A digital roadmap unlocks the full potential of Microsoft Teams at Japanese trading company

Our client is a Japanese trading company with businesses across diverse sectors, and has hundreds of affiliate companies and offices around the world. 

The challenge

Our client was on a mission to improve their digital employee experience, and with an investment in M365 already in place, upskilling their employees on tools already used was key to their success.

To understand employees’ working habits, their internal IT team used data from Microsoft Teams and other business tools, to visualize how their employees were working and identify working patterns. When reviewing this data, it was evident that not all employees used what was on offer, with the usage of Microsoft Teams varying greatly between employees. Although the data was helpful, simply viewing it did not provide sufficient or consistent results, making it difficult to create effective improvement strategies that would improve their digital employee experience.

In addition to this, their IT department was also responsible for managing the adoption of M365 and faced three challenges:

• Challenge 1: Handover due to organisational change – With staff changing roles regularly, new starters often lacked a comprehensive handover with knowledge of the tools used lost over time.

• Challenge 2: Limited capacity to promote the use of business tools – The IT team was overwhelmed with numerous tasks, leaving no time to thoroughly plan a single improvement initiative or review the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle with a fresh perspective.

• Challenge 3: Shifting perception from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams – Our client had previously used Skype for Business as their primary chat tool and viewed Microsoft Teams as a like-for-like replacement. Given that Microsoft Teams was launched early in its creation, many employees were not aware of the continuous improvements released throughout the years, which resulted in a negative perception of the tool and limited adoption.

The solution: A digital roadmap

With our client’s challenges identified, Engage Squared Japan supported them by developing a digital roadmap to encourage better working habits and the adoption of Microsoft Teams. We did this by:

• Step 1: Establishing a clear vision for Microsoft Teams usage within the company – We worked very closely with the project lead to present multiple scenarios that showcased the potential of Microsoft Teams. Throughout these workshops we worked to ensure our client had a deep understanding of the Microsoft Teams and identified key scenarios where it could be fully utilized for their employees.

• Step 2: Facilitating a workshop for innovative proposals – We developed 5 persona patterns based on real user interviews and organised a workshop to generate fresh and creative ideas on the working habits that Microsoft Teams creates and how people could use it. By empathizing with users’ expectations and challenges related to Microsoft Teams, we developed specific implementation measures that aligned with the way our organisation worked day-to-day.

• Step 3: Summarize measures and create a roadmap – To address the challenge of knowledge not being passed on, we categorised and labelled the proposed measures throughout a roadmap. Together with the client, we developed a roadmap that incorporated these measures.

Example of labelling:

1. Reaching out to unused users (expanding user base)
2. Establishing communication rules (promoting casual communications)

By refining the roadmap according to the current and successor staff’s needs, we created a practical plan that gained buy-in from the successor staff.

The result

Developing this roadmap was a critical first step in our client’s M365 journey and allowed us to connect the dots between their working habits and identify a set of practical initiatives that would help them realise their broader goals. We are delighted that this roadmap is undergoing implementation from the project lead with positive feedback already being given.

We believe that the visualization of work styles will only become valuable and meaningful when the proposed measures are implemented, serving as a catalyst to improve the employee experience by ensuring full utilization of Microsoft Teams and other business tools for effective job performance by all employees.