If your ERP or CRM is managed in the cloud, it allows for more corporate agility, increased accessibility, and improved collaboration and productivity.

By Wayne Davies

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Bernard Shaw.

Every year, we have more ways to communicate both digitally and in real life but are we getting more or less done? We may have the impression that we are all moving faster and doing more, but unless we are truly communicating well together, at best, we are stuck pedalling fast in an inefficient gear.

Find cohesion

As we emerge from COVID, we are navigating the world of hybrid work. Most businesses are building a blended model that enables more flexibility around when, where, and how people work – and that model is here to stay. But companies can’t let flexibility turn into siloed, disjointed work efforts — they must enable the entire organization to operate as one business, everywhere.

We have learnt a thing or two over the years about how to align tech to teams to bring about cohesion, agility, and even innovation: This has been the model we have followed for some time at sa.global, recruiting the best people irrespective of where they work.

Move to the cloud

There is no question that the cloud will be the future deployment method of choice for enterprise applications for many organizations. From improved accessibility, reduced internal IT support costs, and unlimited scalability, to capacity on demand and Capex savings, it promises a great deal.

With today’s hybrid working model, businesses of all sizes are becoming more decentralized. If your ERP or CRM is managed in the cloud, it allows for more corporate agility. This means that your employees can easily access the tools they need from anywhere, anytime, and using any device connection. This increased accessibility also means higher rates of cross-departmental collaboration and productivity, as the ability to share and integrate data across your business becomes easier. Critical business decisions can be easily made by remote or mobile employees to respond to any changes in your operations.

In addition to the technological and financial benefits of cloud computing, there are environmental benefits too – it reduces energy consumption, waste, and carbon emissions. In a recent study, it was found that for large deployments, Microsoft’s cloud solutions can reduce energy use and carbon emissions by more than 30 percent when compared to their corresponding Microsoft business applications installed on-premise. The benefits are even more impressive for small deployments: Energy use and emissions can be reduced by more than 90 percent with a shared cloud service.

Use technology as the enabler

Through leveraging Microsoft technology, we are creating apps and solutions to help our clients (and our own business) to make it easier for people in any role or department to connect, communicate, and collaborate – no matter when, where, or how they are working.

Connect, easily

Digital collaboration should help broaden networks, not constrict them. For technology to improve communications (and save you time and money), it should bring together business processes, information, communication, and collaboration, enabling an integrated workspace for teamwork. This is where the Microsoft cloud fits in – giving you the power, autonomy, flexibility, and agility to respond to your client demand as and when you need it, in a scalable way. The Microsoft Dynamics platform makes it simple to meet, chat, call, and collaborate from within the same workspace. For example, as you browse a client record, you can see related conversations, billing history and people, and then start or continue a chat without switching to another application. Whether you work in sales or marketing, service, finance, commerce, or human resources—any role that depends on teamwork—the unified collaboration features in Dynamics 365 applications and Teams will help you get daily activities done in a way that simply keeps everyone connected virtually in a natural way.

Remove information silos

When you break down the silos, all departments update and share data in real time. Teams are more motivated and open to collaboration when they have strategic alignment AND they know what broader projects they are working on. If you want better cross-functional collaboration, you need to find a way to ensure information flows freely. The Microsoft unified platform gives you a single platform to simplify the user experience, connecting your teams and empowering your people to achieve more.

Curious?

At sa.global, we are helping professional services organizations become cloud-first businesses, accelerating their digital transformation to realize greater value at speed and scale. Get in touch to find out how we can support your teams with collaboration and alignment today.

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Collaboration Foundation Implementation