Rethinking workplaces from scratch

Staff num­bers are increas­ing and you need to install a new work­sta­tion. It’s not just a ques­tion of ensur­ing that the new team mem­ber can find every­thing he needs for his job. It’s also an oppor­tu­nity to look where processes and pro­ce­dures can be opti­mised.

Five fea­tures of a mod­ern IT sys­tem – whether start-​up, SME or cor­po­rate group

Espe­cially for small and medium-​sized enter­prises, cloud ser­vices offer many pos­si­bil­i­ties and advan­tages:

Phon­ing over the Inter­net

More and more peo­ple now only make phone calls using their mobile phone or via the Inter­net. At the end of 2016, Deutsche Telekom reported 98,000 fewer tra­di­tional land­line con­nec­tions in Ger­many. ISDN is being dis­con­tin­ued and in a few years, tele­phony will be entirely based on the Inter­net pro­to­col. So why not switch to an IP-​based tele­phone sys­tem with all the fea­tures, ben­e­fits and inte­gra­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties it offers?

Think­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion through log­i­cally to the end

If the infra­struc­ture is avail­able, why not use tele­phone or video con­fer­ences? How­ever, it’s impor­tant to think the con­cept of uni­fied com­mu­ni­ca­tions through to the end. It’s not enough to be able to see and talk with each other across long dis­tances. What’s needed is inte­gra­tion with exist­ing tools, such as Microsoft Out­look. The soft­ware makes it pos­si­ble to plan and set up online meet­ings via an inter­face.

Don’t be con­tent with half a Cloud

Since the email sys­tem for the new work­sta­tion is already in the Cloud, why stop half-​way? Microsoft Office 365 offers the look & feel and the offline fea­tures of a tra­di­tional, local instal­la­tion. Office 365 can be installed on up to 15 devices, irre­spec­tive of man­u­fac­turer or oper­at­ing sys­tem. Allow­ing smart­phones and tablets to become part of the office, in case the lap­top is not to hand at any time.

Not just alone – be part of a team in the Cloud

What’s true for an indi­vid­ual work­sta­tion is even more applic­a­ble to entire teams. Doc­u­ment shar­ing is a first exam­ple. If all employ­ees need to access cus­tomer data such as addresses, pur­chased prod­ucts or call-​centre inci­dents, you need a col­lab­o­ra­tive solu­tion such as Microsoft Dynam­ics CRM. As a Cloud solu­tion, Dynam­ics CRM is eas­ily scal­able, for exam­ple when sea­sonal peaks arise.

Focus on your work instead of doing main­te­nance tasks

Apps have set a new stan­dard: Installing soft­ware needs to be sim­ple and quick. IT man­agers also expect this now. Cloud-​based solu­tions help them in this. The days when new employ­ees had to wait days for Admin to set up their PC are gone. They can get started from day one.

The new team mem­ber now has every­thing he needs. Online. Just a few offline mat­ters still need to be sorted, such as pens, paper and a wel­com­ing bunch of flow­ers. IPDNOW makes mod­ern IT a breeze. Take a look here to see how it’s done.