How Associations Benefit with Microsoft Blog Series: Teams
Why a system built on the Microsoft Platform is the right fit for associations. We’re introducing a new series about Microsoft features and how Altai Systems has adapted them for associations. Odds are that you – or someone close to you – is using Teams. That may not have been the case 18 months ago. Microsoft saw a growth of 233% of Teams users since April 2020. That’s right. Triple-digit increase from 75 million users in April 2020 to 250 million users in July 2021! Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella was not exaggerating when he said that we’ve seen ‘two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.’ But that’s old news now, right? You’ve been on Teams. You’ve adapted. You’ve embraced it. It’s changed how you work with your colleagues in real and tangible ways. But what if there’s more? Teams can extend beyond your internal communication. Associations are about collaboration. Sharing of content and information. Networking. Building a community. What better way to collaborate with your members than with the tool you’re already using to collaborate with your co-workers? And with Microsoft Teams you can do this. Everyone has different collaboration needs. Your Board or other leadership committees need extensive conversations and shared access to develop materials, discuss policy changes, or vote on action items. By extending the collaborating tool you’re already using to team up with your members, you’re eliminating one more distraction to your day with another tool. One productivity study showed 52% of workers’ time is spent dealing with distractions – including using multiple tools for meetings and searching for information from colleagues. By bringing your leadership into the Teams fold, your network of resources becomes centralized and less distracting. That’s where Altai can help make that connection even easier. Altai’s system is designed to leverage the data in your CRM to create automated workflows to populate designated Teams appropriately. Creating a new committee in your CRM to oversee your next annual meeting? We’ll create a Teams for it. A new term for your board of governors? We’ll add and remove members from the team based on their roles. Worried that these members aren’t in your Active Directory or don’t have a Microsoft email? No worries, Microsoft has solved for that. Community has become more important than ever in these evolving times. And that can mean different things to different people as we adjust to a ‘new normal’. But the days of not prioritizing online collaboration are gone. Online conversation, real-time document sharing and updating, and leveraging the tools your members are already using are here to stay. By turning to Teams for your collaboration tool, you’re not only extending the tool you’re likely already using – you’re extending the tool your members are likely already using as well. Talk about no learning curve needed! And to further entice you, here are just a few Microsoft Teams features you and your members will benefit from: Meeting recordings and transcriptions (Perfect for those minutes that your bylaws require!) Share an email to the Teams channel directly from Outlook (Whether you’re sharing a compliment from a satisfied member or troubleshooting a response to the latest fire you’re putting out, you don’t even have to leave your email.) Create tasks lists for your working committee (The organized team member will love this and the unorganized team member will quickly be a convert!) Move the conversation to breakout rooms (Has your committee turned into multiple subcommittees? You can still start and end in the same place and leverage the breakout rooms in between.) Speaking of breakouts, Teams has a channel for that. (Those subcommittees will inevitably last longer than just a breakout room session, right?) Set your status. (You want to be available, but maybe not always available? The Do Not Disturb status is your friend.) SharePoint creates your library of resources. (Libraries have been around for centuries because they work. SharePoint creates that library at your fingertips.) We’re committed to Microsoft Teams because it works. And we’ve built our integrations to our web portal and our platform to make it work for your association as well. Contact us to learn more about how Altai can personalize your Teams experience.
