The Workplace Evolution, published by Harvard Business Review, found at 78% of senior executives believe that a modern workplace strategy very important to company performance. However, only 31% think their company is forward-looking enough in its approach to workplace strategies, processes, and technologies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has driven a rapid transition to remote working and video-based communications and collaboration. It has proven to many businesses that new ways of working are both practical and desirable, not only within the company but also with customers, suppliers, and partners.

We have extensive experience planning and implementing Modern Workplace Digital Transformation. We have in-depth experience of the Microsoft Modern Workplace approach and technologies. However, the core principals apply equality to other technologies including Google G-Suite, Cisco WebEx, Slack etc.

Our services focus on two key areas: Cultural Change and Technology adoption.

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Microsoft Modern Workplace Cultural Change

The SomerfordChange (c) Microsoft Modern Workplace Culture Change service uses our proven five step process:

1. Baseline: Through a series of workshops and meetings with business leaders understand the current culture, processes, and ways of working. Together with pain points and strategy.
2. Art of the Possible: Using the baseline information and our extensive experience of modern workplace best practices, we provide recommendations on what to implement and why, delivered as a presentation and report.
3. Effecting Change: Provides the strategies and tactics necessary to successfully implement the “art of the possible” recommendations. This has a strong focus on the leadership and cultural changes required to drive effective adoption of the new “modern workplace” ways of working. Again, delivered as a presentation and report.
4. Delivering the Modern Workplace: Helps you successfully implement the modern workplace change program. Working closely with business leaders, IT, program management and HR throughout the execution of the program. Delivered as regular meetings to review progress, and recommend and assist with tactics and actions, such as communication, training, and leadership adoption.
5. Optimising the Modern Workplace: Reviews the outcomes of the initial program and recommends next steps to refine and improve best practices and adoption.

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Microsoft Modern Workplace Technology Adoption

The SomerfordChange (c) Microsoft Modern Workplace Technology Advisory service builds on our proven five step change process to help you choose and adopt the enabling technologies based on your business needs.

There are two technology platform approaches to building the Modern Workplace:

1. Single Platform: We advocate the single platform approach, based on Microsoft Modern Workplace, where either your organisation has a strong existing Microsoft investment, or you are planning a completely new platform. The major benefit of this approach is all the different tools in the platform are tightly integrated, have a consistent user experience, roadmaps are in synchronisation, and can be managed from a single console.
2. Best of Breed: Can make sense for organisations with a range of platforms already deployed, where additional components can be integrated to create a modern workplace.

Bringing together our five-step process across both cultural change and technology we help you realise the benefits of a Microsoft Modern Workplace based on the pillars below. We will advise on which tools to use, how to implement them and drive adoption, based on a thorough understanding of your business. One of our key strengths in combining business acumen with technology “art of the possible”.

These pillars, or building blocks, can be used with employees, partners, and customers. We will work with you to select which to focus on, based on your business needs:

Category	Current Workplace	Modern Workplace
Business Management	Standalone tools include CRM, sales, marketing, service, finance, operations, commerce, and HR. Resulting in complex integrations, silos, duplication, and hard to use.	Microsoft Dynamics 365 as the core platform integrated across CRM, sales, marketing, service, finance, operations, commerce, HR and all the other pillars. Resulting in far more joined up platforms that deliver greater business velocity and innovation.
Collaboration and Communication	Multitude of disconnected processes and tools Email focussed, leading to slower and more siloed collaboration, with ad-hoc mobile and social instant messaging Separate phone and video tools for calling and meetings.	Microsoft Teams as the predominant communication and collaboration tool. Based on organisation wide guidelines of how to use Teams, for example standard Teams structures for projects, customers, and groups. Focussing collaborative text, file, voice, and video collaboration within Teams breaks down silos and increases collaboration velocity and quality. Key cultural change is away from email, to Teams.
Connecting People	A multitude of disconnect tools to connect employees to their organisation, including Intranet, email communications, video broadcasters, etc.	Microsoft Viva Connections provides a single place for employees to access announcements, live and recorded events, company information including documentation, policies, handbooks, etc, and organisation wide social forums. Accessed either via web browser or integrated within Teams. The integrated approach helps employees feel more connected to the organisation.
Data Driven Business	Lots of ad-hoc reports and spreadsheets, manually created, frequently changing in what is presented and lacking consistent a “single-source-of-truth”. Hard and slow to make data driven decisions.	Microsoft Power Business Intelligence (PowerBI) pulling data real-time from across your organisation, including non-Microsoft platforms and presenting in dashboards, with AI created insights. Enabling quick and accurate data driven decision making. Key cultural change is away from ad-hoc reporting and analytics, to more structured “run the business” set of dashboards and analytics.
Document Collaboration	Documents, such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel are emailed back and forth and edited offline. Slow collaboration and version control issues	Documents are co-authored online, using Office 365 co-authoring tools in desktop and mobile apps and browser based, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and SharePoint, with offline synchronization for mobile workers. Ensuring there is only one version while improving collaboration quality and speed. Key cultural change is to stop emailing files and instead co-author files.
Knowledge and Expertise	Knowledge and expertise are spread across the organisation, often hard to find information and people on specific topics. Maintaining knowledge is manual on the organisation’s Intranet	Microsoft Viva Topics uses AI to organise information and expertise into topics, making it far easier to find knowledge and experts, and far easier to keep this information organised. The information is gathered from all sources across the organisation and accessed from either web browser or integrated within Teams.
Learning and Development	Learning resources are frequently distributed across the organisation and often lack full integration with complete learning management system, making it hard to give employees customised learning and track their progress.	Microsoft Viva Learning provides a central hub for learning where people can discover, share, assign, and learn from content across the organisation – including LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, third-party content providers, and the organisation’s own custom content. Accessed either via web browser or integrated within Teams it helps make learning a natural part people’s day.
Productivity and wellbeing	Insights into employee wellbeing and productivity is heavily reliant on periodic surveys and ad-hock manager interaction.	Microsoft Viva Insights provides real-time personal insights to individuals and organisational insights to managers. This helps them with both wellbeing and productivity.
Processes	Many manual processes that are time consuming, error prone, and not followed.	Microsoft PowerAutomate is used to automate processes across the organisation, irrespective if they Microsoft tool based or not. This improves productivity, compliance, and accuracy.
Security	Separate systems with unique logins and password vulnerability, which are complex to manage and secure. Resulting user frustration and risk of data loss, disruption, and ransom.	Zero Trust and Single Sign-On (SSO) with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) across all systems, with a joined-up security system keeping the platforms safe and easy to use.
Task management	Ad-hoc across emails, meeting minutes, presentations, spreadsheets, and individual lists.	Microsoft Planner and ToDo as organisation wide task management for groups and individuals. Supplemented by Microsoft Lists, Project, and DevOps for professional program management. All integrated with Microsoft Teams. Delivering clear tracking and better, more on time, completion. Key cultural change is away from ad-hock task management, to organisation wide standard approach.
Tools	Bespoke tools for the organisation that require IT or vendors to create and maintain, resulting in higher costs and slower service velocity.	Microsoft PowerApps enabling many bespoke tools to be created and maintained using no code / low code automation, enabling both citizen and IT/vendor development and maintenance at a far higher service velocity and lower cost.
Workplace	Office focussed. Reliant on people to be in the office at desks and in meeting rooms. Resulting in high office costs, large CO2 footprint, and harder to recruit talent away from office centres.	Hybrid office and virtual. Delivering the same collaboration and cultural benefits of office working while combining the benefits of virtual working. The hybrid office can be effectively realised through a combination of: 1) The culture and tools described above 2) Creating a modern physical office workspace that incorporates the collaboration technology in meeting rooms and desktops, together with fresh and modern office and meeting spaces. 3) Equipping everyone who does remote working with the tools and knowledge to create a great video and audio experience for themselves and those they interact with

Note: Microsoft Modern workplace components are used for reference, however best of breed alternatives can be used.

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