March 2020 | Working Over Distance Insights – As the COVID-19 pandemic bears down on the world and creates a ”new normal,” one thing that remains the same is RealFoundations’ (RF) commitment to providing service to clients and bringing innovative solutions to the industry. Because our business adopted a Modern Digital Workplace (‘MDW’) several years ago, we know how to get work done regardless of where we happen to be and have the ability to continue our work without disruption in these unprecedented times. If you are not familiar with the term, MDW is a collection of tools and ways of working that use social collaboration techniques to turn any place into a place where work gets done. At RF, our MDW is built on the Microsoft 365 Ecosystem and includes Teams, SharePoint, Yammer and Stream Video.
We believe that one of the most valuable things we can do now for clients is to help them likewise continue operating without interruption as much as possible (and hopefully set your company up for a better way of working longer term). The first step is determining how prepared your organization is to function in the current environment when workers are being sent home, even ordered to shelter-in-place, to protect everyone’s health. Where does your enterprise sit on the Work Over Distance (WOD) Maturity Model (see graphic below)?
- Do you have the right infrastructure, business practices and culture — or at least some of the key elements — in place so employees can work remotely, with a high level of efficiency, ensuring business continuity?
- Equally as important, do your employees have the ability to share what they know and transparently discuss projects and initiatives — or “work out loud” (WOL) — in online “places” such as Microsoft Teams or Yammer?
- Do they have 24/7/365 access to the information they need to maintain productivity, regardless of where they are physically?
RealFoundations’ Work Over Distance Maturity Model
If you’re not sure how well your company is positioned for working in this way or you know it falls short, RealFoundations can rapidly assess your environment, identify needs and help build out these capabilities with you. This is increasingly important for competitiveness in today’s non-stop world but critical in circumstances like those we are facing now. Maybe you want immediate, stopgap measures just to keep the enterprise functioning in coming months or perhaps you’re ready to move to a full MDW platform for the long-term (or you might have a vision for something between those two ends of the spectrum.) We can help.
The Power of Microsoft Teams
RealFoundations is uniquely positioned to help because the firm has extensive experience and a track record of success with working over distance and working out loud as a result of leveraging the robust Microsoft O365 ecosystem, centered around Microsoft Teams.
Teams is a single, unified platform for communication and collaboration, offering one-on-one and group chat, video conferencing, document collaboration, curation and exchange of organizational knowledge, file storage, application integration and more. In addition to enabling work over distance, the platform allows for an unprecedented level of organizational knowledge sharing through working out loud, so all team members can easily and continually share what they know, learn from each other and apply that in near real-time when serving clients.
“We run our business on Microsoft Teams, one of the world’s leading enterprise collaboration platforms. It’s a necessity for optimizing productivity because our clients and 400-plus employees are dispersed all over the world. Teams, Yammer, Stream and the other pieces of our collaboration ecosystem empower us to efficiently serve clients wherever they are physically located, significantly reducing travel while producing better business outcomes through knowledge sharing.”
— Chris Shaida, Chief Executive Officer, RealFoundations
Strengthen Your Capabilities Now
Our design-build-deploy methodology begins with an initial assessment of a company’s culture, technology, infrastructure and security governance program to determine readiness for working over distance and working out loud. There are five levels of readiness. At the least prepared end of the range is an enterprise that operates out of a single physical office and conducts business through face-to-face meetings, desktop technology with a thick client approach, and email and shared file servers for document storage.
At the most prepared end of the scale is the organization that’s comprehensively structured for and already operating according to WOD and WOL principles. Employees can always be very productive because they: 1) are equipped with encrypted devices that have 24-hour monitoring and threat protection; 2) have real-time access to external data sources and information; and 3) engage in technology-enabled, collaborative practices that include constant information and knowledge sharing, video meetings and more. They can complete their assignments anywhere and anytime, delivering what RF calls “place-independent work.”
Following the initial current-state assessment, RealFoundations analyzes the results and develops recommendations for a modern digital workplace design as well as a roadmap for deploying collaborative tools and practices. Project duration and costs depend, of course, on a variety of factors including where your company is in the maturity model, current technology and application landscape, security governance, size of your organization and how it is being impacted by the COVID-19 situation, if applicable.
In the meantime, though, while deciding how to proceed, here’s a checklist of things you can do immediately to tide your organization over, pending conversion to or expansion of work over distance, work out loud or full, modern digital workplace model.
- Outfit team members with mobile computing devices (laptops, tablets and things like monitors, printers, headphones/video cameras for collaboration).
- Ensure that the enterprise’s network devices allow remote access (firewalls with virtual private network connectivity) so that critical applications can be accessed from remote working locations.
- Document, share and enforce expectations for remote work (discipline, wifi/minimum bandwidth, dedicated workspace, file access/sharing, video calls and productivity measures).
RealFoundations is qualified to help with the implementation of immediate and/or long-term solutions. We have been recognized as a world leader in digital collaboration by SWOOP Analytics, a Microsoft partner that offers a solution for analyzing and benchmarking how well companies collaborate when using Microsoft Teams and Yammer. According to SWOOP’s 2020 Teams benchmarking report, “RealFoundations has repeatedly been among the top performers in SWOOP’s annual Yammer benchmarking and now follows this with a similar leading performance on Teams.”
Connect with Us
Regardless of where your company sits on the Work Over Distance Maturity Model, contact us to learn how our Modern Digital Workplace solutions can help you effectively continue operations over a distance. To learn more, contact us by email or call +1 214 292 7000.
About SWOOP Analytics
SWOOP Analytics is an Australian company based in Sydney with people on the ground in the UK and US. They passionately believe in the power of collaboration and people networks to get work done. By analysing data from a variety of sources they provide employees and management with unique insights to make informed and evidence-based decisions about collaboration and the health of companies’ social networks.
About RealFoundations
RealFoundations (RF) is the world’s foremost professional services firm focused solely on the real estate industry. Through our delivery of Management Consulting and Managed Services, we help companies that develop, own, operate, service or invest in real estate make better, more profitable decisions. We are proud partners to over 500 real estate companies around the globe, providing accelerated solutions that solve some of real estate’s most complex challenges. We Make Real Estate Run Better.
