In a business, there are few more desirable qualities to exemplify than productivity. Every organisation wants their departments, teams, and users to maintain high productive efforts, because this translates to better business efficiency – and this in turn gives businesses the best chance for success.
According to IT companies, such as TechQuarters, there is a strong argument to say that information technologies are the best way to maximise productivity within an organisation. With information being the most valuable resource a business can gain, and technology becoming more and more ingrained in everyday life and society, this is not an unreasonable claim. TechQuarters provides IT Managed Services London-based companies have used to increase their productive output, but streamlining workflows and processes, and increasing both internal and external communications. These are just a few examples of how an organisation can make themselves more productive, but what are the technologies most proven to enable this?
Business Mobility Tech
Mobility is a very important quality for modern businesses. Mobility is the quality of being able to work and communicate in transit – in other words, while users are on the go, such as when they are travelling to and from work, or perhaps on the way to a meeting or conference. There were times when workers would have no way of communicating to their colleagues and employers whilst they were travelling somewhere, and had to wait until they had arrived. Now, however, we have the technology to contact people at any time.
The most common ways we do this is with mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. It is a good idea to provide employees with company smartphones – this is the safest way to ensure mobility among users. However, it is possible to enable users to bring their own device to work (BYOD policies), but the company should implement Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) to guarantee the security of company data that resides on employee’s devices.
Cloud Applications
Applications are the main way we work nowadays – word processing apps and spreadsheet apps have been in use for over 20 years now. Nowadays, the maximise productivity, businesses can use Cloud applications for work. Cloud apps refers to any app that is hosted in the Cloud, allowing users to access it, and the data hosted on them, from any device connected to the internet. For instance, Microsoft Word is a Cloud app, and it can be accessed from mobile devices, PCs, and from web browsers.
The uses for Cloud apps are very diverse. As we have discussed, Cloud apps can enable you to create content from anywhere; but Cloud apps like OneDrive, SharePoint, or Google Drive enable users to store files and other data so that they can access it from anywhere. For instance, with OneDrive, it means users can create content on Word with their mobile, save it to OneDrive, and then access that content again from their PC. Users can share content without having to send it over a network, they simply upload it to a Cloud app such as SharePoint, to which their colleagues also have access, and they can view or download the content easily.
Unified Communications
This might be the biggest effect on business productivity of all the technologies we will discuss. Unified communications are so important, because communication is essential within business. Whether it is business-to-customer communication, business-to-business communication – for example, IT support providers like TechQuarters need to be able to communicate externally with customers or business partners. As well as this, there is internal communication like colleague-to-colleague. A company needs to be able to contact people quickly and easily.
Traditionally, our main channels of communication for business have been email and telephone – which are still in use, but which lack the immediacy and the flexibility of newer styles of communication, such as instant messaging. A unified communications platform should include telephony, instant messaging, and video communications – it should also be able to integrate with email clients. One good example of a unified communications platform is Microsoft Teams. Unified communications has become especially important since the onset of COVID-19 – but even without that consideration, the landscape of modern business demands high levels of communication.
Cloud Storage
It cannot be argued that the Cloud has been one of the most important innovations of the 21st century. It has been in the public lexicon for a bit over a decade now, and has proven to be a lynchpin to a lot of the products and services we take for granted. For example, social media is powered by the Cloud. Additionally, a large amount of people rely on Cloud Storage nowadays, and the same can be said for businesses.
There a lot of reasons why Cloud Storage is an essential technology for business productivity. For starters, it streamlines the process of file sharing and management. Colleagues can share data with one another in a much quicker and safer way than if they had to send data over a the internet. It also means employees can safely access data while they are away from their company site – assuming they have a site; TechQuarters was one of the many IT Services Companies London saw become remote during COVID, and it is possible for any business from any city to become fully remote using the right technology.
Cloud Storage enables businesses to access other important services. For example, businesses might want to archive data, and traditionally this would have been done using physical storage arrays installed in their offices – however, nowadays, archiving can be done in the Cloud.
Another valuable service business might want to access is Backup and Disaster Recovery. This is where businesses backup every piece of data they have to an offsite storage facility – nowadays, that facility can be in the Cloud. Then, in the event of a disaster (such as floods, fires, earthquakes, etc.) a business can recover their data from the Cloud. The Cloud makes this process much more streamlined, and can shorten the time to recovery for businesses.
