//Upstate businesses are adopting Microsoft Teams to improve operations and efficiency

Upstate businesses are adopting Microsoft Teams to improve operations and efficiency

Article By: Brendan Blowers, marketing director for PTG Inc.

As challenges related to COVID-19 caused many Upstate businesses to work remotely, companies and organizations of all sizes realized that they needed a secure and versatile solution for keeping everyone connected and productive. Many businesses turned to Microsoft Teams as their main communication hub, and plan to continue to use it for chat, file management and video conferencing­ — even after workers return to the office.

Palmetto Technology Group, an IT support and managed services provider in Greenville, saw many of its customers make the switch to Teams in the last few months.

According to Microsoft, Teams usage has increased to more than 75 million daily active users during the pandemic — a 70% increase to an already fast-growing product.

New software requires new learning techniques

While Teams makes communication and file collaboration seamless, there is a learning curve any time an organization adopts a new technology. For this reason, Palmetto Technology Group (PTG) leveraged their Microsoft partner expertise to create a fun and practical free Teams training course called “Become a Teams Ninja.”

The course includes seven short videos and text-based lessons emailed to subscribers each week. Lessons include:

  • A guided, self-paced tour on how to set up Teams correctly.
  • Anytime access to videos & email-based tutorials to help users get started on the right foot.
  • The ability to contact the PTG Instructors to get questions answered and to receive more personalized guidance along the way.

Anyone interested in signing up for the course can do so at https://info.goptg.com/teamsninja or can call PTG at 864-552-1291 and say “I want to become a Teams Ninja.”


“Microsoft Teams is the best hub for teamwork in Office 365,” says Reed Wilson, Founder and CEO of PTG, who teaches many of the Teams Ninja courses himself. “Workers who receive training on how to maximize their use of Teams will collaborate more effectively and engage more while at work — whether that’s in an office setting or remote.”

 

 

PTG’s CEO Reed Wilson goes over how the course is structured in lesson 1 of Become A Teams Ninja.

Response to the training so far has been great, with workers from 40 different Greenville-area companies rushing to sign up for the training within the first few hours of the course going live. Anyone can enroll and watch the lessons at their own pace, and the entire training can be completed in less than 10 minutes, twice a week, for 2 1/2 weeks.

Workers who become Teams Ninjas are encouraged to use their newly acquired skills to teach more of their coworkers how to get the maximum value from Microsoft Teams.

“When employees know how to use technology to communicate and work better, every business operation is improved,” says Brendan Blowers, PTG’s marketing director and another one of the Teams Ninja trainers.

Cloud solutions can help businesses thrive during these challenging times

By adopting cloud technology like Microsoft Teams, businesses can have the security, remote flexibility, and scale to keep operations running smoothly even when dealing with unforeseen problems like a global pandemic. PTG has cloud experts available to show Greenville-metro businesses how to leverage cloud technology to increase their value.

 

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