How Office 365 supports future business models

This article first appeared in the Autumn 2017 issue of The Record.

In the new digital age, many organisations worldwide face daily challenges to their value proposition and disruption to their market position. Such disruptions and challenges require a rapid evolution of new, agile business models in a way previously thought unnecessary or impossible. It is no longer a given that a traditional company can or will survive in the global economy without the ability to rapidly adapt to changing market conditions.

Across most market sectors new competitors are launching their products almost weekly, while traditional products no longer retain market traction. Service products driven by digital technologies are driving a faster market dynamic than at any time in our history. Without market traction, profits can be easily undermined. Research and development takes on a new meaning as new products need to be generated faster to remain competitive in the modern industrial landscape. Alongside all this, business leaders are working hard to determine new business models that meet both the agility and speed required to succeed. This is not a time for the faint-hearted.

At the heart of this business landscape, organisations require business insights and knowledge in ways unimagined even a few years ago. Any organisation not only needs to be able to pinpoint its skills, resources, latest content and authoritative documents at speed whilst trusting what they consume but it also needs to discuss, deliberate, draw on experience and research and make informed business decisions fast. For this to happen, collaboration technology solutions are evolving in parallel whilst also combining into a powerful, flexible portfolio to support everything from business transformation to new product development.

Office 365 is at the forefront of underpinning organisational evolution in the global business landscape through its innovative approach to business challenges. Let’s take video for example. The moving image is the fastest way to convey meaning, context, knowledge and learning and is already ubiquitous in social networks. The deployment of Office 365 Stream allows Morgan & Wolfe clients to work fast by uploading video content on the move, define quickly who needs to consume the video content whilst the audio content is now fully searchable by others who need to get involved. Video means our client teams are better informed, more knowledgeable and trained than at any time in the past. It is this situation dynamic which feeds into so many new and future business scenarios.

Consider product development. Office 365 Teams means our customer product teams can start agile discussions from across the globe, on the move or in their local hub, sharing information and insights that allow for informed decisions quickly as needed. With globalisation and new markets emerging almost daily, it is exactly the liberation of the knowledge worker through imaginative Office 365 collaborative solutions that combine to make the difference between future success and failure.

In a fast-paced business world, our business clients face a challenge of seeking to remain in sync with regulations and compliance whilst remaining profitable. Our new breed of futureproof intranet provides secure and structured collaborative hubs which ensure that business policy is consumed and adhered to 24/7 at the heart of the organisational collaborative process. All this underpins a modern and vibrant organisational culture which desires to share, is open to change and flexible to new ideas whilst leveraging the wealth of diverse knowledge that defines its years of market and product success.

Whilst it is an exciting time to be in business, it is also an amazing time to be involved in the business of collaborative technology to ensure our clients succeed for years to come. The collaborative cloud and those who use it well are here to stay.