Microsoft Teams is a collaborative tool that allows staff to interact with one another in a chat-based workspace. It helps people communicate, collaborate and improves productivity. It’s a great tool for virtually any kind of business, including charities and non-profits.
Replace Skype, Slack, Messenger and More with One Single Tool
What communication and collaboration tools is your organisation currently using? There’s a huge number of different possibilities: Google Hangouts, WhatsApp, Skype, Slack, Messenger, DropBox, and more. If you’re using more than two or three different apps for these purposes, workflow can get unwieldy pretty quickly. People are constantly switching between different apps, looking for documents and conversations, trying to get everything they need in one place.
What if you could replace all of those different tools with one single app? You can by switching to Microsoft Teams. With one single tool, your staff can chat, use video conferencing, upload and share documents, and even edit documents right within the Teams tool. No more switching between different apps, or trying to import files from one app to another. Collaborating is so much more effective when everyone’s working within the same single interface. It’s even possible for multiple people to edit the same document at once, and see edits other people make in real time.
There are also full mobile versions of Microsoft Teams for both Android and iOS devices. Employees can stay in touch when they’re working out of the office, and still have all the Teams functionality they’d have on their PC or laptop, including messaging, video calls, and file editing.
Improved Productivity and Focus
The ability to replace multiple tools and apps with Microsoft Teams has several benefits, but one of the most important is simply that it helps users be more productive. There’s always a certain amount of time lost when switching between different apps, but with Teams this is eliminated.
Another benefit is that Teams organises information into channels. Each channel contains only information that’s specific to itself. So, if you’re working within a particular channel, you’re not getting side-tracked with information that’s not relevant to the task at hand. Users can focus their attention on what they’re doing, rather than having to waste time organising their work space to remove unnecessary information.
Add Extra Functionality with Integrated 3rd-Party Apps
Microsoft Teams is extremely versatile, and there’s a huge amount of functionality within this one tool. For some organisations, of course, there may be highly specialised functions that Teams doesn’t provide.
Luckily, Microsoft Teams allows you to integrate 3rd-party apps, so whatever your organisation needs to do, there’s a way to get it done within the Teams interface. Teams users never have to leave the Teams interface to complete tasks, and everything is done right in the same shared environment.
Increased Transparency
Transparency is often highly important for charities and non-profits, so it’s good to be able to use tools that have that transparency built in. For many organisations, it’s challenging to make sure every user has access to all the information they need. For charities it’s even more important that information is easily accessible, and automatically recorded.
All of this is easier with Microsoft Teams, because every member of a team has access to everything that’s posted within it. And since Microsoft Teams is part of Office 365, every scrap of data is stored securely in the cloud. Nothing can be lost or accidentally deleted, and everything that users do within Teams is recorded.
Microsoft Teams is Affordable
All organisations want to keep their overheads low, but for charities and non-profits in particular, keeping costs down is paramount. This can sometimes make it difficult to get the tools you really need to thrive.
This is one reason why Microsoft Teams is so perfect for charities. If your organisation is already using Office 365, you get to use Microsoft Teams at no additional charge. It’s already there, waiting for you to use it.
Don’t have Office 365? There’s still a free version of Microsoft Teams available. It’s missing the premium features, of course, but the free version is a good starting place to figure out if it’s something you want to use in the long term.
Registered Charities Get Perks for Using Office 365!
Still not convinced? There are some amazing perks that registered charities get for using Office 365. Every year, charities that use the products get $5,000 in Azure credit from Microsoft as a donation. They can also use Mailbox for free, and can use the Office 365 package at a discount.
So, if you’re not using Microsoft Teams yet, it’s definitely worth giving it a try. There are so many benefits that make it a great option for charities. Teams helps you maximise productivity while reducing costs and redundancies—and that makes it perfect for organisations that need to do more with less.
