Chapter 1
Understanding the New World of Work
IN THIS CHAPTER
Addressing the productivity needs of the four cultural generations
Moving to a modern IT environment
Committing to safeguarding business data
Today’s computing environment has leveled the playing field for small businesses. The availability of fast Internet connections has afforded entrepreneurs access to technologies typically only used by big corporations with huge IT budgets. As major cloud service providers compete for market share, a top priority is answering the technology needs of small and medium size businesses (SMB). Sophisticated productivity and security solutions that used to be reserved for large enterprises with huge IT budgets are now available as cloud services at prices within the reach of even a mom-and-pop store.
Against this backdrop, you can see how it’s an exciting time to start a new or manage an existing small business. The days of using free email services full of ads that do nothing to promote a company’s brand are far behind us. For the cost of a cup of coffee, you can pay for a full month’s subscription to the same email solution that Fortune 500 companies are using.
If yours is a startup business, you’re in luck. Without the baggage from the olden days of running an IT infrastructure, you can immediately launch a born-in-the-cloud startup with funding and support from major cloud services providers. Microsoft for Startups (https://startups.microsoft.com/en-us/program-details/), for example, provides product, technical, and go-to-market benefits to start-up entrepreneurs to help accelerate their growth.
Now that cloud computing and the use of personal mobile device in the workplace are becoming mainstream, small businesses have even greater opportunities to compete with the big guys — on a global scale. These opportunities, however, require a change in how you work and how you run a business. And with these changes come challenges.
This chapter lays the foundation for small businesses to start their journey into the new world of work. It covers current productivity and security trends and provides guidance and best practices for taking advantage of the cloud to grow a small business without falling prey to security challenges in today’s threat landscape.
Creating a Productive Workplace
Baby boomers (1946–1964), Gen X (1965–1979), Gen Y (Millennials, 1980–1994), and now Gen Z (Centennials, 1995–2012) are the four cultural generations now converging in the workplace. If you think simply having a cookie-cutter approach for driving productivity in the workplace is all that’s needed, think again.
Consider this. Baby boomers grew up during a time of prosperity and see work as a 9-to-5 career until retirement. Gen Xers, on the other hand, have the highest level of education in the US, saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the tragedy of Tiananmen Square, and see work as a contract — just a job. Millennials grew up with a computer and the initial stages of Internet at home. They do best in a flexible work arrangement and will account for 50 percent of the workforce by 2020. Centennials are the multitasking fiends, super-connected kids who can troubleshoot a baby boomer’s cell phone while building a website and Snapchatting with a friend.
With such a diverse workforce and different work styles, businesses need to figure out a way to provide a flexible and productive work environment while ensuring data privacy and security. The best way to address this challenge is to embrace cloud technologies and adopt a business strategy to run a secure and productive enterprise.
Realizing the value of Microsoft 365 Business
Bring your own device (BYOD), touchdown stations, outcome-driven versus process-driven goals, flexible work arrangements, and data security and governance are just a few of the catchphrases you hear at work today. As businesses shift from the old-school approach to a modern workplace, they do not need to spend a lot of money and procure several solutions from different vendors.
Microsoft 365 Business is a complete, intelligent, and secure solution delivered through the cloud that empowers employees to be productive with tools built for teamwork but designed to fit individual work styles. With one subscription, an employee gets a comprehensive productivity, security, and device management toolkit that doesn’t require expensive consultants and highly trained systems engineers to implement.
Figure 1-1 provides a high-level comparison between several stand-alone solutions versus the bundled Microsoft 365 Business solution. Clearly, SMBs can benefit from the cost-effective, simplified, and integrated solution Microsoft 365 Business offers.
FIGURE 1-1: Stand-alone solutions versus Microsoft 365 Business.
Promoting teamwork in a diverse workforce
We all work differently and have our own preferred method for communication and collaboration. In a team with representation from all four cultural generations, you could end up with someone who prefers phone calls, another who prefers email, someone else who thinks anything other than instant messaging is lame, and yet another team member who mainly communicates with emojis and office memes.
Lucky for you, Microsoft 365 Business has a way to bring all these people together with a universal toolkit for collaboration: Office 365.
Office 365 comes with four key workloads, or services:
- Exchange Online powers email, calendar, tasks, journaling, and more. It has built-in intelligence to protect users from phishing, spoofing, and so on.
- SharePoint Online provides online storage with built-in capabilities for real-time co-authoring and data protection. OneDrive for Business is part of this workload.
- Microsoft Teams (soon to replace Skype for Business) serves as a digital collaboration hub for online meetings, web conferencing, instant messaging, and more.
- Office ProPlus includes the familiar Office desktop applications: Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, and Access.
In addition to these key workloads, Office 365 includes productivity and security tools that integrate seamlessly across the entire suite of services. Following is a partial list of services included in Office 365:
- Delve and Yammer help you identify people in your organization with certain expertise.
- Office 365 Groups automatically gives team members a shared mailbox, file folder, and notebook.
- StaffHub is a retail store’s solution for managing shift schedules for workers or associates, allowing them to share files, swap schedules, and connect to company resources.
- Stream is your YouTube at work. You can upload and view videos, create channels for your team, and even watch videos with transcripts and closed captions.
Putting together a complete list of services is challenging because Office 365 is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering and Microsoft is constantly rolling out new features. Stay on top of notifications you receive from Microsoft regarding updates to the service. In that way, you will know about new features and will be prepared for functionalities scheduled for retirement or deprecation.
If you’re wondering how you could possible use all these services, consider the scenario on Figure 1-2. On any given day, an employee in a modern workplace can work smarter by using at least four capabilities in Office 365.
FIGURE 1-2: How modern workers collaborate in Office 365.
Keeping Business Technology Current
Running a small business is no small feat. Some people have the mistaken belief that start-up entrepreneurs live glamourous lives. I’ll never forget a comment from a former colleague when she learned I had started my own IT consulting firm. She exclaimed, “That’s awesome! You must sleep in a lot.”
I almost choked trying not to burst out laughing at the suggestion that someone running an IT consulting company would routinely enjoy leisurely sleep-in mornings. Anyone who’s ever tried to launch a business knows that sleep is a luxury and never a priority. A small-business owner typically wears many hats. In the first few months of starting my business, for example, I was the salesperson, technical support department, CEO, CFO, marketing department, consultant, and IT director. Wearing all those hats, I never slept late and often didn’t sleep at all.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that small businesses tend to deprioritize the work required to keep their technology current. I’ve met several clients who are still running Windows XP even though support for the operating system ended in 2014. Although the security implications of such an environment are astounding, some businesses just can’t find time to update their current systems.
Keeping up with technological changes is disruptive, time-consuming, and expensive. It seems like every time you update your technology, within a few weeks the update is obsolete and the update process must be repeated.
Microsoft 365 Business attempts to address such challenges. The solution is designed to make it easier for SMBs to keep their technology current, minimize the risk for cyberattacks, and reduce the cost of running a modern IT infrastructure so the business owner and employees can focus on the strategic work required to grow the business.
Looking back at traditional IT businesses
Running a small business used to mean working 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, with everyone showing up at the same office. Employees were given a company-owned device configured with legacy applications accessible only while at the office. The devices for sales team members may have been configured with a network connection, such as virtual private network (VPN), to allow them to access company resources while out on the field.
A day in the life of an IT admin supporting an SMB typically meant manually configuring devices, providing technical support to users, and reacting to technical updates in the industry. For those running Windows operating system, Patch Tuesdays meant long nights testing, deploying, and resolving issues related to the security patches Microsoft released on the second or fourth Tuesday of each month.
If an SMB didn’t have an in-house IT team, scarce dollars were spent on a managed service provider who was usually a lone wolf who may or may not have been available when service was needed.
Running a business today is no longer the same as it was ten or even five years ago. Most SMBs, however, still use the tools, processes, and mindset of a traditional IT environment. Clearly, these SMBs are at a disadvantage when competing with businesses that have adopted a modern IT environment.
Running a modern IT environment
With cloud technologies becoming mainstream, mobile devices turning into a necessity more than a luxury, artificial intelligence pervading our daily lives, and the amount of digital data exploding in the last few years, businesses must transform to stay relevant.
The concept of digital transformation is simply a matter of taking advantage of current technologies to rethink and rework the products and services a business delivers to its customers. Such changes, in turn, alter the processes and strategies by which a business is run.
In many ways, SMBs are better positioned than large enterprises to adopt digital transformation. With fewer hoops to go through in the decision-making process, SMBs have the agility to adopt new and emerging technologies, especially if the cost is budget-friendly.
Most SMB clients I’ve met were at the forefront in adopting a bring your own device (BYOD) policy. The BYOD model was partly driven by the owners’ desire to cut the cost of company-supplied devices. From the employees’ perspective, especially the younger generation, being able to use their own mobile devices for work might be a deciding factor in accepting a job offer or not.
Safeguarding Business Data
When you run a business, you deal with data. When you sell to customers, you collect data. When you buy something for your business, you’re giving away data. With the possession of data comes great responsibilities. A business is required to follow laws and regulations governing data.
The large amount of data in our connected world has paved the way for big data. Big data is simply a huge volume of data that can’t be stored or processed in the traditional way. Imagine processing the data from the millions of tweets a day or analyzing the patterns and behaviors of YouTube viewers watching billions of videos every day. That amount of data could provide insights and competitive advantage.
Data is the new business currency. Data is so valuable that hackers want to steal your company data. Do you have a plan in place to safeguard your business data?
Security is everyone’s business
Small businesses typically don’t have a risk management executive tasked with maintaining the company’s information security program. This may not be a bad thing because some employees in big companies have the mistaken belief that data security is the responsibility of the company’s information security officer. The reality is that security is everyone’s business. When you’re a small business and don’t have a designated security officer, it’s easier to instill a culture of security as everyone’s responsibility.
For example, even though an employee might own his smartphone, company emails received on his phone are not free game for social media posting. Or if an employee is trying to fast-track a customer transaction, she shouldn’t send a customer’s social security number and other personal information through email.
Although technology enable us to accomplish more things faster, it has also increased our exposure to security risks. You can mitigate these risks in many ways, but the best first step is to ensure that everyone in the organization makes a commitment to take security seriously. The shared understanding of that responsibility can then be complemented by the security features in Microsoft 365 Business, such as the ones in the Security & Compliance Center, shown in Figure 1-3.
FIGURE 1-3: Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance Center.
Taking a layered approach to security
Implementing security best practices in the workplace doesn’t mean just enforcing strong, complex passwords. If you rely on complex passwords, users will simply write them down on a sticky note and tack them on their monitors. Shocker.
Microsoft 365 Business takes a layered approach to security to complement your company’s security policies. First, your devices are centrally managed with enterprise-level security features of Windows 10 Business. Features such as Windows Hello for Business and Credential Guard replace passwords with biometrics and facial recognition. Malware can be eliminated with Secure Boot, Device Guard, and Windows Defender. In addition, sensitive data can be automatically encrypted with Windows Information Protection.
You get protection from hidden threats in email and attachments in emails or embedded in Office files by using the built-in security features in Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection.
It may seem as though I am venturing out of Microsoft 365 Business territory when I start writing about Microsoft Azure. However, both technologies are provided by Microsoft, so they work well together. For example, you can prevent data leaks by ensuring that sensitive information such as social security numbers and credit card information aren’t shared outside your company by using Azure Information Protection. You can also manually or automatically encrypt an email or a file with this service and even control who has access to the information by applying restrictions such as do not copy or do not forward.
These security features are just the beginning in terms of what you can do to safeguard your data in Microsoft 365 Business. Microsoft has already done the heavy lifting by figuring out 80 percent of the common security configurations that apply to small businesses. Your IT admin can customize the other 20 percent to fit your specific company requirements.