Microsoft Teams for Small Businesses: 6 Ways Leaders Can Take Advantage

Aaron Sherrill
June 22, 2022
Technology Coaching

Did you know that over 500,000 organizations use Microsoft Teams as their default messaging platform?

This staggering number might come as a surprise if you haven’t used Microsoft Teams in your own business. But for those who have experienced its power, the ubiquity might not shock you.

Some business leaders may not know why Microsoft Teams can be so beneficial, though. Even if they have the tool already, that “aha” moment may not have come yet, especially if only a handful of people work at their company.

In this article, we’ll dissect the benefits of Microsoft Teams for small businesses and show some of the features you can use to your advantage.

Read on to learn more!

In This Article:

Microsoft Teams vs Zoom: Save Money Now.
Make Sure Your Messages Are Read.
Create a Flexible Office that Works.
Stay Organized.
Upgrade Project Management
Be Ready to Scale.

Wait, What Is Microsoft Teams?

It’s important to note that Microsoft Teams is more than a messaging platform. Sure, messaging is a major feature, but plenty of other tools exist within Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams allows organizations to make calls, video chat, and host webinars. Beyond communication, users can share files, create project dashboards, send polls, view calendars, request approvals, and more.

If you haven’t accessed Teams before, you might wonder what it costs to use it. Microsoft provides a basic version for free that anyone can use. The free version is heavily stripped down, and it won’t take long to discover that a higher tier would be better.

Most Microsoft 365 licenses include the software. In fact, many people have Teams and don’t even know it. Pricing begins at $4.00 a month per user for brand new users. In other words, it’s not expensive to have Microsoft Teams for small businesses.

1. Microsoft Teams vs Zoom: Save Money Now.

If you have Microsoft Teams and are paying for Zoom, stop reading this article and go cancel that Zoom subscription. Seriously.

Why cancel Zoom and not Microsoft Teams? Microsoft Teams includes all the functionality of Zoom and so much more.

Microsoft Teams allows you to invite people outside of your company to your meetings. They don’t have to sign up for Teams or even download it. This makes it even easier than joining a Zoom meeting.

2. Make Sure Your Messages Are Read.

It’s hard to believe, but the average office worker receives 121 emails per day.

So, if you find that people aren’t reading your emails, it’s not because they don’t care. It’s because they don’t have time.

Microsoft Teams for small businesses makes it easier to communicate because a direct message cuts through the noise. Skipping the email etiquette makes your messages easier to read and quicker to respond to.

You can also see when other people are available in Microsoft Teams. This feature helps you know if it’s a good time to contact someone or not. See the green bubble? Hit send.

3. Create a Hybrid Office that Works.

Remote work is one of the biggest changes to the modern office. Employees enjoy the flexibility of working from anywhere, and business leaders can cut costs by relying less on office space. It’s generally a win-win.

But without good communication, a hybrid office can become an absolute failure, even if everyone is trying their best. Communicating with Teams can ensure that you’re able to continue working effectively.

Businesses will need to take other steps to create a fully hybrid workforce, but Microsoft Teams is a huge first step.

4. Stay Organized.

Have you ever scoured through countless emails to find one document from months ago? We’ve all been there.

Microsoft Teams offers file management. The files themselves are technically stored elsewhere, but users can access them through a clean interface. Plus, you can open, edit, view previous versions, and set permissions to those documents all within Teams.

5. Upgrade Project Management.

Project management doesn’t need to be done on a whiteboard anymore. And it certainly shouldn’t require constant emails.

Microsoft Teams allows project managers to create task boards, to-do lists, and calendars. They can also assign these items to users and message 1:1 or as a group.

Plus, with file sharing and more flexibility, Microsoft Teams makes it easy to keep all of your conversations in one place.

6. Be Ready to Scale.

The small businesses of today are the Fortune 500 companies of tomorrow. And if you have your eyes set on greatness, you know how important it is to create efficient operations that can scale.

Mats Lederhausen, founder and CEO of the investment platform BE-CAUSE LLC, put this nicely when he said, “Think big, start small, then scale or fail fast.”

It’s either scale or fail.

And for many leaders, adding Microsoft Teams for small businesses is one of the easiest ways you can start small and be ready to scale. It works whether you have 10 employees or 10,000. As a small business, you might not need it yet, but don’t wait until it’s too late.

Microsoft Teams Adoption

As we’ve seen, Microsoft Teams is a powerful tool. But a tool is only powerful if you can use it. Employees in your business will need to adopt Microsoft Teams as the default workplace platform.

It’s fortunate that Microsoft Teams is easy to learn. Even still, some employees may have difficulty adapting to new technology. Others may not like Teams as much as other services.

Adoption is occasionally hard but always worth it. Here are a few quick tips to improve Microsoft Teams adoption:

Communicate the benefits of Microsoft Teams.
Provide Microsoft’s official training to your employees.
Use Microsoft Teams for your own important messages.
Receive support through a local managed service provider.
Ask your managed service provider to provide training.
Monitor the usage to see how you can make improvements.