Being in business is a naturally competitive landscape. Your very goal is to succeed over your peers in winning over potential customers in whatever market you find yourself in. This has always been the case, but in the digital age that people today find themselves in, things are even more competitive due to the constant speed and regularity at which technological advancements are made. Today you might be on the top of your game, but tomorrow your competitors are using something new to give them the edge that you had no idea even existed. At the end of the day, while competition is an undeniable aspect of being in business, it‘s far from the only aspect – constantly worrying about what your competition might be doing better than you isn‘t a productive mentality to adopt.
In light of this, what you might want to do instead is to research technologies that have had the greatest amount of success in office environments and go about implementing those, giving your employees and your business a solid foundation upon which to work. While not all of these will be unheard of, the wealth of new technology that is consistently available might have made the utility of more common methods worth emphasising. More common methods being more practical than flashier new entries simply means you could be saving money on a more well-established product, after all.
The Lasting Utility of Microsoft Office
At home or at work, the usefulness and utility of Office 365 cannot be overstated. Having the ability to craft whatever type of document that the situation requires, offline and easily transferrable through a variety of means, makes it an indispensable tool. At work especially, where so much of the daily tasks revolve around documents, you want the entire plethora of documents you‘ll be working with to be easily accessible and on-hand. As mentioned previously, this is one of the more basic tools in your prospective toolbox, but that doesn‘tmake it any less valuable. It‘s an asset that has enormous utility,and while it‘s easy to take for granted, finding yourself suddenly without it would likely lead to a lot of disruption.
While it‘s easy to think of the number of people and employees who regularly use Word to write reports, essays, contracts, or just about anything else, the other features can sometimes go less mentioned. That doesn‘t make them any less useful or indeed used, however. PowerPoint has seen a widespread usagein its time, especially in businesses where it can prepare presentations from someone in any position – it’s accessible and effective. Meanwhile, its relative Excel might see less presentational use, but behind closed doors, it‘s a powerhouse of organisational software. Excel is used in such a variety of fields, from accounting to simple administration, that it‘s something you would manage to find a use for regardless of the market your business is in.
The Utility of File-Sharing Technology
While Microsoft Office has incredible utility and versatility throughout the office, there will be times where specific convenience is what you‘ll value most, more specifically, the ability for your employees to share and collaborate on documents at a rapid pace. In this instance, you might turn your gaze towards the realm of file–sharing technology, where you can cut out the back and forth of staff sending documents to each other for edits and instead have them work on it remotely at the same time. This is something that you might have already found incredibly useful throughout the coronavirus pandemic and its ensuing restrictions, especially if your workforce had moved to a working from home model where their ability to interact with each other in person was removed. This can also be incredibly useful if the document in question is one of excessive length or detail where there are different aspects that could be done simultaneously to save time.
Additionally, while you‘re thinking of things that you might have had to adjust or change due to the impact of the pandemic, you might also consider how you go about your meetings. The shift from physical meetings to virtual meetings may indeed be one you‘re already familiar with, but it might still feel to you like a change that only brought negatives with it, instead of focusing on the benefits it has to offer. With a virtual meeting in place instead of a physical one, the day is left undisrupted, and your employees don‘t have to relocate, meaning that their workflow won‘t be as affected and, in fact, can still be conducted (albeit to a slightly lesser degree) while the meeting is going on.