Microsoft Teams and remote work. Why the service is so popular among companies

It's no secret that Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom and similar services have shown staggering growth during the pandemic. However, even under these circumstances, Microsoft Teams showed a result that could not predict even the most optimistic analysts – the service crossed the mark of 115 million users a day.

At the same time, the largest increase in service occurred in the first six months after the start of quarantine in the world. In March, Microsoft Teams reported 44 million active users a day, and in 7 months their number increased by 70 million.

Microsoft Teams Statistics

– The number of organizations using Teams has grown from 50,000 in 2017 to 500,000 in 2019.

– 91 companies from Fortune 100 use Microsoft Teams.

– Microsoft Teams grew by 894% between March and June 2020. For comparison: Zoom increased by 667% during this period.

– The service is available in 181 countries in 44 languages.

– In the summer, users of the service set a kind of record. In one day, they spent a total of 5 billion minutes in rallies through Microsoft Teams.

Obviously, the main factor in such rapid success was the transition to remote work, but the Microsoft Teams team worked effectively also.

Why Teams so popular?

Microsoft Teams has a number of advantages, but we will focus on three main ones. These are productivity, tools for collaboration and teamwork, flexibility.

Productivity. Microsoft Teams is more than just a corporate messenger. Its key competitive advantage is deep integration with Office 365, which allows users to easily and conveniently use performance applications (Word, Excel) with cloud storage or solutions such as SharePoint or Power BI. In addition, the service allows you to integrate other applications. For example, the corporate social network Yammer. You do not need to switch between applications, spend time on it.

A joint study by Microsoft and Forrester reports that moving to Teams, the average office worker can reduce the number of emails they receive by an average of 17.3%. If we take into account that people usually respond faster and more concisely (less time to prepare) to messages in the messenger than in e-mails, we will see a direct impact on productivity.

Microsoft Teams functionality promotes effective teamwork. A study by Microsoft and Forrester notes that office workers can save up to 4 hours a week on average thanks to Microsoft Teams' advanced tools for information transfer and collaboration. Combining tools for collaborating on documents, searching for them, monitoring file changes, correspondence, and audio-video calls brings together more real-time interaction, which can save you $14.3 million in three years.

Team flexibility and digital workplace. Teams is a complete cloud service that has a number of advantages. The ability to access information from anywhere and from any device is a significant business advantage. Digitization of the workplace contributes to the flexibility of employees. You can find talents in different locations and combine them with digital tools. Teams will help in the process of training and adaptation of new employees, will allow  holding various events and form open corporate culture.

These are just some benefits of the service. Of course, the secret of popularity the service also consists of many factors: coordinated team work, expertise and ability to work with user feedback, successful promotion strategy and continuous improvement.