Original post on Future of Work
The recent, and extremely rapid onset of digital transformation has forever greatly shifted the way work gets done seemingly overnight. Businesses now leverage numerous digital devices and applications, looking to increase efficiency, productivity, and of course revenue during their daily processes. However, though technology seeping into all industries may appear to be the biggest change brought about by digital transformation is the transition to a mainly remote/mobile workforce.
Pre-pandemic, only roughly 2 percent of the U.S. workforce was working remotely, but by May 2020, that number had risen to close to 70 percent. Even now, nearly two years removed from the start of the quarantine, 16 percent of companies in the world are 100 percent remote, with 85 percent of managers believing that having teams with remote workers has become the new norm.
While the original growth of remote work was out of necessity, due to the quarantine forcing people to safely distance themselves from each other, businesses quickly recognized the benefits for both the company and the employees. Fewer overhead expenses for enterprises and less commuting for workers are just a couple of the benefits. Truly, the main reason driving the continuation of WFH stems from the side of the employee, as 77 percent of remote workers say they’re more productive when working from home.
“The increased productivity brought on by remote work can only happen if the employees are able to reliably contact and work with each other as if they were in the same physical space,” said Jeff Li, Senior Director, Partner Service Assurance at ConnX, an innovation, systems integration and managed services company serving Fortune 500 enterprises across several industries. “This has created a new emphasis for enterprises when it comes to assuring stable communications and connectivity across all work applications for employees who are remote/mobile. To reach these desired levels of quality experiences, organizations have increasingly begun adopting and leveraging communications solutions.”
Recently, ConnX, an innovative multiservice communication platform integrator and managed service provider and Microsoft Gold Partner, announced it has introduced a premium version of Microsoft’s popular Dynamics 365 product line of enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management intelligent business applications. It is fully integrated with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Office 365 – embedding click to call, message, share screens and instantly opening up video collaboration.
Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams integration allows organizations to speed up the flow of work, enabling anyone in an organization to view and collaborate on Dynamics 365 records, from within the flow of work with Teams. Teams can be integrated with Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Marketing, and Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation.
“We are a proud Microsoft Gold Partner and have been working closely with Microsoft for over two decades,” Li said. “For example, when using our Maestro platform, Microsoft Teams is optimized with our SIP solution (Direct Routing).”
While there are a variety of innovative devices and applications that can help create the communication and collaboration platform organizations today seek, the most used platform today is Microsoft Teams. These platforms, like Microsoft Teams, enable employees to interact and share ideas even when the workforce is distributed, and can build a sense of community and trust, which encourages innovation, and helps solve problems in real-time.
“With increased productivity, they can also help reduce turnover by up 60 percent, saving companies money in the long run,” Li explained. “This advantage when it comes to employee turnover works perfectly for remote/mobile workforce, considering organizations can disregard location, and find talented workers wherever they may be.”
While the emphasis on digital communications was sparked by the transition to distributed, remote workforces, platform technology is already blossoming in a relatively short period of time. In 2021, the global cloud communication platform market was already valued at $2.7 billion. The market is expected to grow, alongside business technology use, $7 billion in 2028.
This growth comes as no surprise, as with 58 percent of American workers, which is nearly 92 million people, having the option to work remotely at least one day a week, enterprises are increasingly looking for a platform that fits their unique needs, to ensure they are able to provide their workers with a quality experience across all business applications.
In Microsoft’s research, it was discovered that organizations support an average of eight customer engagement channels, not just traditional calls and email but also chat, social, messaging, and others.
Additionally, these same organizations expect to see volumes increase across all channels. This presents a difficult challenge for contact center leaders, as the systems used to manage these channels are often disparate and uncoordinated. The associated complications with routing contacts, integrating customer data, and creating effective reporting are leading to undesirable customer experiences.
To move ahead and excel at the customer experience, organizations must find a way to use systems that are enablers of success. This is where the complex and truly challenging part of the customer experience happens. The contact center must excel at human-to-human interactions while mastering the use of automation and intelligence as appropriate.
Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams integration allows you to speed up the flow of work, enabling anyone in an organization to view and collaborate on Dynamics 365 records, from within the flow of work with Teams. This joint solution enables enterprises to utilize the best-of-breed technology with voice added to Dynamics CRM with the following benefits from its global integrated communications platform. Following are the key features of the ConnX optimization platform:
- Dual Datacenter / Carrier Redundancy / Failover
- DID Porting / Bring Your Own Carrier
- 24 x 7 Global NOC support model
- Enhanced End-to-End monitoring and management
- Seamless Service Migration
- Dynamic E-911
- Embedded Fraud Detection and Robocall Protection
“With today’s borderless workforce, business groups often collaborate across departments while working on identifying new market opportunities, researching sales prospects, pursuing sales opportunities, deepening relationships with existing customers, and providing those customers outstanding service experiences,” Li said. “Using Teams integration, our customers can now invite anyone in their organization to view and collaborate on customer records right within a Teams chat or channel. They can also make and receive calls from within Dynamics 365 to get work done more efficiently. Customer service representatives can find, view, and act upon customer case records, including troubleshooting steps and follow-up actions tracking.”