Last week, we held our Digital Productivity in the Workplace Seminar. There was a lot of great insight into how tools like Office 365 are changing the workplace for the better.  We’ll be making presentation slides from the seminar available soon, but we wanted to share a summary of each presentation with you now.  ‘The opportunity to innovate, differentiate and thrive’ Robert-Jan Gerrits, Digital Transformation and Unified Communications Strategist at Microsoft  According to Microsoft, digital transformation is ‘the use of digital competencies to drive disruptive changes’ using technology such as the cloud and enterprise mobility. The driving forces behind this are: Data Analytics Cloud But it’s not just about technology. Business leaders and models need to change in order to embrace it. Business models are becoming less about physical assets and more about concepts, and using the cloud to drive them.  ‘Digital transformation in the workplace’  James Butler, Managing Director at Cloud Business 50% of the workforce will be millennials in 2020. James asked what’s their psychology, and what will this mean for the workplace. First up, the psychology:  74% of millennials want flexible work schedules.  88% prefer a collaborative work culture. 69% believe office attendance is unnecessary on a regular basis. 84% want to make a positive impact. Next, how the workplace can change: To encourage a collaborative workspace, you can use forms, mini apps, and social apps like Skype for Business and Yammer. You can make searching for people and workloads in your organisation easier with apps like Delve, SharePoint and a company directory. To ensure security, you can move your servers to the cloud where compliance and systems are updating automatically in the background. Preparing for a digital workplace doesn’t have to be a major investment.  ‘Tools to enhance the digital experience: DocuSign’ Elaine Pakes, Microsoft and CSP Partner Manager EMEA DocuSign is a tool you can integrate with Office 365 to collect legally-binding electronic signatures (known as e-signatures) and add them to your documents. You can do this from any integrated device.  You can check out what documents have been viewed, how many times they’ve been viewed, and what has and hasn’t been signed. You can also add an extra level of authentication to the signing process, such as text message confirmation, voice authentication or single sign-on. Using e-signatures can lead to: Increased productivity. 86% of documents are returned on the same day, and there’s a 25% faster turnaround on agreements. Reduced operating costs. Getting rid of the printing, inking and packaging processes saves an average of £27 per document. Being Greener. 20 billion pieces of paper have been saved. ‘Tools to enhance the digital experience: Hyperfish’ David Bishop, Senior Consultant Hyperfish finds missing company directory information and populates it in Office 365. A chat bot communicates with users via email or Skype for Business, asking them for their information. They can share this from a desktop or a mobile device, making the process quick and casual.   Companies can use this and Office 365’s other applications and tools to their advantage. Other tools include: Skype for Business for having regular meetings with staff who are based in different parts of the country, or other countries, without having to travel.  SharePoint and OneDrive for making sure users have access to only the documents they need at the right times. Yammer for quickly sharing information across a company. Multi-factor authentication for setting up a secure way of using a network from external devices. Digital Forms for digitising the data collection process. Boost Intranet, Cloud Business’ own intranet in a box service, for improving the visuals and navigation of your SharePoint intranet. Delve for finding information relevant to the people you work with and speak to the most.    Driving a digital workplace We believe technology should enable talented people to do their best work. Services, applications and support should be easy to access and use on any device. All of the speakers at our Seminar reinforced this point, and the applications they presented can all be used to drive a digital workplace.  If there’s anything you’d like to know about cloud computing or digital transformation, feel free to get in touch with us.