How Microsoft Technologies Give Companies the Tools to Overcome the Talent Shortage

How Microsoft Technologies Give Companies the Tools to Overcome the Talent Shortage

Modern business is propelled by two major factors– technology and hard-working people. While the tools and technology keep streamlining operations, many companies now face a seemingly insurmountable hurdle as they struggle to fill key positions with qualified and talented candidates. After all the dramatic changes to most workflows during the Covid-19 pandemic, this is a deep blow to many organizations who were looking forward to finally getting back on track with business as usual. This talent shortage is particularly widespread in the US, where a recent poll revealed that over 1/3 of CEOs said that their biggest challenge to innovation and success right now is finding the right talent to fill a growing number of positions.

The solutions to the problem, however, are already at many companies’ fingertips. The very technology that supports your organization offers a multitude of tools that can be utilized to relieve the setbacks of failing to fill key positions. The Microsoft technologies ecosystem can now be leveraged to offer you new opportunities to bolster the expertise within your organization through collaboration and cooperation, or empower the team you do have to be more productive with solutions that streamline their day-to-day efforts and increase efficiency.

How Microsoft Technologies Help Revolutionize Your Workspace

The ever-improving landscape of Microsoft business tools adapted robust new solutions to tackle the challenges of the pandemic. With the right expertise behind your IT team, the rapid evolution of Microsoft’s cloud landscape not only offers you ways to potentially bring expertise into your team with enhanced collaboration platforms but also can help facilitate solutions that could increase efficiency for every member of your hardworking team.

With the increasing power and variety of the solutions that Office 365 provides, your workplace can function seamlessly in the cloud and in the office together. This can massively boost the efficiency and organization of company assets without the need for often costly on-prem servers, but also adds the infrastructure you need to implement systems to streamline your team’s efforts and cut out wasted time. Microsoft’s integration with the cloud delivers you powerful tools throughout your entire organization that can be utilized to help lighten the load on your team through processes like workplace automation.  It also streamlines your entire business ecosystem, giving you more organizational control for better enterprise resource planning (ERP) and more relevant and comprehensive data for analysis to improve efforts like customer relations management (CRM).

Collaboration and Remote Work Enhanced

The Microsoft ecosystem of software helps unify your entire workforce. While Microsoft Teams has been the beating heart of many hybrid workplaces across the world lately, it’s not the only tool that helps streamline your team’s work, wherever they are in the world. Often under the hood of the Office365 ecosystem for much of your team, tools like Sway and Sharepoint give you the functionality to manage your business and resources entirely connected to the powerful reporting power of all your Office applications.

Collaboration has never been easier with the recent improvements to the Microsoft platform. Your entire business has a multitude of ways to share, communicate, and innovate together, even while apart, such as Skype, Yammer, and the online workplace itself of Microsoft Teams which offers a wide array of features. While this doesn’t directly solve talent shortages, it does enable you to cast a much wider net for the skills you need in critical positions.

Bring in Fresh Talent

With your entire business operating within Microsoft’s ecosystem, missing personnel in critical IT positions can make it difficult to keep your entire team on the same page. Many businesses though have taken the new flexibility given to them by increased technological tools to expand their pool of available talent, or even outsource to 3rd party experts who can augment your IT team to keep your whole organization on track. With Microsoft’s cloud functionality, your IT team can stay as flexible as you need them to be.

Through the cloud functionality of the new systems, bringing in outsourced help is easier than ever. Being able to access vibrant labor markets elsewhere to tap into talent can give you a huge edge, and keep you from settling for the wrong candidate. One key advantage to outsourcing IT expertise, in general, is that they can help you develop solutions so that your own team can thrive. Outsourced IT talent could help you develop your Microsoft tools and implement systems that increase efficiency and empower your team to be more productive with the talent that you have.

The Cost of the Talent Shortage

Your organization can’t move forward and grow without a good team in place. In March 2021, the US Chamber of Commerce projected a total of 8.1 million job openings were left unfilled in the nation, and, compared to previous years, there were around half the available workers per open position that there had been in the past. This indicates a situation that isn’t easy to solve, and that finding the right talent to be successful in your organization may get more difficult before it gets easier.

Arguably more harmful than having key positions in your business go unfilled though is getting the wrong person in that position. Vacant positions usually cause the rest of your team to step up, but an underqualified hire in a key position could do huge damage before you even find out, leaving you in a worse position than you started. You need talent within your organization that you can trust, and that gets harder and harder the fewer options you have for candidates.

Breakthrough Solutions to Reinforce Your Workforce

The future of your company relies on a workforce that’s well-equipped to handle any challenges that may arise, and often that’s not possible when you’re missing talent in positions that are crucial for your business to function. Finding the right talent takes time in the unique circumstances companies now face, but there are ways to keep your team prepared in the meantime.

Lighten Your Team’s Load

Through the functionality of Microsoft’s cloud ecosystem, there are tools available that can be utilized to help your team function more efficiently and increase productivity. The convenience of cloud-integrated workspaces also allows you the opportunity to implement your own solutions much easier. Some productivity-increasing measures that can be implemented through the cloud are:

• Workplace automation. Cutting out redundant, mindless work is an extremely effective way to get your employees to focus on important issues that are critical to your organization’s success. Microsoft’s native solution for automation, Power Automate, offers a wide array of tools to automate repetitive processes and streamline business processes.
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Dynamics 365 is powerful ERP software, designed to integrate all your company’s data about resource management into one straightforward platform. This can lighten the workload for not only your accounting department but throughout your entire organization.

Augment your resources

The ability to collaborate worldwide being fully integrated into your entire business ecosystem is a valuable asset. Increasing productivity when you can’t find the talent you need may not be enough. Sometimes there’s no way to automate around talent you need, but through collaboration within Microsoft Teams, there’s no geo-limitation on the talent that you can bring in. Tapping into outsourced experts gets you the talent you need right now, without having to compromise on limited candidates.

Here at CTECH, we know how important having the right talent to fill critical roles can be for the success of a business. If you have questions about how you can utilize Microsoft or any cloud-based tools to streamline your workflow or shore up your staffing contact us today. Our experts are here to make sure that you get the most out of the Microsoft Platform to get the edge your organization needs to thrive.

Written by Carl Fransen

posted on September 21, 2021

Carl Fransen

My passion is to make my mark on the world in a positive and lasting way. I want to set an example for my son that his father can compete with integrity in today’s world, be very successful, and leave the world a better place for him.

Combining my technical/business-based education with a long career steadily progressing up the corporate ladder, I decided to build a company that held true to my values. So, I founded and designed the next generation of IT support firm: CTECH Consulting Group Inc. We are a completely automated, cloud-based IT company designed to compete against any other IT firm without the overhead. We promote a lifestyle to all our staff where they can work anywhere, at any time, access any information on any device that is relevant to their job, and collaborate with anyone they want to.