Practical Tips for Increasing Operational Efficiency with Technology

In the modern business world, running an efficient workplace is the key to a successful company. By optimising efficiency, you can ensure that your organisation is thriving, producing more income for a lower resource cost — allowing you to use those resources elsewhere to grow your company even more.

With the help of technology, improving your business’s operational efficiency is simple. By using new, innovative technology built for companies — such as Microsoft’s software ecosystem Microsoft 365, your business will thank you — performing at a greater standard than ever before.

In this article, we will discuss how Microsoft 365 can greatly benefit your business’s operational efficiency, from streamlining file storage to enhancing employee communication, and how to take full advantage of the technology available to you with Artificial Intelligence.

Understanding Operational Efficiency

Operational efficiency measures how well a business can reduce resource waste while still creating a high-quality product. By reducing the waste of resources such as time, stock, or effort, while ensuring produce quality stays as it was, you can invest these resources back into your company — creating an efficient cycle.

The most reliable to reduce resource waste is by using technology to be able to enhance and completely change how your business works. By using the right tools, organisations can streamline employee workflows, embrace new ways to communicate, and ultimately enhance their workflow from top to bottom.

With tools such as automation, unified communications, and wider artificial intelligence innovations, technology is generally geared to be able to help companies become more streamlined and efficient. For example, automation frees up resources and lets you invest them into more important parts of your business, whereas unified communications make communication and your business’s whole information relay faster. By taking advantage of these tools, you can truly innovate and bring your company into the future.

Key Microsoft 365 Tools for Efficiency

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a unified communications platform, designed to make communication easier and better than ever. You can create teams based on your departments and projects, which will give them access to a central communication hub in which they can chat freely, share files, and collaborate.

On top of this, Microsoft Teams can also be used for meetings, conferencing, and calling, as well as other important collaboration tools such as calendar sharing (integrating with Outlook).

SharePoint

SharePoint brings together your business — letting information and file libraries become accessible communally through sites and libraries. Instead of having to send files back and forth over email or through teams, SharePoint makes access and collaboration easier than ever.

You can create a site for people to navigate through, making finding said files easier than ever, as well as being able to effectively manage files and documents in libraries — with tagging to make the whole process even more robust.

OneDrive

When storing files you don’t want to share, Microsoft OneDrive has you covered. With potentially up to 5 TB of storage per user, you can easily store all your files within Microsoft’s secure cloud storage — making it accessible anywhere.

OneDrive makes it so your employees can access their documents wherever meaning that you can easily support remote working and hybrid working setups — which will ultimately boost productivity by keeping morale high and letting employees work how they need best.

Practical Tips for Using Microsoft 365

Streamlining Communication with Teams

Microsoft Teams is the perfect solution to a long-lasting problem within businesses — easy, accessible communication and collaboration. As a real-time communications program, Teams allows companies to stay connected like never before. Teams makes it so easy to organise and host meetings, stay informed about projects, work collaboratively, and more.

By using Microsoft Teams, employees can truly optimise their time, spending less time scheduling, chasing up, and having to work with archaic communications solutions that could take time to work with and become a hassle all around. Teams is accessible and can be integrated into your workflow — meaning that you can always stay in the loop while working.

Enhancing Document Management with SharePoint

Document management can be a headache. After all, working with lots of documents can just be difficult, and organising them effectively so everyone knows how to find them can cause a lot of difficulty all around.

SharePoint makes the process simple though. It creates a central space where people can access libraries and find the files they need, as well as a system which you can use to triage and tag files to ensure that everything is organised in a manner that will be easy for everyone to find what they need.

Simplifying File Storage with OneDrive

Managing your files has never been easier than with OneDrive. By storing your documents in the cloud, you can access them from anywhere and anywhere. You can also create folders within OneDrive, making file organisation simple and reducing headaches all around.

Ultimately, this all comes together to make file storage simple for your employees. While other options are available for more complex needs, OneDrive gives your employees a space to be able to just have their own files stored and shareable with others — like their own ‘My Documents’ folder but with the benefits of the cloud baked in.

Integrating Microsoft 365 Tools with AI for Maximum Impact

Microsoft 365 and AI go hand in hand. With Microsoft’s investment into OpenAI — and the introduction of Microsoft Copilot — Microsoft has made 365 an AI powerhouse.

Copilot is your own personal assistant, and bolsters efficiency to the next level. Making documents, analysing files and emails, and completing mass actions within Teams and Outlook is just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with Copilot.

On top of this, automation is also a key technology that can be used with Microsoft 365 — removing the headache of having to do everything manually, while keeping your file storage and communications clear and easy to maintain.

How We Can Help

Microsoft 365 is a powerhouse for operational efficiency, and your business should take advantage of the best productivity tools available right now. With their office applications and their collaboration tools like the ones mentioned, using 365 in your business is a no-brainer.

If you’re looking to get started with Microsoft 365, reach out to us today. We’re here to help and will ensure that you have everything you need to be able to take your organisation’s productivity to the next level.

Get in touch with us now and see how we can help.