Gartner predicted in May that IT spending will plummet 8% in 2020 as CIOs slash budgets in response to the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. But that doesn’t mean organizations will abandon their digital transformation initiatives altogether. Quite the opposite. Gartner predicts money spent on cloud services will increase 19%. That’s because, according to chief forecaster John-David Lovelock, “Companies have to be more digital than they had planned to be.” Rather than investing in new hardware or infrastructure upgrades, they’ll be looking to add software that improves efficiency of their existing technologies, maximizing the return on investment (ROI).
Kollective’s enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) for Microsoft Teams is a great example of this. Many businesses have shifted their communication strategies and are using collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams to share important messages across their organizations via video. While Teams is ideal for one-to-many meetings, broadcasting live and on-demand video to thousands of employees without the help of a complimentary technology like Kollective ECDN can easily throttle your network and cause buffering, poor user experience or even event failure.
Here’s why seamless communications are important and how they can impact your Microsoft Teams ROI.
Poor Communications Cost You More
According to “The Cost of Poor Communications” study, “a survey of 400 companies with 100,000 employees each cited an average loss per company of $62.4 million per year because of inadequate communication to and between employees.” Conversely, Best Buy found that higher employee engagement scores led to better financial performance. For every 0.1 percentage point employee engagement increased, individual stores saw a $100,000 uptick in annual operating income.
Additional research compiled by People Managing People shows that engaged employees:
- Increase productivity by 17%
- Increase customer ratings by 10%
- Increase sales by 20%
- Increase profitability by 21%
- Reduce absenteeism by 41%
Unfortunately, the latest research from Gallup found that U.S. employee engagement suffered its most significant drop since 2000 with only 31% of employees feeling actively engaged in June versus 38% in May. Although Gallup attributes much of the decline to economic, public health and social concerns, workplace communications have also played a role. They stated that “employers have taken their focus off – or have been unclear in – their plans, as businesses within many states began to reopen in June.”
Improve Employee Engagement with Video Communications
The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) suggests one of the best ways to increase engagement is to supply employees with the right tools for the job. Don MacPherson, a partner in the employee engagement practice at Aon in Minneapolis said, “Companies with employees who have both the psychological investment in their jobs and the resources to adapt to a changing world are better positioned to survive disruptive market conditions.”
When it comes to communication, Microsoft Teams is a premier enterprise video collaboration tool that can be used to broadcast corporate messages and facilitate team meetings or one-on-one conversations. By equipping all members of your organization with Teams, you make it easier to stay engaged and thus, more productive.
The caveat is that your network must have the bandwidth to reliably and securely scale video across the enterprise. Disruptions to service and poor-quality audio or video can lead to system mistrust, making it difficult to achieve full adoption.
Assessing network readiness is a key component when preparing to scale Microsoft Teams – especially with physical distancing measures in place that will require employees to stream more videos from their desks as opposed to conference rooms or auditoriums. The bandwidth you had before COVID may not be enough to accommodate the new normal.
Why Kollective ECDN for Microsoft Teams?
Upgrading your network with new hardware or infrastructure is expensive and resource dependent. And, it doesn’t align with the directive to embrace digital transformation. Kollective ECDN for Microsoft Teams is the right solution to improve employee engagement. It is an innovative cloud-based solution that layers on top of your existing network and uses browser-based peering technology to deliver broadcast-quality video to all employees without impacting business critical applications.
If your organization has already invested in Microsoft 365, you have access to Teams and Stream today – even if you aren’t actively using them. Rather than paying for a secondary collaboration tool or spendy event production services, you can leverage Teams Live Events in combination with Kollective ECDN to engage employees and generate a greater return on your M365 investment.
Read How Kollective is Being Used in Microsoft Technology and Experience Centers Worldwide
Kollective ECDN is so effective, even Microsoft uses it to demonstrate the scalability of Teams and Stream in its Technology and Experience Centers worldwide.
“At Experience Center Asia, through enabling the use of Kollective Technology for Microsoft Teams live events, we not only showcase our commitment to partners and innovation, we also clearly demonstrate to the market how the Future of Work may look like,” said Microsoft’s Rebecca Hick, Director of Experience Center Asia.
Read more in our new press release.