Encourage Better Work Habits with Microsoft Viva Insights

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Productivity has always been important at work. Yet our awareness that well-being factors into productivity is newer. Microsoft is getting in on that trend with its Viva Insights offering. This article shares the basics of how it improves productivity and helps well-being.

Viva Insights is part of Microsoft’s Viva Suite focused on employee experience. The app gathers data while users work and provides recommendations for improvements.

In Microsoft Teams, Insights reviews collaboration data and suggests strategies to boost engagement. Recognizing common topics across conversations, Insights might automatically create a page devoted to that focus area.

Insights also connect people with meeting reminders and by sending RSVP reminders.

Insights can suggest users take breaks or set longer windows of time for focused work. There’s a Do Not Disturb functionality to help prevent distractions, too.

It is not just process-oriented either. Based on Insights, Viva Learning curates courses to foster learning and self-discovery for individual users.

In Personal Insights, individuals can log how they feel throughout the day. Automated check-ins encourage users to take a moment to reflect or to use the Headspace app integration for guided meditation.

A great feature for remote workers is “start a virtual commute.” This guides people to review and close tasks, preview the next day, and mindfully end their day.

Guides better management, too

The “My Organization” page gives team managers insights into employee trends. They can view items such as “average weekly time spent collaborating after hours,” or see the percentage of employees spending time in “long and large meetings,” or how many one-on-ones they are having with managers, or if they have little time to focus on tasks because of meeting overload.

Insights also give managers input to help them better engage with employees. Managers can view aggregated and anonymized feelings data on the Insights dashboard. This can help them identify the risk of burnout or turnover. When everyone’s feeling overwhelmed, Insights might suggest a no-meetings day.

This may sound a little Big Brother – the platform analyzes Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive activity. Still, Microsoft promises “only you can view personal data and insights based on work patterns.” Managers see data that captures overall user insights.

Getting the most from Microsoft’s Viva Insights

We can help your business get started with Microsoft Viva Insights. We can connect employees to Insights and assign manager roles within the platform. We can make other suggestions, too, about how to get the most out of your Microsoft tools.

Contact us today at (515)422-1995.

Talk to Your Staff About Tech Success and Stumbling Blocks

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You may be in charge of tech for your entire business, but that doesn’t mean you actually use all the technology you source, install, and maintain. You’re responsible for updating that tech, supporting it, and monitoring for threats, yet you don’t have hands-on with that tech day in and day out. That means you can’t fully understand what’s working and what isn’t.

To gain a holistic picture of how your technology is working, ask the people who use it every day. You can’t rely on the fact that people aren’t complaining to mean your hardware or software is running smoothly.

There are many reasons employees might not reach out to tell you what’s wrong:

  • They are too busy to bring up their issues.
  • They don’t know how to communicate what’s holding them up.
  • They don’t realize that the obstacle they’re hitting isn’t normal for a particular solution.
  • They don’t know who to talk to about the problems they are having.

So, it’s up to you to be proactive. Reach out to employees to find out what they need to do their jobs better.

Gain the employee’s perspective

If you’re in IT, you’re seldom found in the trenches with your sales or marketing. You aren’t in accounting trying to track payments or keep up with supply-chain management. So, you can’t expect to know what the lived experience of your tech is like for those teams.

Talking to your staff about what’s needed can help you learn about:

  • digital solutions your people have heard about from peers at other companies;
  • new technologies staff would like to try;
  • roadblocks that are slowing productivity and undermining employee morale;
  • low-hanging-fruit changes that you can make to improve an employee’s experience (e.g. adding a second screen may be all that a disgruntled staffer needs to see their job isn’t so bad).

You might host a lunch-and-learn, where you discuss technology with different teams, or you could send around a survey. Emailing employees directly, and asking them to answer key questions can help, too. Focus your information gathering in three areas:

  • What works well for you?
  • What challenges are you facing?
  • What would make your life easier?

Of course, people are going to have different ways of speaking about technology. They probably don’t know a LAN from a PAN or a WAN, for example, but they will be able to convey whether they feel the network is too slow or not.

Prioritize tech solutions

Talking to people in the trenches with tech can help set infrastructure priorities. Once you’ve learned what tech is needed and what isn’t working as you’d hoped, reach out to a managed service provider for help. We can consult on new solutions and help you streamline business processes. We know tech for small businesses. Contact us today at (515)422-1995.

Making the Most of Microsoft Lists

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If you have Microsoft 365 but aren’t using Microsoft Lists, you could be missing out. This useful feature, which is included with your 365 subscription, helps businesses work more efficiently.

Lists is a productivity feature on Microsoft 365 (MS365), formerly Microsoft Office. This app is a more recent addition to the MS365 app store, so you may have missed it. This article shares some advantages of this tracking and work management app.

An upgrade of SharePoint lists, which has been with MS365 all along, Lists integrates with Microsoft Teams. This means Lists help you collaborate and cooperate better. In fact, all users in a Teams channel with a List can access and edit that List without leaving Teams.

With Lists, you can create, distribute, and track data in a configurable way. Yes, it is good for helping you make a simple list of, say, things to do, but you can do much more with Lists.

Added functionality of Lists

Lists comes with templates to get you started quickly. You can also configure the lists to suit your specific business needs. Plus, you can set the lists to display in the way that works best for you. Maybe you want to look at Lists as a calendar, a grid, a gallery, or in a custom view. You can do that but in real-time, with everyone using that list getting the same updated data when they’re logged in.

In Lists, you set up tables of information to track extensive amounts of data. For example, you might track a project in Microsoft Lists by adding all the tasks to a List. You could add columns for the person responsible, task status, project priority, and more. You can also use colors within the List to help sort information more easily.

Additionally, since Lists is part of MS365, you can use Lists wherever and on whichever device you access the software. You can also integrate Lists with other powerful tools on the MS365 platform. You might extend forms with Power Apps or customize workflows with Power Automate. With automation, you get even more from your Lists.

Taking advantage of Lists

There are many business applications with Lists. Besides project management, you might organize an event itinerary and speaker info in a List, or track assets, or manage a new employee onboarding checklist. If you have an idea of something you want to create, configure, watch, and share, you can probably do it within Lists.

Lists is a default feature in MS365 Teams, but you can switch it on or off in the Teams admin center at any time. You can even permit or ban certain users from Lists.

If you’re not yet using MS365, our IT gurus can help you get started. If you’re on the platform already, let our experts help you get the most you can from your license. Call us today at (515)422-1995.

What is Digital Friction, and What to Do About It?

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No one wants to work harder than they have to. Digital transformation is one way businesses can make employees’ lives easier. Yet simply increasing the amount of technology isn’t the answer. Digital friction can actually make the workday more challenging. Read on to learn more about digital friction, its demotivating force, and how to avoid it.

Digital friction describes added challenges employees face trying to work with business technology. As businesses add more digital tools, teams must adapt to a more complex ecosystem, but problems can arise:

  • Technology isn’t integrated, so there are now more steps to follow.
  • Workflows grow more complicated, as there are several digital solutions to navigate.
  • Employees are overwhelmed with notifications tracking, managing, and monitoring digital workflows.
  • New approaches create or duplicate manual processes.
  • Employees become overloaded with information thanks to the many new collaborative, digital tools.

Any of these issues is counterproductive to digital transformation. The idea behind adding new digital solutions is to streamline and simplify, but if you’re complicating the work environment, you’ll undermine productivity. You aren’t helping employee engagement and morale either. Your people grow frustrated with your fresh expectations.

Sources of digital friction

When you install new tech, you intend to save time, reduce effort, and improve productivity, but the best intentions don’t avoid digital friction. If you’re going to install digital technologies be wary of these problems:

  • Poor understanding of workflow. If you don’t understand what is happening now, you can’t effectively install digital processes.
  • Inconsistent workflows. When employees approach processes differently, there will be friction on new, digital solutions.
  • Poor-quality data. Digital technology relies on data. A major source of digital friction is low-quality data. Employees spend too much time locating, validating, and formatting data to see benefits.
  • Lack of understanding of a solution’s impact. Investing in tech for the sake of “going digital” is not setting employees up for success. You need to know what the technology can do and how it will impact employees’ daily work.

What to do about digital friction

Before even adding technology, consult with your employees. Learn their pain points and what they want from a digital solution. Find out how they are doing their jobs today. Then, you can work with an IT consultant to determine which digital offerings will add value.

Look for opportunities to integrate your digital technology. Help employees avoid information overload and being constantly pinged and notified. Take stock of all the apps and software you’re using. Identify where you are duplicating processes, especially manual ones. Ferret out the places where your people are having to work harder to do their jobs. Know that data quality is a prime culprit.

Make decisions about new digital technology based on outcomes. What do you want the software to do? How will it be used and managed? Be sure you know how this new tool you’re offering is going to help people if you want them to embrace the change.

Simplify access by ensuring employees have a positive user experience. With more employees working remotely or hybrid, they need to do their jobs on a wider range of devices.

Need help cutting digital friction? Our technology-agnostic IT experts can identify problems and increase productivity. We can also consult on legacy tech and data migration to support digital transformation success. Call us today at (515)422-1995.

“Save Me the Money”: Why Work with an MSP

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The pandemic, a supply-chain crisis, and rising inflation are impacting the economy. In this current climate, your business may be budgeting with caution, and you might question the value of partnering with a managed service provider (MSP). Yet as counterintuitive as it may seem, adding MSP services could save you money overall.

The right MSP supports your business efficiency. You can also cut costs and get more from your IT investment. At the same time, you gain a partner to provide IT monitoring and maintenance. This can help avoid costly downtime and lost productivity from unexpected IT disruptions. Instead of reacting to problems, the MSP proactively manages your tech to ensure it meets your evolving needs.

One of the first things an MSP will do is get an overview of your business technology environment. The MSP can identify savings with an objective view of systems, software, and hardware. The MSP often lowers IT overheads by looking at all bills and subscriptions to find duplicates and the right fit for your plans. The MSP has provider relationships to draw upon and can help find the right solution at the right price. Unlike software salespeople, there’s no advantage in an MSP attempting to sell you more than you need.

Affordable IT expertise

With an MSP, you also avoid the effort and expense of recruiting, retaining, and training your own IT staff. Bringing in an IT team is increasingly expensive. Demand for such talent is high, and the labor market is tight. But with an MSP, you gain access to tech talent that has a breadth of experience, plus, the MSP is doing the hiring and HR for those experts.

Already have IT people on-site? Keep them happier by giving them challenging projects and inviting them to innovate. They can be contributing to your bottom line while the MSP’s team takes on the routine, mundane IT tasks.

Further, an MSP helps you scale without the challenges of bringing in more IT help or having to let valued staff go. An MSP can help your business migrate to the cloud, where you can grow tech capabilities without having to invest in more staff or systems. If market pressures make scaling back makes sense, you can also do that easily in the cloud with an MSP’s help.

Cost-effective IT solutions with MSPs

The MSP’s goal is to solve your tech problems. Success is boosting business efficiency and finding cost-effective IT solutions. Taking a proactive approach to IT, MSP experts can also cut cybersecurity risk, or, if the worst does happen, they can have plans in place to help your business get back up and running quickly. That can help you save money, too.

Find out more about the value of investing in MSP services. Contact us today at (515)422-1995!

How SaaS Can Save Your Business Money

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When you see the acronym SaaS you may not immediately think of dollar signs, though the S‘s are pretty close. Yet Software as a Service, what SaaS stands for, can save business money.

What is SaaS?

For SaaS to save you money, you need to understand what this solution involves. Think back to a few years ago: installing software from discs was one of the first things you had to do with a new computer. Depending on how old you are, you might remember doing so from a CD or maybe even a floppy disc!

A business might have paid for several licenses and uploaded the software to many computers, but each copy was unique, whether uploaded to on-premises computers or laptops.

The SaaS solution offers greater flexibility. The business user gains online access to whatever software applications they need. There is no need to install each specific app on Jamal’s computer and then do the same for Janice. Instead, the software is available whenever users want and on the device they choose. It doesn’t matter, as long as they have internet connectivity.

This means workers no longer have to be on-site to use all business tools. Plus, since applications aren’t installed on business machines, you don’t need the same storage space or processing power.

How SaaS saves you money

Software as a Service reduces your upfront costs. Under the old model, you needed to pay for the physical disc or download the software from the internet. You also needed to ensure you had the appropriate hardware to run the applications. Plus, you would pay to maintain the license and support the software.

With SaaS, you pay only the monthly or annual subscription fee. The vendor providing the software has the servers and hardware. That means they cover the costs for its maintenance and upkeep. Meanwhile, you get the advantage of a set fee that covers licensing and support.

Cloud-based SaaS is also economically priced for the number of users you want to access that software. Since it is in the cloud, you can scale up or down as your business needs change. If you’re not using the software as much as you expected, drop that application. You’ve paid only a subscription fee rather than investing in a lifetime license, hardware, and maintenance.

Starting with SaaS

The one big concern businesses have about SaaS is data security. Having control of the software on-site can feel safer. But SaaS providers invest more in cybersecurity than your small business could. Their business depends on reliability and resilience. They build in redundancy, have backup tech, and keep the software upgraded and secure.

Making the move to SaaS doesn’t have to be difficult, especially if you partner with another acronym, an MSP. A managed service provider can help you find software solutions for your needs. We’ll advise you on SaaS options and support your transition to the convenience and cost savings of SaaS. Call us now at (515)422-1995!

Avoid This Top IT mistake: The “Wait and See” Approach

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Patience is often a virtue, and being budget-conscious is also a plus in business. Yet taking a “wait and see” approach with business tech is a top IT mistake.

There is a lot of uncertainty in the current economy. You may be looking to save money to give your business more budget leeway. But if you don’t make ongoing investments in your IT, your business could suffer.

You might skip software upgrades, but that can put your business at risk from cyber bad actors, who look to exploit weaknesses when people don’t upgrade their systems.

Deciding to put off replacing older devices or legacy hardware, you may be thinking, “What’s one more year?” It can make a big difference, actually. Your systems may have vulnerabilities that cyber-attackers will leverage. Your hardware may not be able to keep up with your business during its busy times, and your people could be working on devices that are no longer supported by the manufacturer. If something does go wrong, you’re on your own.

Trying to get by with less when it comes to business technology can hurt your business. We’re not saying you have to throw all sorts of money at every new technology out there, of course; it’s about fitting the right technology to your specific business needs.

Business tech: Better now than later

Businesses today are undergoing digital transformation. Across industries, people see the advantages of IT. The right technology enhances the quality of work and boosts productivity. You have the tools needed to support faster processing and wider information distribution.

Thinking only short-term about technology, as in “it’s working fine for now,” could hurt you in the long run, however, and by not looking after your tech and keeping it current, you could be missing out on:

  • keeping your software and systems patched and protected against the latest cyber threats;
  • enjoying the greater efficiency that comes from streamlined workflows and business process best practices;
  • being able to collaborate seamlessly with team members or clients and customers via the latest cloud communications tools;
  • getting things done more easily with the hardware and software you need to keep up with your business;
  • scaling up or down as your business needs with the convenience of cloud technology;
  • having peace of mind that if there is a data breach or other system disruption, you have a backup to get your business back up.

Moving forward with an MSP

There is an inevitability to investment in business tech. You know you’re going to need it. But taking the wait-and-see approach simply puts you at risk of a cyberattack or other productivity drains. Keeping your IT current and investing in this essential area can benefit employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and your business’s bottom line.

Not sure what technology to focus on while working within your budget? Our IT experts can help. We’ll get to know your systems and your unique needs. Then, we’ll make suggestions about the smartest investment areas for your business. Contact us today at (515)422-1995!

Understanding the Cost of Downtime

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Business downtime is costly. Research abounds on just how much it can set a business back. Some small businesses can’t even rebound from the expenses associated with downtime. This article outlines the many expenses a business can encounter as a result of downtime.

What do we mean by downtime? There are many reasons a business might experience IT downtime. Say, the Wi-Fi goes down or there’s a simple power outage. Either could lead to a small-scale, short-term downtime.

Worse, you could be the victim of a cyberattack that sees criminals encrypting your data. A data breach or malware infection could force you to take systems offline to solve the problem.

Severe weather events such as tornadoes or hurricanes can also cause downtime. Or maybe the building suffers a gas leak or a fire, and your business isn’t immediately able to get back on-site. If you don’t have cloud-based access to your applications, you could suffer downtime.

Every minute you are without your business technology can add up. Let’s consider the various costs you could encounter.

Loss of business revenue

If your people can’t access business systems or network applications, productivity drops. Your sales team can’t close deals, or your product development team can’t access schematics. Perhaps someone in client development can’t get to their pitch presentation.

Remediation costs

Fixing your business technology after downtime takes extra work, which means added resource costs. You may have to pay overtime to the IT team working round the clock to get you back up and running, or there could be places you need to catch up when you had to spend time doing things manually. This disrupts efficiency and costs money.

Customer dissatisfaction

How often do you hear someone apologize for their computer running slowly? When you call a customer service line it’s a familiar frustration. Imagine telling someone instead, “our systems are down, and we are unable to help you right now.” You will be compounding customer aggravation. They don’t want to wait for your downtime to end to resolve their issue.

If there’s a data breach, customers will worry about personal data or compromise of proprietary information.

Legal and compliance fees

Your business could run afoul of compliance or face legal action. For instance, if you are in the health services industry and are breached, you could be hit with hefty fines for jeopardizing personally identifiable information.

Brand reputation

Say your payment processor goes down, and you’re not able to take any orders. Some customers will get impatient and order from a competing website. They may end up switching to that company permanently.

There’s also a misconception that any press is good press. But you do not want your business to make headlines for having fallen victim to a cyberattack.

Employee engagement

Every business owner recognizes the importance of retaining motivated and skilled staff. Employees frustrated by downtime may start looking elsewhere.

Morale and your business culture could decline. Turnover could rise. You’ll need to invest time recruiting, training, and retaining fresh new hires.

Key takeaway

Don’t think business downtime can’t happen to you. When it comes to technology, threats are ever-evolving. Keep current with updates and software upgrades, and be vigilant about fresh threats.

Partner with an MSP to develop backup plans. An IT vendor can help move systems to the cloud to ensure mobile access. MSPs can also be proactive. They perform preventative maintenance and help cut your cybersecurity risk.

We can’t promise downtime won’t happen, but we can make sure you are resilient and able to bounce back more quickly should problems arise. Contact us today at (515) 422-1995.

Onboarding an IT Provider: What’s Realistic?

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When you hire a managed service provider, you want instant results: you want all your technology to run faster and more smoothly, and everyone to be more productive. And there will be no problems again, ever, right? But that’s not realistic. Managed service providers are pretty great (even if we do say ourselves), but we’re not miracle workers. So, let’s discuss what you might realistically expect when onboarding a new IT provider.

Sometimes, quick wins are achieved. The managed service provider (MSP) may be able to immediately get that server powered up again or fix that printer on the second floor that’s only been taking up space for the past three months. Yet there is no magic wand that allows these IT experts to solve every issue instantly.

What should you expect?

If there is a pressing issue, the MSP will start there by looking into what has gone wrong. Then, they’ll be able to make plans for addressing the concern. Maybe a part failed, or your hardware has reached the end of its life. They’ll look into how you use that technology and provide suggestions to make a fix.

Otherwise, if nothing is immediately wrong, your MSP will begin the engagement by learning about your business tech. They’ll want to talk with your stakeholders to discover:

  • where you are now;
  • where you want to be the future;
  • how you use your IT;
  • what your IT budget looks like.

In getting up to speed, this outsourced IT team should be making a great impression on you. This is the beginning of your relationship. They have won your business, but you can expect them to be proving that you made the right choice. Still, this doesn’t mean they can get everything perfect right from the get-go.

The timeline depends on the context.

There could be issues that will take longer to resolve. They may need to do diagnostic work to get to the root of the problem. Solving the issue could take creative problem-solving and a lot of research legwork.

We’d love to say that every business we work with comes to us with pristine IT. Everything is in great shape, and we can immediately step in and make everything work even better. But there can be lingering or unidentified concerns. The business may not have the IT depth to recognize the problems that the MSP will quickly diagnose. Perhaps you’ve been ignoring security warnings or network errors or you’ve been bombarded with access requests from malicious IPs. The MSP is going to have to take on those outstanding concerns.

Again, there is no magic wand. The MSP can’t instantly turn the ship around if it’s been sailing toward a massive iceberg for the past year.

Expect to give your MSP team some time to learn your business and get up to speed with your IT. However, don’t give them forever. If it has been six months, and they’re still “figuring it all out,” you may want to reconsider that partnership. But be aware that cutting those ties means starting from scratch to build a relationship with a new MSP.

The better approach is to expect ongoing, informative communication from your new MSP. They should be letting you know what they are learning about your technology needs along the way and making suggestions to improve usage, boost security, increase productivity, and drive efficiency.

One thing you can realistically expect? Your MSP will make a real contribution. These experts should be more than a vendor and more like a partner in your business success.

Contact us at (515) 422-1995.

What IT Services Should You Outsource?

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Every successful small business owner reaches a point when they need to tap others’ talents. When it comes to IT, depending on your skill set, that point could come pretty soon. Yes, there are IT services you can do in-house, but there are others that are beneficial to outsource.

When you started, you might have been dealing with one computer in your home office. As the business grows, so will your IT footprint. Eventually, it could make more sense to outsource your IT infrastructure. Managing your own hardware could prove too costly and time-consuming. In particular, a cloud service provider allows you to take advantage of economies of scale.

There are umpteen options for outsourcing your cloud computing. Once you settle on the provider, someone else can manage updates, handle backups, and track security.

Even if you keep your hardware infrastructure on-site, you can outsource its management, as it can grow too complicated for you to handle alone. Bring in an IT expert to source, manage, and troubleshoot your hardware. You can return your focus to other business areas that better suit your skills.

Other IT areas to outsource

If your business sells to customers online, you might outsource your e-commerce. There are many excellent e-commerce operators out there. They focus on ensuring your customers are always able to shop and buy from a secure online shop. You don’t want to risk losing sales because you’re trying to manage e-commerce as well as all other areas of your business.

Security is another key area for IT outsourcing. Cybercriminals are not slowing down. In fact, security agencies from Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom reported in February 2022 on the increasing threat of ransomware. One of their findings? No one is immune, no matter the size of their business.

As a single-computer shop, you could do automatic updates and change Wi-Fi passwords. But, as your operations grow, there are many more entry points to protect. Identifying vulnerabilities becomes more difficult, and you can’t spend all your time monitoring cybersecurity threat feeds. There’s other work to do, too.

Cybersecurity can’t be set and forgotten. Sometimes, updates can’t wait until the next one you have scheduled. You may need to react quickly to a major event or move proactively to identify whether you are at risk. Outsourcing to professionals who track new threats can help you avoid the worst. When updates are due, they can schedule them at the least disruptive time for your business. Plus, if there is an infected file or malware issue, you have someone on call to deal with that issue immediately. That can help cut costly downtime.

Outsource to IT experts

You may be brilliant in your business area, but that doesn’t mean you’re also skilled at IT. By outsourcing some IT tasks, you can gain peace of mind about your business tech reliability. Instead of trying to recruit and train your own IT people in a tight labour market, you can let the experts in. Then, you can get back to focusing your attention on the other core elements of your business.

Outsourcing IT can lower your tech costs, increase your productivity, and provide peace of mind. By turning to our experts, you can be more productive and enjoy a higher level of IT services. Contact us today at (515)422-1995!

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