Is the 21st-century office obsolete? According to PwC, 83% of office workers now prefer to work at home at least one day a week. And, a surprising 32% want to work at home five days a week. In light of COVID-19, a range of hi-tech companies have rolled out app solutions to scale digital payments, secure supply chain flexibility, and boost cybersecurity measures. Is enterprise application integration far behind?
By all indications, 82% of employers plan to keep at least some of their workforce remote. As we embrace this new reality of work, finding ways to drive collaboration in an increasingly digital world isn’t easy. For many, the realities of collaborative frictions are quickly overshadowing the advantages of remote work.
Thus, supporting this new mobile workforce requires the right tools. In particular, collaboration is a critical lever of remote success. But, how can you create the right IT landscape to engage and motivate employees? And, how do you shift boardroom meetings and water cooler discussions to digital spaces? Finally, how do you consolidate all of your existing apps and processes to a framework that enables secure access and collaboration?
The SharePoint Intranet can be your solution to all of the above challenges. Below, we share how SharePoint and enterprise application integration can help support your mobile workforce.
The Rise of the Mobile Workforce
Presently, an astounding 98% of companies in the United States have workers who work remotely. But, it goes beyond remote: 80% of the global workforce is now “deskless.” In the past, workers adhered to internal network policies and relied on corporate desktops. They collaborated in boardrooms and at the water cooler. Today, they’re on their mobile devices and communicating over Slack and Teams channels. The way we work isn’t changing — it has changed.
But, for many businesses, this is less of a welcome change and more of a nightmare. 60% of workers use apps to access work documents. If your business doesn’t have the apps and tools to support this digital shift, you risk workplace frictions.
To compensate, companies are pouring time and resources into building workplace apps. In fact, the average business now deploys over 129 apps. And, that can pose challenges. We know that apps are the linchpin of the mobile workforce. However, businesses are spending substantial resources developing an excessive number of applications. To put it simply, employees simply don’t have the device space or time to figure out how to use them all effectively.
Leveraging SharePoint Intranet and Enterprise Application Integration to Support a Mobile Workforce
When you look at leading software providers like Microsoft or Salesforce, they all share something in common: they exist in one ecosystem. Microsoft 365 isn’t a tool. It’s a combination of many tools that work seamlessly together. And, since businesses can simply invest in one solution that provides them all the resources they need to digitally transform, 91% of Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft 365.
SharePoint can help you build your own integrated, cohesive, and seamless network of business apps. A single intranet portal can give employees access to critical business apps, forums, workplace documents, and collaborative tools with a single log-in. In other words, the SharePoint intranet can help you create your own mobile ecosystem. Developers can log in and see message boards next to Splunk data. Meanwhile, marketers can log in and check out marketing resources and tools. Finally, your sales team can access critical data to make real-time decisions that positively impact revenue margins.
In a nutshell, the SharePoint Intranet can act as a singular dashboard that connects your employees to their most critical apps. So, instead of downloading 129 apps, they can pull out their phone, fire up the SharePoint Intranet, log-in, and get to work.
We all want to compete in the digital world. However, consolidating a hundred siloed solutions does more harm than good. Case in point, the average employee wastes one month a year simply navigating workplace apps. SharePoint can help you break that trend.
Are You Ready to Embrace the Future of Work?
The way we work continues to evolve due to socioeconomic trends. To stay competitive, businesses need to consider their entire app ecosystem. You’ll want to connect employees to critical apps and resources without subjecting them to complex, time-consuming workflows that involve 70 different app touchpoints. The solution is simple: integrate existing business apps with a single SharePoint intranet portal.
Are you interested in bringing your workplace solutions together under one common SharePoint banner? If so, we can help. Contact us to see how we can work together to embrace the future of work.