Skype for Business Server has been an integral communications platform for thousands of organisations around the globe. But as the global workforce becomes increasingly agile, data-driven, and distributed, new tools and technologies are transforming the ways we connect, share, and collaborate.

Skype for Business is retiring on July 31, 2021 and users are being encouraged to begin or accelerate their upgrade journey to Microsoft Teams today!

Benefits of Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams extends the capabilities of Skype for Business, bringing together chat, meetings, calling, collaboration, app integration, and file storage into a single interface. With now over 115 million users, this new hub for teamwork can help streamline the way users get things done, improving user satisfaction and accelerating business outcomes.

Microsoft are continually expanding Teams’ capabilities to enable you to communicate and collaborate in new ways, break down organizational and geographical barriers, and drive efficiency in process and decision making.

A study conducted by Foresters and commissioned by Microsoft, entitled ‘New Technology: The Projected Total Economic Impact™ Of The Microsoft Teams Platform’ found that prior to leveraging the Microsoft Teams platform, IT organizations struggled to drive adoption for productivity and data visualization tools already available to employees.

Employees constantly switched between applications and tools throughout the day, losing time and momentum. To collaborate more efficiently with their colleagues, employees sometimes chose publicly available third-party communication applications, increasing risks for data security for the organizations.

Using the Microsoft Teams platform as a hub for teamwork enabled organizations to reduce disruptions to employee productivity, helped IT and security teams strengthen protection against data leaks, and contributed to a culture of citizen developers that, in turn, accelerated business digitization and innovation.

Upgrading to Microsoft Teams

Upgrading from Skype for Business to Teams is more than a technical migration. It represents a transformation in how users communicate and collaborate, and change is not always easy.

The ideal upgrade approach should address the technical aspects of your upgrade as well as encourage user acceptance and adoption of Teams, driving a positive user experience and business outcome realization.

Ensure effective adoption of Microsoft Teams

Training is a vital element of driving adoption in your business. Delivered by ALX Training, we provide a variety of Microsoft Teams training courses to ensure increased and continued adoption within your organisation or to help you to maximise your investment and make the most of its features to enhance the productivity of your organisation and its employees.

These training sessions can help drive the following outcomes for your organization:

• Improve collaboration between Team members on documents
• Reduce reliance on internal emails with attachments and copies of files
• Improve communication between colleagues
• Quicker access to files and information within Teams
• Carry out effective online meetings and track arising action points

The end of life of Skype for Business is a great opportunity for organisations to digitally transform their internal communication channels, to better communicate and collaborate.

To find out more about how we can upgrade your organisation to Microsoft Teams and drive adoption through our training courses, email us at enquiries@c5alliance.com or call +441534 633 733.