Workplaces have evolved rapidly over the last few years. Employee and customer needs have changed, with organisations challenged with adapting their workplace to better suit them. Add in a global pandemic, a shift to flexible working patterns and the explosion of technology, and it’s no surprise the ‘modern’ workplace looks thoroughly different to those of the past.

The rapid change to modern work easily causes whiplash. Even systems bought in the last five years could now be out of date, leaving many organisations out of touch.

However, outdated solutions then lead to inefficient operations that negatively impact customer experience and profit margins.

The Workplace Evolution, published by Harvard Business Review, found that 78% of senior executives in enterprise businesses believe fostering a modern workplace strategy is essential. However, only 31% think their company is forward-thinking enough to do so – meaning the majority are left coping with the consequences of their outdated infrastructure.

Microsoft’s Modern Workplace technology solves this issue. It enables businesses to get the tools they need to facilitate productive, collaborative working, with minimal disruption during the transition.

In this blog, we explore everything included in the Microsoft Modern Workplace and how each tool benefits your business.

What’s included in the Microsoft Modern Workplace? An overview

The Microsoft Modern Workplace includes a suite of Microsoft technologies and productivity applications that harness the power of the cloud.

Each solution supports modern ways of working, facilitates digital transformation and keeps your business secure.

Microsoft Modern Workplace applications improve employee productivity and satisfaction by creating seamless communications across the business. They also promote collaboration while maintaining the security and integrity of systems and data for a modernised approach to working.

Microsoft’s Modern Workplace includes all these tools:

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 is a comprehensive suite of productivity tools and cloud-based services designed to empower businesses of all sizes. It includes familiar Office applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and more. These are the tools any business needs to thrive, and your staff will already be hugely familiar with.

Additionally, it offers advanced security features, cloud storage and business intelligence capabilities.

By leveraging Microsoft 365, businesses can significantly enhance their productivity and collaboration. The cloud-based nature of the platform allows employees to access their files and work on documents from anywhere, on any device, fostering seamless teamwork and remote work capabilities.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams facilitates real-time communication, video conferencing and file sharing, streamlining collaboration and reducing the need for in-person meetings.

At its core, Teams provides a centralised hub for teams to chat and make calls. This eliminates the need for multiple tools and platforms, simplifying communication and reducing distractions. Teams also seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft 365 apps, such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, allowing teams to collaborate on documents in real-time and share files.

Beyond its communication capabilities, Teams empowers teams to manage their work effectively. It offers features like shared calendars, task management and file storage, enabling teams to track progress on projects. Additionally, Teams can be customised with various apps and integrations, expanding its functionality to suit specific business needs.

As such, it’s a significant tool for communication, no matter where your team members are based.

Microsoft SharePoint

Microsoft SharePoint is a collaboration and content management platform. It provides a centralised location for teams to store, manage and share documents, ensuring easy access and efficient collaboration. With its intuitive interface and robust features, SharePoint simplifies document management, reduces clutter and promotes knowledge sharing.

SharePoint also offers advanced search capabilities, allowing users to quickly find the information they need, improving productivity and decision-making.

In short, it’s a platform for better managing your company-wide documents and allowing staff to find them easily.

Microsoft OneDrive

Microsoft OneDrive is a cloud storage service that allows users to store, share and sync their files across different devices. It provides a convenient way to access your documents, photos and other files from anywhere with an internet connection. By doing so, it facilitates hybrid and remote working.

OneDrive is backed by robust security features, meaning that files are also protected against unauthorised access and data loss. This enables secure storage for your business, with files remaining accessible for users on-premises and remotely.

Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS)

Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) is a comprehensive suite of security and mobility management tools, designed to protect your organisation.

EMS offers robust identity and access management solutions, such as Microsoft Entra ID, to control who can access your organization’s resources. This helps prevent unauthorised access and data breaches, which is a risk businesses will increasingly face in the modern age.

EMS includes advanced threat protection capabilities, like Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, to detect and respond to cyber threats in real-time. This helps safeguard your organisation from malicious attacks and data loss.

EMS also empowers employees to work securely from anywhere with its mobile device management and application management features. This flexibility allows employees to work productively while ensuring that corporate data remains secure, even when accessed from personal devices.

This enables you to navigate the risks of the modern workplace, while maintaining the data you need to operate successfully.

Azure Active Directory

Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is a cloud-based identity and access management service that provides secure access to applications and resources. It serves as the foundation for the modern workplace, enabling organisations to manage user identities, passwords and access policies efficiently and securely.

Identity and access management is crucial currently, especially as businesses facing rising cyber threats and impersonation attempts through phishing.

Azure AD offers a wide range of features to protect your data from unauthorised users, such as multi-factor authentication. It also provides single sign-on (SSO) capabilities, allowing users to log in once to access multiple applications and services. This simplifies the login process, allowing staff to easily access the tools they need without barriers.

Power Platform

The Power Platform is a collection of tools designed to empower users to create custom apps, automate workflows and analyse data, without requiring extensive coding knowledge. It also enables businesses to embrace innovation and build custom solutions, which can fuel better working processes.

Power Platform consists of three key components:

• Power Apps: Allows users to build custom apps tailored to specific business needs. These apps can streamline processes, improve efficiency and enhance user experiences.
• Power Automate: Enables automation of repetitive tasks, such as data entry and report generation. This frees up valuable time for employees to focus on more strategic work.
• Power BI: Provides powerful data visualisation and analysis capabilities. It helps organisations gain insights from their data, make informed decisions and identify trends.

Depending on the needs of your organisation, each of these tools can have significant benefits for the modern workplace. This includes increasing productivity through automated processes, driving data visibility or finding bespoke fixes for working challenges.

Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 is a suite of cloud-based business applications designed to help organisations manage their operations more efficiently. It offers a range of solutions tailored to specific business needs, including customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), field service and more.

D365 empowers organisations to streamline processes, improve customer relationships and make data-driven decisions. By automating tasks and providing insights into business performance, D365 frees up employees to focus on strategic initiatives. It also addresses many obstacles of the modern workplace.

Azure

Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, provides a vast array of services that significantly support the modern workplace. It offers a flexible and scalable infrastructure, enabling businesses to host applications, store data and run virtual machines in the cloud. This eliminates the need for on-premises hardware and infrastructure, reducing costs and complexity.

Azure empowers organisations to embrace remote work and hybrid work models. By hosting applications and services on Azure, employees can access their work resources from anywhere with an internet connection. This flexibility enhances productivity and work-life balance. Azure also provides robust security features, such as identity and access management, data encryption and threat protection, safeguarding sensitive information and ensuring compliance with industry regulations.

Furthermore, Azure enables organisations to leverage cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and IoT. These technologies can automate tasks, improve decision-making and create innovative solutions.

Microsoft Viva

Microsoft Viva is a comprehensive employee experience platform that empowers employees and drives organisational success. By focusing on communication, learning and well-being, Viva helps organisations create a more engaged, productive, and fulfilling workplace.

Viva offers a suite of modules focused on different aspects of the employee experience:

• Viva Connections: Fosters a sense of community and belonging by providing a central hub for company news, culture and resources.
• Viva Insights: Leverages AI-powered insights to help employees understand their work patterns and improve their productivity.
• Viva Learning: Empowers employees to learn and develop new skills by offering access to curated learning content and training courses.
• Viva Topics: Helps employees find relevant information and expertise within the organisation, facilitating collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Each of these tools can allow you to improve engagement, communication and culture within your workplace, for both in-house and off-site teams.

Microsoft Copilot

One of the most significant changes in recent years is the explosion of AI in workplaces. By leveraging it, businesses can drive productivity, analyse data and save precious time.

Copilot is Microsoft’s AI-powered assistant, designed to revolutionise the way we work. Copilot is not just a tool; it’s a collaborative partner that adapts to your needs and learns from your interactions. It fosters creativity and empowers individuals to achieve more.

It seamlessly integrates with Microsoft 365 apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, providing intelligent assistance and automation.

With Copilot, users can generate text, translate languages, write different kinds of creative content, and answer your questions in an informative way. It can help draft emails, create presentations, analyse data and even write code.

By automating routine tasks and providing real-time assistance, Copilot frees up employees to focus on more strategic and creative work. It also enables you to keep up with emerging work trends, rather than fall behind your competitors.

Do I need every tool in Microsoft’s Modern Workplace?

While every tool within Microsoft Modern Workplace can deliver specific, valuable advantages to your business, the beauty of it is that it’s tailorable. You can pick the solutions that best address your requirements and challenges, helping you to build an ecosystem that works for your employees.

This means you can embrace modern working solutions on your own terms and in your own place, without having to force a drastic transition or overwhelm your budget.

Is Microsoft Modern Workplace secure?

All Microsoft applications are highly secure. Microsoft Security is also a leader in five Gartner Magic Quadrants.

Within Microsoft 365, the security stack gives us the insights to proactively defend against advanced threats, such as malware, phishing, and zero-day attacks as well as identity, app, data, and device protection with Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Intune, and Windows Information Protection.

The full suite of intelligent security products, backed by Microsoft Security Copilot include:

• Microsoft Defender: Depending on your licensing package, this includes Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Microsoft Defender for Business. All these products provide comprehensive threat protection, detection and response capabilities.
• Microsoft Sentinel: Combined with Defender XDR, Sentinel provides organisations with a unified Security Operations platform that extends security prevention, detection and response with a unified Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution.
• Microsoft Entra: Entra provides enhanced identity and access controls to your organisation. Covering AAD, ID governance, verified IDs and network access management controls.
• Microsoft Purview: This solution lets you understand and govern your data, providing greater visibility and safeguarding controls. The tools improve risk and compliance posture.
• Microsoft Priva: this suite of tools allows organisations to store, process and remove PII data to ensure compliance with regulations such as GDPR.
• Microsoft Intune: Intune is designed specifically to help businesses manage and secure all their endpoints in one central location. This includes cross platform endpoint management and Mobile Application Management to enforce a zero-trust security posture.

Why should you adopt a Modern Workplace?

In the last few years, businesses have faced unprecedented challenges, including tackling remote working, increased demand for data and the tidal wave of AI. All of these have required them to modernise to retain their edge.

if you opt for a traditional set up over a solution like Microsoft’s Modern Workplace, here are some of the pitfalls you’ll face:

• Disparate communication channels. Employees communicate through a variety of different channels. Messages are then lost in translation. But the Modern Workplace can provide visibility and control across your entire organisation’s communication.
• Stand-alone platforms. In a traditional setup, business management platforms are often implemented that have very limited integration and automation with each other. This makes the risk of error high and increases workload, while productivity fails.
• Data and team silos.  Teams have a habit of working in silos with limited visibility to other parts of the business, especially in a hybrid environment. Data is stored in numerous locations and access is restricted due to the setup. It means opportunities are missed and collaboration fails.
• Remote working. In the traditional workplace, Desktop PCs are commonly used. Not all employees have access to laptops or tablets which disables remote working, which is often seen as a must-have in today’s world. You risk losing talent and dissatisfying existing staff.
• Technology. Outdated has scalable limitations and won’t completely meet the needs of your employees. By switching to modern technology, you’ll improve agility, productivity and growth potential.

By switching to the Microsoft Modern Workplace, you’ll protect your business against future threats, increase scalability and keep everything working as one well-oiled machine.

Licensing options for the Modern Workplace

Microsoft often a number of licensing plans that can bring your business onto the Modern Workplace. These licenses will give you access to the tools included within the Modern Workplace, alongside additional benefits like enterprise-grade security.

In our data sheet, we break down the core licensing options for your business, what’s included in each and how to pick the best choice for your needs.