Introduction
Nice to have you with us again for another episode of Digital4Productivity. And today we have the audio-aware version of my Smile-to webinar, the best practices and biggest mistakes when introducing Microsoft 365. I hope you enjoy this productive hour.
Wonderful. Thank you very much, dear Cemal, dear participants. A quick thumbs up when you see the M365 best practices, the start slide. I see a thumbs up. Wonderful. As usual, I love it. Who likes to turn on the camera, then I can see if my jaw hits the desk or if I reach one or the other here after all. And if I’m not looking at the camera, I can always keep an eye on the chat. So feel free to use the chat too. Please put a “0” if you don’t use Microsoft 365 yet and a “1” in the chat if you already use Microsoft 365. So I’d be interested to get a feel for what the distribution looks like. So far, we have nothing but Microsoft 365 users. That’s wonderful. We also have someone, Stefan Anders, who is not yet using it. So as always. If I’m going too fast, slow me down. The standard mode for me is always to use the chat, but of course we can also use the microphone for the size I have prepared a little something as always, but of course I can also switch live at any time. Yes, as always, my motto is always “first switch on the brain, then the technology” and that’s why I always like to start with the question that every participant here naturally asks themselves, to say, okay, why is this topic relevant to us at all? That’s the first question, because what I’m experiencing is that there are 100,000 apps, not just on the iPads – it’s also a topic of mine – but there are also new apps for Microsoft 365 almost every week. And when I look at it, why is it relevant to deal with this topic a little more intensively, because – and there are studies on this, I once brought one here from the AKAD University together with Bürokaizen – the colleagues simply showed how a typical office working day is distributed?
This is what a typical office day looks like
And that’s roughly how we spend 20% of the day searching and 30% of the day on emails. That brings us to half. Then there’s about a quarter for meetings and then just under a quarter is left over for our own work. Many people say that meetings and emails are also work. Yes, you can have different opinions, sometimes more and sometimes less. But even if you take this 20% search time issue alone into account, then with 5 working days it’s somehow a day that you spend searching around somewhere. And if you save that, you save a lot of time, so an alternative approach to the 4-day week, even with the topic of digitalization.
And I always like to have two pictures where I say, how do we actually work in other areas? And I always say that if we worked the same way in production as we do in the office, then a car would probably be finished. So imagine you’re in production at Audi, an Audi drives past and you and a colleague are fitting a wheel. And then it goes bing and then we jump back to the office because an email comes in, we jump back again, of course we have to walk a bit further because the car has moved on, we screw on the next screw, it goes bing again, we jump back to the office and the whole thing goes back and forth three times. By the third time at the latest, the colleague would ask us, say, have you got a wheel off? – in the truest sense of the word. But we do that all the time in the office. So the first thing I always deactivate with people is all notifications for any notifications. And when it comes to Microsoft 365, you suddenly not only have notifications for emails, but also for team messages, for chats, for Planner and whatnot. So this issue of bling, bling and jumping here is actually multiplying instead of reducing. That’s why I always say that more is not always better. I often find that Microsoft 365 actually increases productivity and complexity because it’s not used in a reflective way, but simply like WhatsApp, to say, let’s just throw everything in there.
Digital mailbox
The second issue is that when you come home tonight, privately, you probably have a paper letterbox and if you open it now, 2,648 letters will fly at you. And two are already open, so you take them out. You open one, put it back in, put the other one back in, close it again and you have 2,644 letters inside. So I think if you did that, your neighbor would ask what kind of weed you smoked and where you got it. And when I look at digital inboxes, the top performer that I once had, I like to ask about it, to say, don’t worry, not today. How many emails does someone have in their inbox? And my top performer so far is 18,000, so you can see where this issue of search times comes from. And what I always hear people say, oh, I need some tips for the search function. And I say the best tip for the search function is to delete it, because if you can’t find anything, then you simply have too much. It’s like the pile on your desk. The problem is that we see the pile on the desk and that’s why we clear it away at some point. We don’t see it in digital form and one of the biggest problems with Microsoft 365 is that a few more piles are simply added and if we don’t say properly from the outset, okay, if something is added, what do we take away, then it simply becomes more complex.
So a very big basic principle is simply to say, when you introduce new things, what do I no longer do for them? And what’s also very important is to say, please don’t transfer what you’re doing to Microsoft 365 one-to-one. To give you a very specific example, recording meeting minutes in a notebook has always been a shitty idea. It doesn’t get any better now that I do it in a digital notebook in OneNote. Complete nonsense. In production, no one would ever think of doing process control in notebooks. There’s a company from Japan, Toyota, that invented Kanban in 1948. And when I introduce the topic of the Kanban principle as part of the Microsoft 365 introduction, I’d be happy to receive a 2 in the chat about who is already using the Planner with Microsoft 365. I’d be interested to know. So when I present the Planner and say, for example, that meeting minutes are taken with the Planner, people always look at me as if I’ve somehow reinvented the world, where I say, yes, productivity principles from the production area are welcome to arrive in the office after, let’s say, almost 100 years.
The Inbox Zero principle
And I would like to encourage and stimulate this to a certain extent. And I know I can be exhausting sometimes because they sign up for a seminar and say, now I’m expecting the best tips and tricks and that I’m going to see them live on the screen. And I always say, people, the lever is not the last little trick, but the lever is simply that you set up such a system in a sensible, cleanly structured way. For example, I’ve had Inbox Zero for 14 years or, I think, 20 years. So my inbox is empty in the evening and sent is empty. And a lot of people say, yes, you probably only get two emails a day. Yes, I get around 400, so I get a few more from the site. And of course it only works if you have a sensible system in place. And that’s where Microsoft 365 can help, because instead of saying that I have chat messages in addition to emails, I have channel reporting in addition to emails, the idea is that I say, okay, if I have teams in channels, for example, that I say, okay, internally there’s a ban on emails. In other words, internal communication will only take place via this channel. So it’s not like this, as you probably know. Someone writes in an email, then writes in a channel, I’ve just sent you the email. He also writes this in the chat, ideally in the WhatsApp group that runs in parallel, and then he calls and says, have you read my messages yet? So that’s a perversion of the way things were when email first started, when people called and asked, have you read my email yet? So I was always quick to say stop.
In other words, such things are, and I’m deliberately making this a little more blatant here, and someone who has also expressed this very blatantly is the former head of Telefonica, colleague Heinrichs, and he once said very nicely that if you digitize a shitty process, then Thorsten Dierks will have a shitty digital process. And it’s been a few years since he said that, but there’s not much to it.
Digitization stages
So, the important thing is that there are three stages to digitization. One is digitization and digitization means translating an analogue process one-to-one into digital. German authorities, for example, are world champions in saying that you have a form, you have to print it out, you send it by email, then they print it out again, fill it out, scan it in again and so on. Now they say that doesn’t exist. Well, my wife is a professor at the state university. So I sometimes experience things that I thought I had already eradicated when I started my career at Nixdorff in 1988. And it’s not much different in some companies. That’s why we look at what are sensible basic principles, how do you deal with this issue? Of course we look at the topic, which apps, and we also look at best practices. Yes, because what I experience, and we’ll get to this later, when you introduce Microsoft 365 in companies, the question is always to say, okay, what’s annoying today? And that’s a good question, because – you probably all know this topic too – when you introduce a new system in a company. Then last night, for example, I had another participant at a lecture event and I talked to him and he came up with a really great formula for me. He said that in order to change a process in a company, from his 40 years of experience – he has four years more professional experience than I do – he says that you need about 25% of the time that such a process has been running. And I did a bit of soul-searching and I can say that there’s a lot of wisdom in that. So I can definitely say that in many areas. And why is that? Because change is simply not our standard mode, regardless of how good project management is. And the most important question is to ask it once and say, what’s annoying today? And that’s a completely different question, then I can get some drive into it. And this applies above all to managers, but of course also to yourself, to always ask yourself: What is annoying today, especially in communication with others, and how can I do it differently?
Another important topic. For example, I visit a lot of Volksbanks and Reifeisenbanks. And what I found great, the approach was not even mine, but at the Volksbank in Leipzig, Falck Helle, who says that we used to have the basic principle that we made files available and then distributed rights and said, according to the motto, only he may see this, only he may see that and an incredibly complicated rights management that kept the IT department very busy.
What information should you share?
And they reversed the basic principle. They have said that with default, everyone in the company can see everything. And yes, that also works in a regulated environment. That’s mainly a control issue, that’s what you have with you. But if you turn this basic principle around and say, okay, of course there are exceptions, like personnel matters, like works council issues and so on. So they take those out too. But they also said that if you have a problem with the fact that one sales department, the sales figures of the other sales departments, you think that they are looking at each other all day and not working, then you have a completely different problem, not a technical one, you have a management problem. So you can’t solve a management problem with technology. So it’s very, very important to say what not everyone is allowed to see, that’s the exception. And here’s a specific tip. There are channels in teams and there are different types of channels. There are channels that are the standard channels. Everyone within a team can do everything there. Then there are protected channels and protected channels are very, very popular with many companies because they say, oh, only the management can see that. Then I see a lot of protected channels. Firstly, the thing has the problem that it quickly becomes difficult to administer and secondly, the protected channels in Microsoft Teams are still very limited in their functionality. So if you want to hold a Teams video meeting, you can’t even schedule a video meeting in a protected channel. You can’t make a planner board. There is a lot of information that is simply functionally restricted. What you should use more often in teams, and this is a different type of channel, is shared channels. This means that if I have redundant information, I can create a channel in one team and can say that I can also see this channel in others. So I always find that the protected channels are used far too much and that the shared channels are used far too little. And this is mainly due to the basic principle that you turn it around, not to say I have a file, I have to protect it super, but rather to ask the question, what can’t everyone see? And then also, if we are in the regulated area, here too, I am in different banks, I am in the bank and then it says, yes, in Microsoft 365, we can’t use that because not every single step is documented there.
I often experience this kind of hasty obedience when I’m at another bank, like Westerwaldbank, for example, where they say, “Where is that? I have to document decisions, I have to document results, but not every process step. So here too, when you introduce Microsoft 365, you have the chance to say, okay, what really needs to be documented? So we also have a tax consultant with us here in the form of Mr. Hoffarth, for example, hello dear Peter Hoffarth. And of course there are things that I logically have to archive and document in a legally compliant manner. But if Peter Hoffarth sends me a tip, which we do from time to time, an email with some kind of tip, saying, here’s another cool digital tool and I write back somehow, thank you very much and so on, that’s not something I have to archive in a legally secure way. In other words, we often overdo it in this area. And when we do it, you just don’t find anything. And if you now say, okay, you’re going to change the processes, then Frank Hehle also told me wonderfully, okay, then I said, tell me, what was the main driver for you to get the employees to change their behavior in terms of saving files and so on? He said quite simply, when do users change their behavior? When they don’t have 1,000 options, but when they have no alternative? So, if you want the guys to only drink orange juice, then you only put orange juice on the shelf. And that’s what we’ve done very specifically, for example, by saying that files used to be on local drives, then they were on network drives, then they were in Teams and what I experience again and again is that there are files distributed on exactly these three things, then there’s something on SharePoint. And they’ve said, for example, that there’s one storage location where people work, that’s the Teams channels that are linked to it, so everyone knows where things can be found. Yes, but other people can access it. Yes, exactly. That’s the default. And the data doesn’t belong to the employee, the data belongs to the company. So, it’s not indecent if others can also access this information. And with this “My data”, it’s always like this, especially if you distribute such a log by e-mail, I have it with every user, if I have a log of 10 people, everyone has saved it, everyone has to organize it for themselves and so you organize it cleanly in teams. That’s why I’m a big fan of providing structured support for things like this, because the leverage when it comes to work organization is much greater than for the question of what I’m doing. So first switch on the brain, then the technology.
Recommendations from the field
However, we are now also taking a very consistent look at what I recommend from the big jungle. And thank you very much, Peter Hoffarth, for confirming in the chat that I’m not completely off the mark when it comes to this topic.
Yes, when you open Microsoft 365, there are millions of apps. I don’t think even I would know what all the Microsoft 365 apps can do. In other words, there are of course the apps that I use regularly, but there are always new ones being added and it’s not a good idea to dump all the systems in at once, but a good idea is simply to get an idea of what the core module modules are that you have. So here’s an overview: What are the most important core modules? And by the way, Cemal has also uploaded my charts as a PDF with the product. So you can look them up again at any time afterwards.
Which apps do I recommend using
Yes, that, which is a sub-area, is of course the classic Office with Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Outlook, To Do and OneNote for self-organization, and OneDrive for personal file storage. Incidentally, these are still available in Leipzig, but really only for 2% for the things that are really only for the individual and there are fewer and fewer of them. And in Leipzig, for example, they have very, very consistently disconnected the file service, i.e. technically the possibility of saving files on the network drive. So that means there is no possibility. And I asked them, tell me, wasn’t there any trouble? They said, no, the employees were actually happy because it was less confusing, because they didn’t have to think, yes, where do I have to save it now? And that always leads to confusion. Then there’s the big part that didn’t exist in the traditional office: Teams as, I always call it, a group and workspace. So in the pandemic, Teams was often self-defense. In other words, I had to use it for video conferencing, but only using it for video conferencing is simply 3% of what it can do, but the idea is that I say I have workspaces where I can have conversations, where I can chat, where I can store files, where I have shared notebooks, where, if I have notes, such as training documents, I can easily create them as OneNote notebooks and then you post them once and everyone in the team has immediate access to them. If someone changes something, everyone has it immediately without having to write an email. And you know, I’m often out and about with different devices. I have it on my smartphone, I have it on my tablet, I have it with me on all my devices.
Yes, lists too, of course. I can create an intranet, an internal Facebook, I call it. I can also use Power Automate to close gaps that Microsoft still has, which is very powerful. For example, I can say that when I move an email I receive into a subfolder, a new task is automatically created in Planner, where all this information is added, or approval workflows – I’ll come back to that later.
Yes, and I can access it via Windows programs, via web browsers, via smartphones and there are a thousand other things. What the colleagues in Leipzig did, and I thought that was a very smart idea. I modified it a bit, but the basic idea came from Leipzig. They simply did the following: they made a diagram where they said, okay, there’s self-management and there’s teamwork. There are different areas, namely file storage, communication, tasks and minutes and notes and information.
And they have set this thing up so that when the employees start up their computer, this completed chart is always visible as the background on the PC. This means that I can see it immediately at any time when I have the desktop, I know, oh, what was that again? How do we swap? And that’s where I sort the most important apps, but my recommendation is to say that file storage, the few private documents, should be the absolute exception. In Leipzig, they are even considering disconnecting this part. But that’s the main topic on Microsoft Teams. And I’m going to go live for a moment and show you a little hack that experience has shown far too few people use in Teams, because many people say, yes, files in Teams are totally bulky. That’s stupid, because most people already use Teams, as I’ve seen. So, here I am in a training team and I now have files here. And what is of course totally stupid and totally cumbersome is when I say I’m going to go to a file, click on it and edit it if necessary. Of course, depending on the internet connection, this always takes a little while.
So this file handling, when someone says, sorry, Jekel, you tell me that files in Teams are much better in the file manager. And then I say, right, that’s much better in the Windows file manager. And the great thing is that I can view all Teams files in the Windows file manager. And they are automatically synchronized. And how does that work? It works in such a way that you can always see it here with the various tabs that are available here and there are commands. And either it’s like mine, behind the three dots, or you immediately see this command here, synchronize. That’s one of the first things I always do in Teams clients, where I say, I always go into this tab here, lax files, and at the top level, that’s where I always go in first and say synchronize. And now I say, okay, synchronize is fine, I’ll do it. And if you do that, then you not only have your normal network drives and your own OneDrive files here in your file manager, but you also have another tab down here, which I call Jägel and Team, that’s the name of my Teams. Tenant is the technical term. So, I now have my corresponding teams here because I synchronize them. And now I can go to the manuals, for example, checklists, emails and now I’m in the normal environment that we’re used to, I can say open file, save file from any program, and I do it accordingly, but I do it in teams. And finally, even if I then look at the subject of training, I’m going to mute this for a moment, I don’t want to censor anyone here, but I don’t want you to discuss confidential matters here and not be aware of it. That means … Thank you. In other words, it’s very important to say this link in the file manager. And then you always have it with you. And I’ll switch to the iPad for a moment. I’ll also show it there, because when I’m out and about on the iPad, it’s also great that I can access my files here as part of Microsoft 365. And what most people do now is, oh, I work with Teams. Now I open the Teams app on the iPad.
Teams app
And the Teams app on the iPad is an application that I hardly ever use, to be honest. I very, very rarely use it on the iPad. You can see that he even has to optimize the functions there. Of course I can go in here. I can also go into the training team now. I also have the files here now I can go in there now and I can’t, for example, set the level behind these three points so that I can also make these files available offline. Because, let me tell you, how can you tell that you’re in Germany? Bad internet. I was on the train this morning. That’s when you realize that it’s good to have things offline. That’s why I recommend that you don’t use the Teams application for file management on the iPad or Android, but the OneDrive app instead. And the OneDrive app has the advantage that I have the files area here. These are your own OneDrive files. You have the “shared” area here, which are shares. You should only do this in absolutely exceptional cases, because it is much more intelligent to go to the libraries area. And what are the libraries? Libraries are exactly the training teams I was just in. And if I’m in here now, I can even say immediately at the top level that I’ve already got it offline. That’s why he says remove from offline. I can now say: “Please take it in as an offline file too. That works, at least not at the top level, it doesn’t work in the Teams application. And the great thing is that I now have the things I always need offline. And what is also brilliant, which is very much underestimated, is the Microsoft 365 application. You can even put it on the iPad as a widget. In other words, if you tap and hold somewhere, you can go to this plus in the top left-hand corner and then there are these widgets for all the applications that you have installed, and there’s also one that I already have on here, Microsoft 365. And you can see that I always have the files that I last used.
The right file management
And if I tap on it now, this application opens and the brilliant thing is that when I go in, no, I don’t want to do a scan now, I want to go here. I always have the files that I last edited somewhere in the top area right away. And that’s totally brilliant. In other words, I have a file hub here with OneDrive where I can find all the things immediately. And when I go into the Outlook application on the iPad, it’s also totally brilliant, because in the Outlook application I can say, I’m going to write a new email, I’m going to do that now, and I want to add an attachment to the new email. And for this attachment, I simply say this corresponding bracket symbol here and say insert file. And if you now have it consistently on Microsoft 365, then it shows me the last files that I have edited, whether on my iPhone, on my iPad, on the PC or on the Mac. That means you always get exactly the last thing you did. You don’t have that if you have it on a network drive.
OneDrive, Sharepoint, DATEV DMS and other virtual storage locations
And if everyone has it in their own OneDrive, then everyone has it just for themselves. That way, everyone has it with them. And then I can immediately say, I’ve got my training team here again, it’s so intelligent that it always goes straight to the latest teams. And now I can say, okay, I want this manual, and now I can even say, when I send it, I can just say, especially if I do it internally, I’m not sending a copy, then I have another redundant thing, but I’m sending a link. And that’s a completely different way of working. So ideally, with Microsoft 365, you should send links to everyone who has access to this team. And now the team keeps coming back, yes, that’s in the protected team. Yes, then don’t put it in a protected team, but please put it in a team where people can also access it. And the whole thing even, I don’t know how you do it, Mr. Hoffartht. I even know tax firms that already work with clients with teams, so they say, okay, the client and the tax firm even have a shared workspace there.
That means they can then put files in there. And there are now, I don’t know if there are any more tax consultants involved. I’m sure you already know them, Peter Hoffartht. There is now an interface to DMS, i.e. to the DATEV document management system, where I can say that I can send things from the DMS, the mother ship, the document management system to Teams. The clients don’t have access to the DMS, but the clients have access to Teams and then I can move things in and out the other way round. So it’s always important to link up with the mother ships, with the other systems. Back to the computer again and just to say, don’t I have double taxation here? In the storage space, the question here was once again, no, dear Willi Metzger. The nice thing is that this is a link. In other words, what you see here is not a copy, but the data is technically stored in SharePoint. So SharePoint is what’s under the hood at Microsoft and you can access it via the web interface, via Teams, via the file edge, but it’s also just a link. And precisely because of this, because what I often experience is that I then have employees who say, I now have something here in Teams and I want to edit this file that I have there.
Then I regularly experience people saying, I’m going to download it here. Well, you can download it here and then download it here, save it on your C hard disk, edit it and upload it again. So at least dear Manfred Seiler is already scratching his head, but I’m experiencing this and I always ask, why are you doing this? And I get, people don’t want to somehow, let’s say, annoy the IT system, but I always get two responses. The first feedback is, oh, I didn’t know there was another way. The second feedback, which is why I’m a big fan of not just dumping something like that into the system, but also explaining it. The second is that many people say that it’s so cumbersome if I have to edit it here in Teams because they don’t know this synchronization button yet. So that’s why I’m always a big fan of doing it immediately at the top level, as I’ve just shown. Once you go to the files area here, you always have the synchronization topic at the top level and you don’t have it specifically, not twice.
So I hope, dear Willi Metzger, that answers the question. Carl Dönemann’s question again: Do you have a recommendation for the synchronization of GoodNotes? Yes, I have one. Switch to OneNote. That’s not the question or the answer you wanted to hear, but I used to use GoodNotes and GoodNotes can be … What works in GoodNotes? Let me show you. You can at least in one direction in GoodNotes, you can at least create an automatic backup. So that’s possible. What you can do: I’ll open GoodNotes and we’ll take a look at it live. So GoodNotes. So, here we are. And when I’m in GoodNotes, there’s this cogwheel in the top right-hand corner of GoodNotes. And I can now do the following with the cogwheel: Now I can say, okay, I’ll go into the settings and say, there’s an automatic backup in the settings. And this automatic backup, it also offers me OneDrive. And then what it does is, if I enter OneDrive here, it creates a directory in my personal OneDrive. And the moment I close a notebook, it automatically saves it as a PDF file.
That means you can also do it in the original format, but if you do it as a PDF, then at least you have the option of looking at it on the computer, on the PC, which unfortunately you can’t do on the PC and working on it together. And I often have this, for example, I don’t know if you use it in the office, Mr. Hoffarth. Do you use OneNote for client meetings? Not yet? Exactly. Well, there is the idea in tax firms, for example, and I can highly recommend my colleague Lange from Meisterkanzlei. He’s been promoting it for years and he’s a tax consultant himself, so he’s someone who really comes from a professional background and he says, okay, when he’s preparing for a client, he doesn’t print things out on paper, he prints them out in his OneNote notebook and then he makes notes for the client and that automatically synchronizes into a team that everyone who works with it has access to. And that’s something like this and I’ve been working with OneNote for 20 years, I think. So I think the likelihood of OneNote being discontinued is relatively low.
It is supported on all platforms. So with this in mind, dear Carl Dörnermann, you can at least back it up automatically using this auto-backup, as just shown. That’s better than if you only have it locally on the iPad, because if the iPad is broken or stolen, the data would be gone. So with that in mind, it’s an option that will hopefully help you a little. But I always say that the most important thing for me is always and the most mature banks can now also go to Microsoft 365 in stages, with OneNote, which has the disadvantage that it’s just a bit ugly but has very good integration. Yes, Notion, dear Stefan Anders, is also a possible replacement for Notion. So Notion and OneNote are competing products. Notion has the charm of being a little easier to share on the Internet. So that’s a bit nicer. The advantage of OneNote Note is that it is really well integrated here. In other words, I have the topic here that I can immediately create a training manual here … so something like this is totally suitable for that, for example. And the brilliant thing is that the moment I actually write something in here, it immediately appears on all my devices without me having to think about it.
Handling files correctly
And for me, that’s always a basic principle, where I say that everyone who needs to work on data should always have access to everything without having to worry about it. And you can do that wonderfully with Teams. Then you save search times, you save copying times, synchronization times and all these things. What you could do, Notion can be used via a website and you can also integrate any website into Teams. In this case too, the idea of Loop in Microsoft 365 is an exciting one. The idea of Loop is that there are small components that are linked. This means, for example, that I can make a survey, which I can do with Loop, and I can put this small Loop component into an email, which I can have in a Teams, which I can have internally on a website and which is always linked to the same thing. So that’s the basic idea behind Loop. The disadvantage of Loop: There is no offline-capable Loop app for smartphones and I often need information on my smartphone when I’m out and about. So Loop is, at least as things stand today, purely online-capable and always requires an internet connection.
And since I travel a lot on the train, for example, Loop is not an option for me, because I always need services that work 100% offline, both for business and pleasure. For example, we’ve now been on the road again for five weeks with I’m in Camper-Man. I’ve been collecting pitches in my OneNote for years, where it’s easy to park and when I’m somewhere, I just quickly say on OneNote and if I don’t have internet, I still have the pitch information offline on my cell phone. I do that. So that’s why it’s always a matter of taste, of course. And if you, Ms. Dietrich-Lorens, are in a work situation where you always have the Internet, congratulations, then you can also work wonderfully with Loop and I also have customers who say that it is the more suitable solution for them. So there is not always one solution where you have to do it this way, but there is a suitable solution. And so back to the diagram, to say, okay, what are the things that I recommend saying, to say, documents on teams in the synchronized form, as I have just shown you, communication via the internal team channels. And here, please, there are also the great temptations that you always have with you and I’ll switch over to the Windows world again, which I always experience very nicely and very quickly, this area of chats, which is exploding. So, people say, oh, there’s a chat here, is it like WhatsApp? Well, and that means that the default mode is chat. So if you’re a Volksbank or Reifeisenbank, then Atruvia– and I think that’s good, I would even shorten it – deletes the chats after two years. And if you say, okay, you want to document a few things in a legally secure way – not a good idea. But that’s why, even if you don’t have that, I’m always a much bigger fan of putting it in posts here. And before you say, yes, but I have things that are relevant for all teams, for example, then ideally you should have a shared channel or a general team, because otherwise I always experience this WhatsApp group effect. So surely everyone knows that, right? I would say that they then have groups that are simply loud at some point.
Productivity killer
So at the latest since my mother-in-law discovered WhatsApp, the family group has been flooded with all kinds of wild memes and stuff. And I’d say that, for me, WhatsApp is one of the biggest productivity killers in the whole of Germany, next to TikTok. And unfortunately, a lot of people say, oh, it’s like WhatsApp, I know it, I do it. I’m very frequent in saying that chatting is really only an absolute exception, especially as there’s also a big security issue here, because you can exchange files in a chat without any problems. So, if you do that, then you automatically grant the other chat partner a share on their OneDrive with this file. Now you say, okay, I don’t need the chat anymore, I’ll delete it, or the employee leaves the department, for example, and should perhaps no longer have access to it, then you not only have to delete the chat, but you also have to revoke this sharing. Nobody does that in practice. So, against this background, you have a major compliance issue. In other words, sharing files via chat is an absolute no-go anyway. So, if you do it privately, solopreneur, no problem at all.
Compliance in larger companies
In the corporate sector, you have a huge compliance issue. So please don’t work through the chats. That’s another one of those first impulses that you just have. It’s like OneNote for meeting minutes. Is that the first impulse? But the first impulse is not always what you should ideally do. So, of course, if you have external people, if it doesn’t work yet, then you can also communicate by email.
Incidentally, Teams also allows you to retrieve an e-mail address for each channel. In other words, you can say that I want external people who don’t have access to Teams, but I want them to know that when an email comes in, it’s in Teams straight away. That works. You can get an e-mail address here in Teams. This means that every channel you have always has the other options here. As you can see, you always have the option of retrieving an e-mail address and can say that if someone sends something to this e-mail address, then you can immediately add it to the team. So there are also transfer options and they are getting better and better.
Yes, then. Exactly. Wonderful, dear Peter Hoffarth. Nice to have you back. Exactly. Then to say here too: knowledge management. In the Microsoft 365 world, I’m a big fan of OneNote and Teams if you have Microsoft 365. Otherwise, there are also special solutions for this. In the scientific field, also with the topic of AI, for example, there is a solution that I can highly recommend that comes from the scientific field. It’s called Aphorei. I once wrote it in the chat. And Aphorei, for example, is a solution that was originally intended for people who are writing a master’s thesis or a doctorate and they have to manage a lot of sources somehow and I use it for a lot of purposes. So if we stay in your field, Mr. Peter Hoffarth, I’ve just had a tax audit. So, what have I done? I have all my receipts, not just in DATEV and so on, but I have simply tipped them all into Aphorei and then I simply ask to say, tell me, what was the receipt for so and so much at Amazon? What was that? And then he immediately shows me the receipt.
In other words, there are also systems here that actually come from a different area, such as Aphorei, which is also wonderfully suitable for this area. Yes, tasks and logs, I’m a big fan of the fact that even Outlook and To-Do are logically integrated with Planner for teams. And here is also something that happened in Leipzig, for example, where there was this topic of minutes, there was OneNote before I was there, where I said, no, I don’t think OneNote is a good idea, but I think it’s much better to do it with Planner, that you say, so, what is the topic pool? Topics, current meeting. What are we discussing right now? What are we waiting for? What is done? What is documented? And then you have a board instead of X emails or notes at every jour fix, every week. In other words, the idea is that I say, of course I’d like to use OneNote in the team or with Viva Connections I can build a really nice intranet and the systems are getting better and better. In other words, when I look at a Planner Board like this, I say, here’s a customer in front of me, they have 50 Jour Fixe meetings and I asked the secretary, let’s say, how many e-mails do you have in the preparation and follow-up, and she said 20-30 e-mails. I said, do the bottom edge, 20 e-mails, 6 participants. If you multiply that, you end up with 6,000 emails going through the system and we just replaced that with a Planner bot.
Teams vs. master task
And that’s something where I say, if you only take one thing with you, definitely take a look at the Planner. Nowadays, you can even use this planner for yourself. In the past, you always had to have a team for it. Now you can also use it yourself. I’m also a big fan of self-organization with the Planner. I was already using it when it was only possible in a team. If you … Meistertask, also great. Exactly, OCR recognition is completely integrated there. Outstanding. It finds more than my normal Finder definitely finds more than … I don’t have the comparison to the DMS with DATEV, how good the OCR is there, but at least I find more there than in my customer view. Meistertask, also a great solution. Meistertask has the same basic principle, but has the small disadvantage that it is simply not quite as well integrated into Teams. And with Planner, I also like the fact that I can group it according to completely different things.
That means I can group here and can say I don’t want to look at the columns by flow, but I can say, for example, who is it assigned to? I can move it back and forth. So I have to say that MeisterTask is nicer, just as GoodNotes is much nicer than OneNote. So Microsoft usually doesn’t deserve any design awards, which unfortunately prevents many people from working with the solution. I always like to compare when I started with companies online. I can still remember when I started scanning. As a mainly Mac user, I had a wonderful scan program and then this puke-ugly scan module from DATEV came along. And then I said, no, I’ll scan with my thing. And then I measured it once and I was twice as fast with the DATEV module because it was simply intended from a workflow perspective and not from a design perspective. And that’s also a bit of an appeal to say, please don’t be distracted by the bling bling and the shiny, it’s important that the systems are cleanly structured. And keyword cleanly structured, so what we have done here at the bank, for example, is that as part of the Microsoft 365 introduction, we have very, very consistently listed all the processes where we say these could be processes and this is one of, I think, a total of 500 pages in the printout or something, where we have really looked at all the processes and said, how do you do them? And by the way, there were points like vacation planning and team, for example, where we said, okay, so far it’s done via Excel, it’s done via geno.HR, it’s done via a calendar. So we have already identified three different ways of working in this bank and we said, for example, why are we doing it in future? We said that we would do it here via geno.HR in future, because we said that geno.HR is the best solution in the network. So it doesn’t always have to be a Microsoft 365 solution. In other words, this is also a solution where we say that here in the previous tire banks, they cannot yet communicate with external parties. This is already possible in data tax consulting. So there is the possibility of doing the same. By the way, here’s another tip, I’ll say, put a 1 in the chat to indicate who the tax advisor is. I know who Petra Hoffarth is. Of course I’ve already seen it there. So he probably knows, but we have more tax advisors. Exactly, sorry if I didn’t remember that. At DATEV, there are two ways in which you can use the Microsoft 365 license.
Which is cheaper, DATEV or Microsoft 365?
One option is that you buy the license from DATEV. The other option is that you bring in the license. And this applies both if you have your own server solution and in the ASP solution. And my tip is to ideally bring it in yourself. Especially if you perhaps … I have some law firms that already had Microsoft 365 before. You don’t have to move them, everything works and you simply migrate them quickly to the DATEV environment.
The second topic, you have the advantage of DATEV that you have a simple user portal for administration. But how often do you create a new user? It’s not every day that you create a new user. You don’t do it that often. But the disadvantage is that, especially if you work with external parties, if you have the license via DATEV, everyone, including clients, must always work with two-factor authentication. And even as a tax consultant, for example, I work with two-factor authentication wherever possible. But when I look at how difficult it is for clients to deal with the issue of encrypted emails alone, they simply overwhelm many with the issue of two-factor authentication. And if they bring in the license themselves, then you can just say that we as a law firm do two-factor.
It also applies to normal companies, you can say we make our users two-factor. I do guest access without two-factor authentication. So once again relevant for tax consultants, but also for others, in terms of how it is administered. What I can also highly recommend, Power I said it, what is the best access? The best approach is that there are sample templates and you can simply look at them and then you can copy them and say I’ll use them as a basis. And that’s the best option. As you can see, we have a whole host of approval workflows here, for example. And that’s pretty well solved, because here I can say, for example, that I’m requesting an approval and no matter where the boss is at the moment, if they’re in their Teams application, they can see it in Teams. If they’re on email, they’ll see it on email. This is becoming more and more intelligent so that it is not redundant, but on one channel. And if they then approve it on a device somewhere, it disappears everywhere. So approval workflows can be done extremely well with Power Automate and you can close so many small gaps with it.
Overview of the biggest mistakes
So it’s definitely worth taking a look. Yes, to conclude, what are the biggest mistakes, most of which I’ve already mentioned, that you see when introducing Microsoft 365. So this issue of thinking in terms of IT instead of processes. So it’s much more important to take an inventory of processes and say, where does the process still have weaknesses? Where does it crunch? Which systems are we using to do this today? And I experience this again and again that I am a company where there are different ways of working in different departments. As long as they don’t have to work together, that’s fine, but as soon as they have to work together, it simply becomes difficult. And that’s why it’s more important to have the process organization glasses on than the IT glasses. So zero inbox is not something that can be achieved by making the right settings in Outlook, but by simply thinking about work organization. Yes, but please don’t implement the actual processes one-to-one. I always say that for every new process you introduce, you should get rid of at least one process, preferably two. We’ve also simply eliminated many processes at customers where I’ve worked because we said, okay, does anyone still need that? Nope. So is this art or can it go, in other words, if in doubt, get rid of things you don’t need. And then to make sure that, for example, like with the Planner topic, that you simply make use of opportunities, because that’s not digitization, that’s the first step, remember. Digitization means that the crappy analogue process becomes a crappy digital process and usually even gets worse in the digital world. Digitization is when I say I’m going to use an option, such as Planner, and say I’m going to use Planner to create a log, I’m going to use something that wasn’t possible in the analogue world. That is digitalization. And the highest level is digital transformation. They achieve this, for example, by using AI, perhaps by being able to translate existing video material that they have, which is currently only in German, into Indian, English, Spanish or French with AI lip-sync. I had a lady at a lecture event yesterday who said that we have a business model here that we have had in Germany up to now. Thanks to AI, I can now scale this worldwide because I can automatically translate my videos and materials with AI lip-sync.
That’s digital transformation, opening up new business models and new markets. Yes, too many apps, especially for one … So you can’t have one person working with OneNote, another with Notion, another with GoodNotes, another with the Apple Notes program. It has to be consistent, especially if the same people are working on the same things. It’s also not a good idea to do too much at once, to overwhelm employees, but to start with the basics first and then slowly, step by step. It’s better to take smaller steps that people can follow than if you, as the owner, managing director or project manager, are already 200 meters ahead and the team no longer knows where to go. Yes, the whole issue is definitely a change process. And you also have to look at it from the perspective of just throwing it in and the issue will explain itself, it’ll sort itself out afterwards. I often come across companies where they say, oh dear, we just introduced this in a relatively unstructured way. Now we need someone to sort it out and tidy it up a bit. As you know, even in real life, it’s usually more work than if you just set it up properly and cleanly.
Then there is a lack of support from users. It is not self-explanatory. And also the so-called digital natives, by the way. We always think, oh, just because they’re young … Well, I have a 27-year-old daughter. Just because they’re young, they’re all super fit in all Office programs. They can type WhatsApp messages three times as fast as we can and are also faster in TikTok. But when they have to work on an Excel spreadsheet, they need the same kind of support that we needed back then. So we overestimate the young and we often underestimate people who, like me, have been young a little longer. I’m 56, which often means over 50, digital Dino, we don’t even ask him anymore. And I don’t think Bärbel Radermacher is with us today. Because she has another appointment, but she’s over 80 now and she’s really digital and my father, who’s 83, always shows me things that make me say, wow.
Lack of communication rules
We discussed it again last night, there was an employee who said she was always frantically checking emails and then I said, is the place on fire? No, but we have a culture like that. And then I said, tell me, have you ever asked your boss whether she expects you to check your emails 24/7? And of course I’ve always adopted an inner attitude when my bosses have sent me an email. But at some point I got into the habit of agreeing communication rules with my bosses. And most people know that I have two watches, the analog one I already had before. That’s my emergency channel, where I can be reached by text message. Yes, then We are the world champions of crime prevention in Germany, so we like to put the circuit board right across the road. I say, please make one, not just one, but two, left and right, but please don’t just put them across the road, but right and left. That also makes sense. It’s important to integrate the management and also to integrate this into regular meetings and set an example. So if you as a board member say that we all have to go digital and you have your emails printed out, then it’s the same as if you say that we all have to tighten our belts and you order a fully equipped S-Class.
So that makes no sense in this case. And that’s why here, in the slide, you can see once again the biggest mistakes made by teams, which we have also looked at. Thank you very much for the topic of protective blankets. I’m always learning something new in this area too. Wonderful. What are the best practices where I say to ask yourself what is annoying about digital working, to say that everyone sees everything with defined statements. There are simply no alternatives to saying, this way or the highway. To say quite clearly that if I put in a new process, then I throw out two processes. Incidentally, this is also a topic of legacy issues. I thought that was great in Leipzig. They just said, we’re moving to teams and they didn’t take over all the old files, but said, okay, you have three months. During the three months, you have to move the files you still need from File Service to Teams yourself. And then they were archived. So don’t just copy everything over and migrate it over. Empty start is a good idea. You don’t always have to document everything, but you can also focus on the results there.
For initial training courses, as much as I am a friend of online training, I think face-to-face is the more suitable format, because you can also look at the screens, so you can be a bit closer. You should definitely ask those of you who are members of the works council to join in, which is a good idea anyway, but I always recommend that you do so to avoid any headwinds. And to say, if you, you’ve seen it, I’ve switched to the iPad two or three times, then also use that when I look at it now, for example with the preparation on the PC, with OneNote, to complete the whole thing on the iPad with the Apple Pencil, for example, to have the whole thing automatically integrated again and of course to integrate it back into the DMS as part of the month-end closing routine. So please, no pure quick messengers without an application and clearly in the direction of change management. In other words, at the beginning I said that if we worked the same way in production as we do in the office, no car would ever be finished. That’s my question at the end, what would happen if we worked in the office like we do in production? And of course, Cemal has already included the charts in the product.
Conclusion
But I’ll also put my e-mail address here in the chat if there are any questions. Most people already have it with them anyway. In this sense, I’m not at the end of my tether, but at the end of the promised time. Sorry, I’m three minutes over, but I just wanted to answer one or two questions in between. Thank you also for the questions in the chat and the additions. And on that note, I say good luck, thank you very much and I give back to the wonderful host, our dear Cemal Osmanovic.
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