technologies:

• Realise an ROI of 362 percent.
• Reduce development costs by 70 percent.
• Increase business process efficiency by 15 percent.
• Recoup their investment in only three months.

4. Automate time consuming processes

Power Apps and Power Automate integrate across the core apps you already use. Automate mundane, time-consuming business processes into streamlined workflows.

• Digitise paper-based processes and reduce errors and cost while saving time.
• Use AI to quickly process information, approvals and get smarter insights.

5. Maintain security and customer trust

The solutions you create are secure because they exist within the compliant Microsoft environment.

Get started building your no/low code apps

Now you understand how Power Apps and Power Automate can drive innovation in your organisation, the next step is to get started! You can empower everyone in your organisation to turn ideas into solutions that solve business challenges. Productivity can be boosted by automating manual processes, so employees can have more time to do value-adding work.

Low-code Power Platform lets more people in your organisation build apps and processes required to transform. Whether working solo, or delivering in partnership with professional developers in Fusion Teams, you can combine the best of both to help scale the impact of pro developers in delivering business value together.

We’re sharing a handy checklist on how your people can get started building their apps today:

Find out more

Digital Innovation that delivers a seamless experience with real impact

Join a Power Platform Virtual Training Day

About the author

Matt heads up the Digital Transformation and App Innovation team within Microsoft UK’s Solutions business. He leads a team of innovation and development-centred Specialists focussed on helping customers understand, plan for, and adopt some of the most cutting-edge services in Microsoft’s arsenal – from GitHub for developer productivity, managed container offerings such as Azure Kubernetes Services, PaaS and serverless with Azure Functions and Logic Apps, Integration Services, Event Grid, and more, through to engaging wider stakeholder audiences in the development process through adoption of low-code development with Power Apps.  

Matt’s background is firmly in engineering for innovation. With a master’s in computing and over two decades of experience from hands on ecommerce, payment and billing systems development in the late ‘90s and early 2000’s, to leading a global consulting team designing and rolling out bespoke Budgeting, Planning and Forecasting products for FTSE 10 integrated energy companies, and on to launching an IoT Pet Tracking start-up, founding, building, and selling a Digital Transformation consultancy before joining Microsoft in 2018. 

Consistent to all of Matt’s endeavors is an understanding of what is possible, how it aligns to solving real world business challenges, and always starting with the “Why”.  

The post Make app building easier: The benefits of low-code and no-code appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Frontline workers have suffered ongoing disruption throughout the pandemic which has led to considerable exhaustion and burn out. Increased working hours and pressure means they are also likely to experience a feeling of disconnection from their organisation and their team. As a result, organisations need to support healthcare staff wellbeing. Based on the Work Trend Index Special Report, one of the main focuses organisations should have when it comes to building an inclusive team culture is ensuring frontline workers have the digital tools to stay connected to core organisational messages and resources.

Improving connections to organisational knowledge

Technology like Microsoft Viva Connections can play an important role in shaping the organisational culture to include frontline workers. Viva Connections brings together relevant news, conversations and resources from around your organisation into one place within Teams. It provides both a desktop and mobile experience. Viva Connections is built on the current Microsoft 365 ecosystem within your organisation. It’s powered by SharePoint to help inform, engage, and empower the hybrid workforce. The Viva Connections experience is fully customisable to your organisation’s requirements. Living in Teams, this allows all employees to access information no matter what device they are using and where they are. As a result, all healthcare workers can complete their roles without the need to search for different websites, use different and outdated applications or load resources and tools which only work on a PC.

An improved and updated intranet brought into the flow of daily work in Microsoft Teams provides a simple way for health organisations to deliver all relevant news to frontline workers. It can also create a safe and collaborative space for healthcare teams. This can support organisations in their efforts of keeping employees engaged which can result in higher levels of retention.

Every day, new healthcare regulations are put in place by governments. Often, healthcare workers struggle to find the latest government regulation or guidance and may struggle to pro-actively locate this information. With Viva connections, organisational leaders know they can deliver this content in a uniform experience to all employees, regardless of role.

Delivering connections to new employees

Viva Connections can be particularly useful for new healthcare workers. When joining an organisation it is often difficult to embrace and understand the organisation’s culture and mission. Especially remotely when on the frontline and not in an office setting. Viva Connections provides a virtual resource portal for a new healthcare worker. It supports onboarding through a customisable dashboard which can be personalised to different employee roles. The dashboard delivers a tailored view of these resources through adaptive cards. These can be targeted directly to frontline workers and their own needs. Popular use cases can include weblinks to view pay and benefits, submit holiday requests, view and manage shifts or access time sheets. All these are opened within the Teams browser on a mobile device.

Through the dashboard experience, Viva Connections also provides an extensible platform, where 3^rd party integration such as ServiceNow, LifeWorks or Talentsoft can be plugged directly through adaptive cards. This means that employees can access and complete even more tasks directly from the Connections app. As a result, healthcare workers can save large amounts of time. This is because they no longer need to search the organisations intranet for scattered resources.

Take control of your organisation’s internal communication strategy

In a hybrid working world where healthcare workers are likely to be more disconnected than ever from their organisations, both information workers working from home and workers using mobile devices on the frontline have benefitted from using Microsoft Teams. Now, in this evolution of Microsoft Teams, Viva Connections can ensure healthcare workers stay in touch with their organisation’s latest news, legal requirements and their organisation’s mission and purpose.

To learn more about Viva Connections please connect with Edward Adamson and Ioana Marinescu on LinkedIn. Or, contact your Microsoft account team and we can organise a Viva Connections envisioning session.

Find out more

Get started with Microsoft Viva Connections

Work Trend Index Special Report

3 ways technology can help rebuild your frontline workforce

What’s a Simple Definition of Employee Engagement?

Viva Connections mobile and new partner integrations are now generally available

About the authors

Edward is currently a Modern Work Specialist working with healthcare organisations across the UK, helping on their journey towards digital transformation. Focussing on hybrid working, frontline technologies and wellbeing and productivity management, connect with Edward on LinkedIn to follow content relating to healthcare and Microsoft 365 optimisation.

Ioana works with healthcare organisations across the UK to improve their journey towards digital transformation using Microsoft 365 technologies. She helps healthcare organisations utilise Microsoft Teams to connect multi-disciplinary communities across the organisation, bring wellbeing and productivity management into the flow of everyday work and surface knowledge and learning across the organisation.

The post How to keep frontline healthcare workers connected with digital technology appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Over the last year, the average duration of mental health related absences were three times longer than that of COVID-related absences in the NHS between 1st June 2020 and 1st June 2021. This, teamed with the enormous pressure placed on healthcare organisations recently has placed a newfound importance on personal health and wellbeing. Additionally, frontline teams and their integrated care communities need high quality communication and work practices.

The demand for workplace empowerment tools has existed long before our new hybrid working world. Frontline healthcare workers spend the most time working outside of their working hours compared to their colleagues. According to the 2020 NHS staff survey, 55.2 percent of all NHS employees work additional unpaid hours every week. Due to the demanding nature of frontline jobs, higher employee turnover and the feeling of being disconnected from the community of the organisation is common. This places paramount importance on being able to manage wellbeing at an individual level through readily available tools in order to stimulate a supportive frontline worker community.

Improve productivity and wellbeing

For organisations tackling the increased levels of stress and anxiety of their workforce, leaders are starting to consider the different technologies that can support mental health and wellbeing.

Insights can help empower healthcare employees take control over their own wellbeing. And with Viva Insights, employees can manage the way they work with recommendations visible only to them. For example, a frontline employee on the ward that might want to send praise to a specialist nurse for the incredible way they have been treating a patient. Or colleagues who are part of a multi-disciplinary team might want to make everyone aware of the positive impact a team member has had on their development.

The ability to send praise in the Viva Insights dashboard can help to create and boost team morale. In addition, this can help everyone to feel more connected, being part of a team where their efforts are recognised and praised. As a result, employee retention is improved.

Getting caught in daily administrative tasks, especially if you are a clinician that regularly faces unexpected circumstances during a shift, can leave little time for wellbeing management which eventually could lead to burnout. Clinicians and everyone across the organisation can start taking control of their wellbeing by setting up reminders in the Viva Insights app to finish their shift by reflecting on how they’re feeling. Over time, they can start analysing their reflections, and begin to understand the driving factors behind their emotions. By focussing on their feelings over time, they can discover ways to reduce burnout.

Meditation breaks can not only help people feel energised but can also improve their ability to focus and engage, leading to better patient outcomes. With the integration of Headspace meditation into Teams through Insights, employees can now tap into moments of relaxation before a patient appointment or a team meeting, making sure they feel ready to tackle any problem that may arise – all from a computer or smartphone.

Through the stay connected tab in the Insights app, healthcare workers can easily discover any pending tasks or people they need to connect with, all based on data from the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Leveraging actionable insights in the context of the day-to-day work can help the workforce to concentrate on things that matter. For example, ward staff can easily complete their admin tasks and focus more on delivering the best treatment for patients.

Take Control of Your Wellbeing

Microsoft Viva brings together scattered organisational resources into the central hub of collaboration that is Microsoft Teams, ensuring healthcare workers can manage their wellbeing and utilise their organisational resources so they can deliver the highest standard of patient care while staying in the flow of everyday work. Insights is the first aspect of Microsoft Viva we will be covering in this blogging series. Make sure to send this document to a human resources colleague, a wellbeing lead or a clinician you know who wants to modernise their wellbeing management.

Keep an eye on our Modern Tools tag on our blog, as we continue our series into how organisations can use these tools to support powerful employee experiences.

Find out more

Introduction to Viva Insights

NHS England » Making the most of the skills in our teams

NHS The Promise

Remote Employees Are Working Longer Than Before

3 ways to support frontline workers in a hybrid world

About the author

Edward is currently a Modern Work Specialist working with healthcare organisations across the UK, helping on their journey towards digital transformation. Focusing on hybrid working, frontline technologies and wellbeing and productivity management, connect with Edward on LinkedIn to follow content relating to healthcare and Microsoft 365 optimisation.

Ioana works with healthcare organisations across the UK to improve their journey towards digital transformation using Microsoft 365 technologies. She helps healthcare organisations utilise Microsoft Teams to connect multi-disciplinary communities across the organisation, bring wellbeing and productivity management into the flow of everyday work and surface knowledge and learning across the organisation.

The post How to improve frontline employee wellbeing in healthcare appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Let’s dissect this a little. Firstly, what is culture? It’s quite an ethereal term and one I have often struggled with. Someone once shared a simple definition that resonated with me: Culture is “what you do when your boss isn’t watching”. Culture is something ingrained into how you work and think, which is important. You can’t simply say you have a culture as an organisation. You must live and breathe the culture.

And what do we mean when we say data-driven? It’s not about collecting all data. In fact, lack of data isn’t a problem for most organisations! However, what they often struggle with is extracting value from that data. Therefore, what we are really talking about is decisions that are driven from data. Because we use the data to inform and justify our decisions, it needs to be good quality.

So, a data-driven culture is one where the organisational norm is that decision making is driven by data. How can leaders successfully build this culture? If we look at the journey to a data-driven culture, I think of four steps.

1. Create the right mindset for a data-driven culture

To me this is the most crucial step – leadership must be clear. I don’t just mean that leaders need to talk about using data. Leaders need to demonstrate how they place data at the heart of what the organisation is trying to achieve every day.

In order to thrive, leaders must be clear about what their organisation’s purpose and outcomes are. A great way to create accountability and direction is to tie those purposes and outcomes to measures of success.

At Microsoft, we use an approach called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to organise and align our activities to transform. The focus on key results inspires a data-driven mindset across the organisation. It also provides a common data driven focus and language for everyone in the business – we all start to think about the measures that matter.

2. Find organisational and individual value in a data-driven culture

When looking at driving change I have to say that unfortunately we, as humans, can be a selfish bunch. Often, one of the biggest drivers of successful change is understanding what is in it for the individual. Within Microsoft we apply the PROSCI change methodology. At the heart of this is the ADKAR change model. There is the adage: organisations don’t change, people do. ADKAR is an acronym for five elements of change for individuals:

• Awareness of the need to change.
• Desire to participate and support the change.
• Knowledge on how to change.
• Ability to implement desired skills and behaviours.
• Reinforcement to sustain the change.

To embed the change within our people and therefore to drive change in the organisation, we really need to create the desire to change. If people are told the future is a data-driven culture they simply won’t buy into it and commit to it. Therefore, demonstrating change and demonstrating value from data fast is important. When people see that the change works and is more effective, they’ll want to change.

3. Build your and your employee’s skills

If we are working on changing our mindsets, we also need to prepare our people with the right skills and tools. Everyone needs basic data literacy skills and we all different levels of knowledge. Some people have inherent data literacy skills. Others may need support to be able to understand and assimilate data then interpret and analyse it. Then, once we have the basics in place, we need to progress to understand how we can use the tools at our disposal to answer the business question we have. However, we can’t just throw tools like Excel, Tableau and PowerBI at our people and expect them to be able to optimise and transform our organisations.

Leaders need to help their employees on their learning journey by democratising data access, building learning opportunities and give employees the time to take those opportunities. One way you can do this is to build re- and upskilling into employee KPIs. In our data journey we move from a data consumer to data analyst, citizen data scientist and beyond. Not everyone starts in the same place. Everyone’s learning path is different and the KPIs need to reflect that.

Microsoft provides access to great learning tools to support you and your employee’s individual journey. These include Microsoft Learn – the front door to all your training needs whether you are just starting out or an experienced professional, with role-based learning paths. You can also explore how to use AI in your organisation with the Microsoft AI Business School.

4. Empower employees with the right tools

So, now you’ve changed your mindset and the mindset of your organisation. You’ve seen the value of a data-driven organisation and are building relevant skills. But what tools do leaders need to get insights?

Firstly, organisations need quality, curated data that is easily accessible. Not everyone in the business is a data engineer who can find, cleanse and prepare data for analytics. You need an easy way for everyone in an organisation to find the business data that they need. It also needs to be presented in a manner that is easily understandable – using the language they understand. This is where a data marketplace or data catalogue is invaluable. At Microsoft we have Azure Purview, our unified data governance platform. This is a platform that automatically discovers data wherever it lives in your organisation. It can classify data and identify data lineage; but importantly it also presents a data catalogue of your data using business language. The data catalogue is a core element of a successful self-service strategy.

Using self-service data insights tools like PowerBI provides easy access to pre-prepared and certified datasets. This enables your people to be confident in the quality of the data source and empowers them to discover new insights from the data. It also allows the data owners can enable controls to ensure colleagues can only see the data they need to.

A continuous journey to a data-driven culture

These four steps will help you build a data-driven culture. I also want to remind you of the final step in ADKAR: Reinforcement! It’s critical that this is not seen as a one-off initiative. You need to work hard at reinforcing the change to build a successful data-driven culture. If people don’t use these new skills, mindset and tools, it is the case of use it or lose it. This can be tough – but creating a champion network focused on data is a wonderful way to organically drive and embed the culture.

Find out more

Build a data-driven organisation

Peer to peer interview: Unite your data strategy and culture

Create a data culture

About the author

James is a Digital Advisor in Microsoft Consulting Services. He is focussed on helping customers realise their business outcomes and purpose by enabling their digital transformation with advanced cloud technologies – with a particular focus on data, AI, automation and sustainability. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2014, James held several roles across financial services (HSBC, Schroders), public sector (Scottish Water) and consulting (PwC).

The post The role of leadership in a successful data-driven culture appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

To truly take charge in this intrepid new workplace, leaders need to take a step back, reflect on the lessons learnt and design for the future.

Let’s explore a framework and ideas for hybrid working.

To start, an effective hybrid workplace takes effort. You need a clear strategy – one that adapts to individual and organisational needs found both inside and outside the office. These decisions will impact everything from your culture, how you attract and retain talent, how you respond to change and how you innovate. Organisations will need to make sure strategy underpins experimentation. Don’t be afraid to roll out new initiatives or encourage creative ideas within your organisation. Use data and your employee’s own engagement to gauge success. Learn and correct as you go.

To build successful hybrid working, organisations need to think about three things: People, process and place. Underpinning these are empathetic and motivated leaders, and secure, inclusive technology powered by the cloud.

1. People 

Your people are the heart of your business. And their wellbeing is critical. Over 70 percent of employees want flexible remote working to continue, while over 65 percent crave more in-person time with their teams. Hybrid working requires leaders to ensure employees have the flexibility to work when and where they want.

A successful hybrid organisation embeds empathetic leadership and prioritises individual wellbeing to help people focus and be their best. Almost half of the global workforce is likely to consider leaving their current employer this year. This means to stay competitive you need to take a people-first approach to your hybrid working strategy. At Microsoft, we’ve taken this approach, building wellbeing into our daily priorities, including implementing Wellbeing Days – additional paid time off for employees to focus on themselves.

The NHS took this approach when building its partnership with Microsoft. GPs, consultants, nurses, therapists, paramedics and support staff now have the digital tools to help them collaborate more effectively and access the information they need, when they need it.

 “Adopting the most up to date digital tools and operating systems are crucial for a modern day NHS – allowing staff to work as efficiently as possible which will deliver even better care for patients.” 

Matt Hancock, Secretary of State 

A major benefit to hybrid working is the growth you’ll see in your talent pool. Because job roles are no longer required to be near the office, you’ll attract more diverse talent. And with secure digital tools that improve accessibility, productivity and anywhere collaboration you will drive a more inclusive workplace. 

Building digital skills

And speaking of skills, underpinning the hybrid workplace is technology. Cloud-enabled devices and intelligent apps that support operations, collaboration, and productivity all require digital knowledge. Our research found that 63 percent of UK employees said they don’t have the digital skills needed to fulfil these roles. You can help start your employee’s learning paths on Microsoft Learn, and take advantage of on-demand training and events. 

Building your employee’s skills is essential. To keep your organisation competitive and innovative. To help your employees learn, reinvent and grow. And ultimately, to help our nation’s economy. This isn’t a one off. You need to implement an always–on culture of learning. This will help support employees and drive innovation.  

2. Process 

According to Accenture, organisations are focussing on digital transformation to the sum of $1.2 trillion globally, but are neglecting culture change. While technology can empower the hybrid working culture, it cannot create it. It needs to be a whole organisational shift. Leaders need to come together to unlock the data, expertise, and knowledge of the organisation.  

Equip employees with both digital skills and secure low/no code enterprise app technology to give them the autonomy to solve challenges and reimagine traditional processes. When you automate processes and workflows, you can innovate manual work, reduce errors and discover new insights to improve services.

We’ve partnered with Refinitiv to help financial firms connect, collaborate and unlock the power of their data. By doing this, organisations can make critical business decisions faster and gain new insights into their markets and customers, helping critical business decisions.  

“When you add tools within that collaboration platform to help people surface information quickly, you create a seamless experience that brings the best of technology and data together with the human expertise needed to move markets forward.” 

Ben Shepherd, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Refinitiv 

Make sure you provide policies and technology that support synchronous collaboration – meetings, voice and video calls – as well as asynchronous collaboration – where team members can dip in and out of projects and work when they have the time. Lean on your collaboration platform to build variety and encourage connectivity anywhere. For example, encourage non-work related check-ins, voice-only walking calls to prevent screen fatigue, or even buddy up colleagues from different teams for informal chats. 

Leaders will need to embed a process of continuous testing, observing, and adjusting to processes to ensure they grow with your organisation and adapt to your employee’s needs. 

3. Place 

Now we’re planning a hybrid workforce, office space is no longer limited to the office. 

Leaders must balance virtual and physical workplace to ensure equality and inclusion for everyone. To do this effectively, we need to restructure the physical workspace and invest in digital tools.  

Humans are social creatures. Everyone – from those working at home, in the office or on the frontline – needs to be able to have a voice and feel included in your culture. Cloud-enable AV solutions such as Teams Rooms and interactive screens such as the Surface Hub 2S placed in meeting and social spaces can enhance collaboration and inclusivity. 

However, it’s equally important that offices don’t become event venues. Your space must reflect the changing nature of the hybrid workplace, with the flexibility to adjust the physical environment for different scenarios, for example, collaboration spaces and focus areas. 

Nationwide is integrating technology into their London new digital hub. Their ambition is to ensure Microsoft Teams is in every meeting room to ensure colleagues can join physical meeting rooms remotely, supporting greater collaboration and efficiency. 

“The workplace of the future will be about choice, with the flexibility to be where we need to be to do our jobs as effectively as possible. Technology is essential as it provides the infrastructure needed so we can work dynamically.” 

Patrick Eltridge, Chief Operating Officer at Nationwide 

Use data to improve hybrid working flows

At Microsoft, we are surveying employees and looking at data such as social graphs and employee traffic patterns. This helps us provide the right spaces for teams, while understanding how those needs evolve over time. 42 percent of employees say they lack essential office supplies at home. Therefore, it’s important to ensure you equip your employees with the right tools both at home and in the office. Microsoft Graph enables you to pool data across Microsoft 365 to inform business intelligence. This can boost user productivity, creativity, and team collaboration, while protecting business resources and users’ data from anywhere. 

Leaders need to set the tone for hybrid working. The strategy and plan to embed collaboration, creativity and culture into the hybrid workplace must come from the top. You need to ensure you look after your own wellbeing, taking regular days out of the office and logging offline when the day ends. This will help avoid the rise of presenteeism at the workplace or online.  

Building sustainable growth with hybrid working

We are no longer bound to traditional notions of working. Our hybrid working framework lets us set aside our assumptions and start building a more flexible, people-focussed approach. 

We believe this is an opportunity to progress. To drive sustainable growth and foster an accessible, innovative, and supportive culture. One ​where everyone is inspired, and no one is left behind.  

Find out more 

Discover how to help your organisation be more agile and resilient 

Create an agile and innovative workplace 

About the author

Nick leads the Modern Work and Security business for Microsoft UK and has a passion for helping individuals and organisations to become more productive. Personal and organisational productivity is high on the list for every leader right now; Nick and his team dedicate their working hours to the role that Microsoft technologies can play as part of a business transformation journey.

The post 3 steps to build a successful hybrid working framework appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

The current state of employee experience tech

For employees, this can be especially bewildering. They have to navigate far too many apps and platforms during a normal working day. To leaders, it can be a challenge to manage and deliver the value that such technologies promise. It’s all got a bit too much. One company I came across had several hundred technology solutions. This caused confusion with the employees and the company. This delivers fragmentation at the expense of focus – one of the notable problems Microsoft attempts to solve.

I’ve often said that there are only a handful of companies around the world that could ever build an integrated employee experience platform. Microsoft is one of them. In just one day, Microsoft 365 users take part in more than 30 billion collaboration minutes. This is very helpful when creating a platform that flows with the daily rhythms of work. So, I was intrigued to learn more about Microsoft Viva and its capabilities.

Connecting employee experiences

The promised land for employee experience technology is a platform that helps people to effortlessly connect to the things that help them to be successful in life and work. That’s the bottom-line. Indeed, it’s the only line that matters when thinking about productivity, performance, and wellbeing. If the technology in a business is not directly helping people to deliver their best work and live their best life, then we do really need to question buying decisions.

Focussed and decisive companies are the one’s that win in the market  – it’s the same with the employee experience. I talk about this in my book, Employee Experience. At the heart of the holistic employee experience (HEX), is the Truth – a company’s purpose, mission, and values. Technology platforms are there to enable and reinforce this Truth for each unique brand every day and in every way. If a company’s technology is clunky, cumbersome, or a chore to use, this will not contribute to a positive experience in work. In fact, quite the opposite will happen, and it will seriously hinder progress.

That’s why the scale and scope of the connectivity across the Microsoft ecosystem is as exciting as it is powerful. The full power of Microsoft 365 is behind Viva, which brings together a variety of mission critical elements including communications, knowledge, learning, resources and insights. The initial start point for the platform includes Viva Connections, Viva Insights, Viva Learning, and Viva Topics.

A joined up employee experience platform

Historically, there’s no doubt that employee experience technology within companies has not been joined up in any meaningful way. Microsoft Viva offers an answer to this. It will be interesting to see how it develops to add even more value across the holistic employee experience in the future. The platform itself is feature rich and covers many important aspects of organisational life.

• Viva Connections: Empowers people to communicate, access curated and branded content, and access a personalised feed of relevant information.
• Viva Insights: Access privacy-protected analytics, data, and insights that support wellbeing and allow people to focus on the things that matter most to them.
• Viva Learning: A powerhouse for experiences that educate, train, and develop people. The combination of LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, and an organisation’s own content is potent. Additionally, the integration of other leading learning providers makes this is a rich and diverse learning environment.
• Viva Topics: An AI-powered organisational wiki that gives relevant company information to people fast.

Personalised the employee experience

Building on the strong foundations of Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365, this new platform feels like a natural step to take. It creates a more seamless integration between both Microsoft and third-party technology. The big emphasis here is a much more personalised approach. Microsoft Viva can enable people to curate and connect to experiences that make a difference to their work at any given moment.

What this means for the future of work

The last year has created gaps between people and companies. Collectively, we need to keep pushing boundaries around what is possible in the digital space. However, keep in mind that humans drive technology. Organisations that have strengthened relationships with their people during this challenging period have fully embraced and supported the human experience in all that they do.

If we’re talking about an employee experience platform, companies need to think more holistically about the quality of the experiences people have within and beyond work. Leveraging human-centered and experience-driven technology is always a wise move that has the potential to make a powerful impact on the experience of work. Microsoft Viva offers a glimpse of the future that we’re all now co-creating. I’ll be watching its development with a keen eye like everyone else who has an interest in helping people thrive at work.

Find out more

Discover Microsoft Viva

Build a people-powered workplace

Learn more about Ben

About the author

The post Unite your people with the right employee experience platform appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

But how do you run these sessions remotely while creating that same energy? How can you maximise productivity and return on investment of time and resources? Virtual meetings tend to require more thought and planning to enable and drive business results in an engaging and inclusive way.

We consider some of the underlying assumptions around working in the same physical space to map to a fully virtual way of working model for remote creative thinking sessions.

Moving on from traditional creative thinking sessions 

It’s a general assumption that the investment of time (including travel), focus and energy is offset by generating innovative ideas. This leads to workshops and agendas which are coarse-grained, to maximise the investment in time people have set aside to contribute.

Being somewhere physically can lend itself more naturally to creating serendipitous moments and the feeling of connectedness. Yet, when organised correctly, these moments can be designed into a virtual event.

And when you factor in those other ideas such as travel, and focus, hosting a virtual event can improve those. A major benefit of virtual events is that there is reduced cost and no travel time – there may even be a reduced carbon footprint. This increased flexibility can result in increased attendance, allowing people to carve out the time and get themselves in the right headspace.

Now we have the digital tools to support virtual ways of working, it makes sense that people’s expectations have changed, and they’re more likely to expect virtual events in the future. A virtual event has the potential to be just as good as, or even more successful than a physical event.

What makes a good facilitator for a creative thinking session?

It’s important to remember that often ideation session attendees are diverse and in a lot of cases do not have close and pre-established working relationships. This means you need a good facilitator to help drive the session.

They will ensure that everyone is briefed on ground rules, agenda, objectives and required tools. Ongoing active facilitation manages the energy and focus of the group. When all are in the same physical location the facilitator can read visual cues. This needs to be done differently for virtual ideation sessions. Visible or declared accessibility needs can also be more explicit and actively catered for. We’ll go into some depth about how to manage these in the virtual environment.

How to flip from physical creative thinking sessions to virtual effectively

Examine your assumptions

• Video conferencing fatigue is real: Agendas should be much more granular in a virtual setting to ensure breaks.
• Introduce small breakout rooms to ensure everyone can share ideas.
• Establish ground rules.

Virtual accessibility

• Planning is key: Ensure you have accessibility factored in, such as automatic captioning.
• Consider everyone: Use the Accessibility Checker in your presentations and documents to ensure everyone can access them.

Virtual engagement

• Actively plan engagement: Use digital engagement tools to gamify sessions.
• Facilitate creative thinking: Implement warmups, games, and quizzes during breaks.

Virtual tools and processes

• Effective meetings take planning: Share a pre-brief of the tools and processes you will use so participants can familiarise themselves.
• Mistakes happen: Allow time in your agenda in case something doesn’t work right away.

Examine your assumptions for creative thinking sessions

When everyone joins remotely, we need to examine our assumptions of physical meetings. For example, we shouldn’t assume that all attendees have blocked out the half-day or whole day to collaborate. Conversely, we should be mindful that many will be sitting in their home office or living space. Agendas should be much more granular in a virtual setting. Allowing people the time to get away from their desk is a key part of this.

We should challenge our assumptions that workshops must be in a whole or half day event. Consider breaking up your agenda into ‘bites’. Make sure to include recap time to warm people back up. This also allows real time for consolidation of previous sessions and presentations of feedback and insights to guide the group forward.

This approach might mean more facilitation time is needed – potentially filling the time of two facilitators where one was previously enough.

Virtual inclusion

We all make assumptions of how we want to collaborate. Even if we’ve identified strategies to address our subconscious biases, inclusion requires extra consideration in a virtual setting. Virtual meetings have the potential to be a great leveller, where everyone is starting from the same place.

One useful strategy for driving inclusion in diverse groups is to task attendees to write an ‘about me’ slide which is shared ahead of the session. This can outline things such as:

• How I like to work
• My areas of expertise
• What I am hoping to get out of the session
• How I prefer to communicate

Facilitators can also use this to look at the balance of perspectives, objectives and experiences in the team. They can also allocate individuals to breakout groups to maximise diversity or concentrate expertise (as appropriate).

Another useful approach to drive inclusion is to structure your agenda around smaller group breakouts, followed by share backs with the wider group. Smaller groups still need an element of facilitation. However, generally the smaller the group the more opportunity everyone has for their voices to be heard.

Ground rules are also important to establish. Brief attendees to try to be more self-aware and to actively give each other airtime. Establish the use of the ‘Raise hand’ feature in Teams when they want to speak, for example.

In some cases, we have even seen virtual meetings become a cultural leveller, as they flatten organisation hierarchies – for example by reducing deference that team members might have for their boss in a physical setting.

Virtual accessibility

We need to actively plan for specific accessibility needs in virtual settings. In a physical setting visual cues may make accessibility needs more present. Yet, a remote setting may even be an enabler through the use of accessibility features in digital tools such as live captions. Like in physical settings, planning is key.

Virtual engagement for creative thinking

Engagement needs to be more actively planned. Warmups and ice breakers need to be more part of the agenda. Digital tools can help defend against distractions. Asking people to be present is a start. But techniques such as regular voting and gamifying participation can drive engagement. It can also help deliver feedback to facilitators on the level of group engagement and attention, and where help and coaching may be needed.

Consider side challenges – for example quizzes or cryptic puzzles, with prizes awarded to inject purpose. Creativity is your only limit. Make things fun! Equally, actively encourage breaks more regularly than you would with a typical set of back-to-back meetings.

Virtual tools and processes

There are many established design practices and tools to utilise which will help you establish the right methodology, tools and templates. Yet, we should be mindful of how these need to be modified, extended or changed for virtual meetings. Effective physical meetings require preparation. So do virtual meetings.

You’ll need to standardise the overall working method and toolset ahead of time, sharing this and encouraging people to try it out before the meeting. From a process perspective, a small working group should define the process based on objectives and create things like required templates, breakout meeting groups and process guides. And for the first time you try this, allow for things to go wrong by with extra time in your agenda – as they probably will.

Creating engaging experiences for everyone

Where do we get our best ideas from? Diverse groups where everyone has a voice to share their thoughts. That’s why ideation sessions are an essential business tool to solve the problems of today and create the opportunities of tomorrow.

And because we’ve moved more to virtual meetings, this means more people can take part, solving challenges quicker and building new ideas. When done in a clear and structured way, they can maximise human creativity and drives business results.

Creativity never needs to stop – even in a hybrid or remote working environment.

Find out more

Reimagine the new world of work

Discover how to respond to the new world of work with leadership, culture and practice

About the author

Terry Room is currently a Managing Architect for Microsoft Consulting Services in the UK. With over 20 years of technology industry experience, he leads a cross disciplinary team of consulting architects and digital advisors, with a focus on driving large scale business and technology transformation with strategic enterprise customers through the design of compelling business cases, resilient technology architectures, and transformation programmes which deliver sustainable business value.

The post How to encourage creative thinking inclusively and remotely in the new world of work appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

To rise to the challenge, firms are increasingly using technology to support their new ways of working. They’re empowering staff, improving client experiences, and driving the practice forwards.

Firms are exploring ways they can empower their people with data visibility to streamline key workflows and drive new levels of efficiency. By doing so, they can create those much-needed personalised client experiences. An experience that is faster, more responsive, and more familiar to their client base.

Adopting the right strategy and the right technology is pivotal in meeting new client needs and moving your firm forwards. A 2019 PwC survey found that eight of the top ten law firms identified technology as the key challenge to growth in the next two to three years.

There are five scenarios where law firms today should be looking to introduce efficiencies that enrich and differentiate client experiences through technology.

1.      Earn trust in uncertain times

Workplace transformation and technology adoption has accelerated. Innovation is becoming a critical capability for the modern in-house legal function. But to deliver successful outcomes it’s essential to build a long-term strategy – one that leverages measurable business insights to make clear decisions.

Your clients need to trust the decisions you make. Your employees need to be trusted and empowered to make those decisions. Reduce silos and gain insights from data across the firm. This not only enables your employees to make better decisions faster but meet the needs of your clients proactively. Earning and building trust takes time. An intelligent platform that works across devices will help deliver a consistent approach to the right contact, with the right information at the right time. This will help to build solid client relationships and allow firms to differentiate from competitors.

2.      Provide personalised client experiences

Clients value genuine working relationships. They also need to feel confident that the team representing them understand their requirements. Personalisation is essential to building lasting client relationships. However, currently face-to-face meetings and events have been put on hold. This means you need to consider other approaches to nurture client and working relationships.

The industry is seeing the shift to virtual work play out on LinkedIn, where engagement on the platform has increased. Understanding and learning about your clients and their challenges through a platform they are using everyday can help you transform your firm into a client-centric business.

Share your business insights across all your silos such as marketing, business development, and lawyers. This will help create better services and solutions. It will also enable you to create personalised experiences across all touch-points and provide better services that help clients as they need it or even before they realise they do.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 reduces silos by bringing together disparate data sets across your business to make informed decisions, faster. It covers all the critical areas for law firms and the entire client journey such as Marketing, Business Development, Finance and Operations and HR.

[msce_cta layout=”image_right” align=”right” linktype=”blue” imageurl=”http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/industry/blog/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2021/01/WIN20_PRO_RemoteWorking_030-scaled.jpeg” linkurl=”https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-gb/what-is-dynamics365/” linkscreenreadertext=”Discover Dynamics 365″ linktext=”Discover Microsoft Dynamics 365″ imageid=”45110″ ][/msce_cta]

3.      Understand your data and be agile to client needs

A recent survey by The Law Society’s Law Management Section suggests law firms are forecasting a 10-20 percent drop in revenue for the 2020/2021 financial year. Data holds the key to making timely, considered decisions. However, it is important to bring together data silos across legacy systems. This will provide a clear single client view.

One of the UK’s largest listed legal businesses, DWF, recently broke with tradition by going digital first.

“We had to be brave to step away from proven technology that the legal sector uses, but we had to in order to take DWF forward and give our clients the service they want today. By adopting this system, we are taking case management to the next level and transforming how all our staff work…It’s enabled our employees to see a complete picture of their clients and make informed decisions. That’s good for both parties.”

Samantha Charman, Head of Applications and Development, DWF

Microsoft Power Platform enables your firm to analyse data, build agile solutions, automate processes and surface knowledge at speed. The platform allows your firm to meet changing client needs in an agile way as well as empower your employees to make faster decisions.

[msce_cta layout=”image_right” align=”right” linktype=”blue” imageurl=”http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/industry/blog/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2020/09/WIN20_HOME_FAM_Surface_Pro6_0018.jpg” linkurl=”https://powerplatform.microsoft.com/en-gb/” linkscreenreadertext=”Be more agile with Power Platform” linktext=”Be more agile with Power Platform” imageid=”40373″ ][/msce_cta]

4.      Automate repetitive tasks to free up time for your employees

Efficiency is key for sustained success across organisations and industries. Especially to become more agile and resilient. Therefore, automation has become a high priority for law firms. It can help reduce the time-sapping administrative processes found in the legal industry.

The Allen and Overy Legal Benchmarking Report 2020 states that “the proliferation of legal technologies means that it is more feasible than ever to automate and streamline legal processes.” Yet only a small percentage of firms have invested resources into building a strategy in this area.

Robotic process automation (RPA) is gaining momentum to free up employees’ time to focus on higher–value work. Alongside this comes a growing demand for turning insights into opportunities and automating daily activities.

Put simply: the more you reduce unnecessary admin the more time you have for your clients.

5.      Provide confidence in data security

Data breaches have grown in intensity in 2020. The National Cyber Security Centre handled over 700 security incidents last year, compared to 658 in 2019.

Cybercriminals are more likely to take advantage of vulnerable businesses who have been forced to use legacy technology remotely. Therefore, clients need more assurance that their data is secure at all times.

With a cloud-based technology platform built on Microsoft Azure, your firm and your clients can have the confidence that their data is safe and protected, without compromising on anytime access for all approved staff.

Discover the way to make every client interaction count

Remote working doesn’t need to be a barrier to creating enriched, differentiated client experiences. It’s also likely that new measures of remote working and flexibility will continue to be expected by your clients and your employees, creating a hybrid working environment.

By making every client interaction count through adopting the right technology and supporting the best talent, your firm will be able to increase competitiveness, lower operational risk and truly embrace modern ways of working.

Find out more

Discover new ways of work with Microsoft Dynamics 365

Learn now to adapt your business now and for the future with Microsoft Power Platform

Reimagine an agile, smarter law firm with Microsoft Dynamics 365

Discover new ways to reimagine your law firm

About the author

Craig is a Microsoft Business Applications specialist aligned to the Professional Services and Legal sector. He has over 15 years’ experience in the software and services industry and is focussed on helping law firms through their workplace transformation journey. Craig is passionate about helping firms realise their strategic goals and understanding how the latest software innovations layered with data and AI can add value through the delivery of outstanding and increasingly distinctive client experiences.

The post How to build exceptional client experiences as a law firm appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.