How do you manage corporate news in Office 365?

Information is central to every organisation, especially in an era of digital transformation. If you can leverage Office 365 to manage your corporate news, it will help you increase engagement from employees and departments.

We frequently find that many businesses don’t properly utilise Office 365 for key business functions, so we thought we would put together this short blog to explore some of the ways that Office 365, and specifically SharePoint, can help you manage corporate news.

Set up channels in Microsoft Teams

Every business needs a messaging and communication tool that allows employees to communicate with one another. Microsoft Teams is a flexible application that allows you to chat with other team members, post updates, attach documents, tag other members, and collaborate.

However, more importantly, it is a platform that allows you to revisit past threads and conversations, without having to dive into old emails, which can be incredibly time consuming. It also allows you to communicate with your team members in a way that is transparent and collaborative, which helps increase efficiency and maximise the potential of your team and department.

To get the most out of Microsoft Teams, you’ll need to set up different channels, which allow you to separate the different elements of your business or department. Don’t fall into the trap of creating too many channels, as this can just confuse people and decrease the usability of your platform.

You can create specific teams for each department, which allow you to segment the different communications and projects that make up your business. It can work very well for smaller teams and local departments and provides a central hub for key communications.

More than just an Intranet

Managing news always starts with a central intranet. That’s why we developed our SharePortal Organisation Intranet Portal, which is composed of all the key web parts that your organisation needs. This helps centralise all the other portals, like the Department Portal and the Personal Portal, which also act as a landing page for key functions.

Personal Portal

The Personal Portal is probably the most relevant to each individual, as it is based on your own specific needs, and composed of email, appointments and meetings, important documents, and the department and wider organisation news that you need to see.

Without implementing this key functionality, employees and departments will find little value in using your Intranet. This often happens when these systems aren’t set up properly, with businesses complaining that employees are choosing instead to resort to email communication or quick phone calls, which can stifle collaboration.

However, by adding value and ensuring that these portals are integrated with all the required Office 365 applications, you can ensure that it is a usable interface packed full of the right functionality.

Department Portal

Oftentimes, there are elements that connect the wider organisation and your own personal portal. After all, each person is usually part of different teams, like Finance, Marketing, Product, Management, and so on. Each of these teams have their own priorities, tasks, and even terminology, so it makes sense for them to have their own designated area for posting collaborative work, questions, and announcements. This also helps connect individual employees to the wider organisation, by acting as an intermediate step between these two components of your business. It also helps employees feel more informed and connected to team members and the wider company.

Yammer

Yammer is a great social network for businesses, as it can allow you to share updates and news, while also using it to promote engagement amongst employees. It is similar to other social media platforms, like Facebook, but it helps keep these conversations in a controlled environment, which keeps people using internal platforms, rather than resorting to personal social media accounts. This can also help improve data security and helps keep people updated and involved.

However, it is important to remember that you don’t want to confuse your users. Essentially, each one of these platforms can serve a different purpose, but you need to ensure that this is thought through and that you have considered the different functionality of the different news platforms within your business.

How to Manage News in Office 365

Betasoft can help your business manage news in an efficient and future-proof manner. The first way is by providing helpful Office 365 Training and SharePoint Training, which can help you get more out of the platforms and software that are already present within your business.

Another way that you can improve the way you manage news and communicate with team members is by utilising our SharePoint Templates, which are available in three configurations:

We are running a limited time promotion on our Organisation Intranet Portal (RRP £995), which now comes free when you purchase our other SharePoint Modern Site Templates. Find out more on our website, or get in touch with us to discuss it in more detail.