Since its initial announcement in March of 2017, Microsoft Teams has presented the collaboration question of the century. To move or not to move to Teams. Over the last two years, Microsoft and UC providers alike have gathered a better understanding of what the future holds for unified communications and collaboration (UCC), and with that have determined the role Microsoft Teams can and will play. However, you still need to ask yourself the question, “Is Microsoft Teams the right fit for us?”
It may not be. Each organization is unique and Teams comes with its own hurdles that need to be considered before committing to a migration.
CONSIDER YOUR END-USERS: Is Microsoft Teams more than your users need?
It’s important to determine if a transition to Teams aligns with your unique organization’s UCC goals. By clearly identifying functionality gaps and future requirements, you’ll be able to determine if a move to Teams is the correct step for you.
Microsoft Teams represents a broad range of collaboration and application functions than Skype’s “pure” UC stack. Therefore, Teams may provide an expanded set of capabilities that do not align with some organization’s unique needs. This addition of unneeded functionality leads to complexity in the workplace at both the end-user and administrative level.
CONSIDER YOUR TECH STACK: Does Teams overlap with your existing tools?
Another major aspect of vetting a move to teams is understanding areas of functional redundancy and collision. While Teams’ functional expansion suits the needs of many companies, some SfB user organizations may have already invested in alternative workstream collaboration (WSC) platforms, such as Slack or HipChat. By not only auditing your full stack of UCC solutions but also surveying endusers you can determine areas of improvement and/or gaps in your organization’s technology stack.
CONSIDER THE CHALLENGES: Are you prepared for the organizational hurdles?
Teams enables organizations to work differently, which can lead to operational challenges such as training and user adoption. According to Gartner’s Research Circle Suvey1 for WSC, there are three main challenge areas for organizations trying to use WSC platforms:
Cultural
The comfort of using an email with attachments is a common example of established behavior and a symptom of a corporate culture that lacks a willingness to share. This exists where there is a perceived loss of control over messaging and documentation.
Training
Training requirements will be significant as employees navigate a new IT environment of channels, bots, team rooms, immersive chat, and APIs.
Collaboration Fragmentation
With the average large enterprise using at least two platforms for conferencing and collaboration purposes (see “Forecast Overview: Unified Communications, Worldwide, 2017”), introducing additional communications and collaboration applications begins to overwhelm employees with choices and questions of how to interoperate.
It’s important to consider these questions prior to migration and to have a complete understanding of all your options. At TetraVX, we work with clients to determine if Teams is the right fit for each unique organization. We identify key use cases, workflows, needs and challenges for each developed persona and identify specific technical requirements to ensure it’s the right fit. At the end of this workshop, TetraVX delivers a complete overview of all the organization’s options, and if appropriate, a pilot of the Teams deployment.
Interested in a Microsoft Teams Workshop? Contact us today.