How Free Technology Can Improve Teamwork Thursday, March 1, 2018 How Free Technology Can Im prove Teamwork (NAPSA)—If you own or work for a small to midsize business, you're far from alone. Such companies represent 95 percentofallfirms and 63percent of total employment. Now, manyare improvingtheir pro- ductivity and collaboration through digital technology. Managing Growth As small businesses continue to grow andscale, technology will be ‘They experience growth, then change key to creating an engaged, highly to help them scale. As the company functioning team acrossoffices and Consider this: Many small busi- nessesstart with a team ofoneor two. grows in employees, locationsor business functions, new challenges surface. time zone: sion: Now youcan haveseamless doc- No longercan yourely on one or two people to get work done. You need to unlock the powerof your team to truly umentstorage andcollaboration with At the sametime, employee buy-inis importantfor small businessesin partic- ing: Start one up with just one click grow and scale, ular. With fewer employees, morale has an even greater impact. Ensuring that employees are happy and productive means communicating clearly and keep- ing everyonein the know. What's more, according to a recent Microsoft survey, newgenerationsentering the workforce enjoychatjust as much,if not more than, in-person conversation. The survey also found that remote workers value video calling nearly two times more than does a nonremote worker. Technology’s Role This is where technology can make Office appsbuilt in. Coordinatingall the technology for a group meetup can be challengbecause voice and video calling are built in. Business functions and conversa- tions can be hard to juggle: Integrate with third-party apps such as GitHub, AsanaandTrello. + Whenyou're a busy small-business owner, staying in the know and tracking deadlines while not in the office is important: The Teams mobile experience is rich—letting you chat, video call, view documents and colJaboratejust asif you were in theoffice with yourteam. or break a small business's success. Keeping workers (including yourself) engaged andexcited can some- and video meetings, and everything a memes, emojis and GIFs to break For example, chat, files, apps, voice small business needs can be brought into one hub for communication and. collaboration with Microsoft Teams, a chat-based workspace within Microsoft 365. Here’s a look at someof the problems such system can solve: + Communication can be complicated: Now, conversations can be organized simply into Teams and then channels, and organized by department or times seem tough: So create custom downbarriers andkeep workfun. Free Software Perhapsthebest newsis that Micro- soft just released a new, free version of Teamsfor up to 300 people, built to help small businesses grow, scale and engage their teams. It can solve communication troubles by providing seven significantservices: 1. Unlimited chat messages andsearch project. New employees canfeel a little lost: Its easy for them to learn what the team is working on and ramp up quickly because past conversations, files andactivity are in Teams. If you step away for a moment, you canlose the thread of the conversation: Get threaded,persistent chat that createsa platform for quick communication that’s easy to catch up on. Searching for a document can be time consuming and you may not even besure you have the right ver- 2. Guest access for 3. Built-in audio and videocalling group, andfull team 4. 10GBofteamfile storage + 2GB/ userof personalstorage 5, Integrated Office Online—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote 6. Unlimited app integrations with 140+ business apps 7. Built on top of Microsoft's secure, globalinfrastructure. Learn More For further facts, visit aka.ms/ freeteams. --- PHOTOS --- File: 20190816-142234-20190816-142233-86398.pdf.jpg --- FILES --- File: 20190816-142233-86398.pdf