How Microsoft Teams helps the Inova Solutions Marketing Team Excel in Busy Times

May 17th, 2021 | 5 minute read

• How our Marketing department leverages Microsoft Teams to excel in busy times

• Inova Solutions participates yearly in Microsoft's Partner of the Year Awards contest

Monday morning, 8:00 AM, April 19th, 2021

The Marketing department at Inova Solutions is focusing on their upcoming deadline – the Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards (POTY) nomination submissions. This yearly project requires input from the entire Inova Solutions team, and with the current lockdown in Curaçao – where the Marketing department is located – the team is working from home. Thankfully, Microsoft Teams has the necessary tools to help Inova Solutions successfully complete this project.

The Marketing department is responsible for the activities and budget of every country where Inova Solutions operates. For the POTY submissions, the team expects to write 10 case studies with the help of their colleagues and submit them in several categories in the hopes of bringing the awards home.

Manager Adriana Wong started the POTY engines at Inova Solutions at the beginning of March, by announcing the submission deadline on Yammer, an internal social network integrated with Microsoft Teams.

Afterwards, Adriana coordinated the case study nominations. During a Microsoft Teams meeting with each Country Manager, she discussed the requirements to be eligible to submit nominations in the different categories with the help of screen sharing, while Digital Marketer Marcy van Ooijen used the integrated OneNote tab to take notes of the suggestions of the Country Managers.

A Channel for Optimal Communication and Collaboration

When Inova Solutions started participating in the POTY awards several years ago, the Marketing team created an ‘POTY Awards’ Teams within Microsoft Teams, and created a subchannel for each year. The team could easily communicate with other team members working on the POTY project. The meeting notes, planning, case studies and submissions are all stored in the subchannel according to each year. This allows every member to easily access documents from past years for reference, as well as access, edit, and upload any necessary content for the current submissions. Members can also post updates in the channel, share files and tag other members if they want to share anything with them.

Thanks to this setup, the Marketing department can easily monitor the progress of the case studies needed for the submission and communicate any updates relevant to the POTY submissions.

Tuesday afternoon, 3:00 PM, April 23rd

No matter how prepared a team is – they should always expect the unexpected. The marketing team has discovered that one nomination mentioned during the earlier conversations with the Country Managers, can be separated into two case studies! This means that Marcy, who luckily has a background in copywriting, will be writing an 11th case study. As exciting as this is, it means extra pressure on the tight schedule Adriana and Marcy were keeping to meet the submission deadline.   

But thanks to quick conversations with the relevant team members in the Microsoft Teams chat, the marketing duo can collect the necessary information and supporting materials to make a strong case study.

During the rest of the week, Adriana and Marcy check, double check and triple check the case study drafts. Some are written by team members, but most are written by the marketing team. Thanks to the handy features of the Microsoft Office Suite, Adriana can easily see the changes Marcy makes to the documents, and vice versa. What’s more, they can collaborate on a case study simultaneously, allowing them to be creative together.

Whenever Adriana, or Marcy have questions about something written in one of the case studies, they can go on a quick call with each other or one of their colleagues in Curaçao, Jamaica, Puerto Rico or Ecuador to get more details about the case studies.

Friday morning, 11:00 AM, April 23rd

All but one case study has been written, and they are currently being entered in Microsoft’s POTY online submission tool.  During a Teams call with Adriana, Marcy shares her screen and together they go over the nominations, checking if every nomination is entered in the right category, if all information is entered correctly, and if all supporting documents and customer references are added. Then, they officially submit all the drafts.

In the meantime, the deadline of the nomination submissions is moved up to April 26th, allowing Marcy more time to write that last case study. It turns out to be one of the best stories this year, about a subject that is close to Inova Solutions’ heart: helping communities through technology.

Monday, 9:00 AM, April 26th

Adriana and Marcy submit the last of the nominations in several categories for the POTY Awards, with time to spare.

Monday, 6:00 PM, April 26th

Marcy writes a final post on Yammer, sharing all the nominations and thanking all team members for their time and dedication.

Completing this project so successfully was no doubt thanks to the dedicated team of Inova Solutions. But an essential tool during the process was Microsoft Teams.

Later, while reflecting on the week, the marketing team realized that without the platform, they could not have been in constant contact with their team members and stay on top of the project progress. If they did not have the ability to collaborate on documents, they would have possibly done redundant work. Being able to do quick calls and chats made the process of writing and submitting a case study that much faster. And let’s not forget the POTY Awards 2021 Teams channel, where all documents were stored eliminating the risk of someone losing or misplacing a document.

Using Microsoft Teams decreases the risk of miscommunication and empowers teams to be collaborate and be more productive. For the Inova Solutions Marketing duo, Microsoft Teams is an integral part of completing their daily tasks (even though they mostly communicate through GIFs in the Teams chat).

Would you like to find out more about how Microsoft Teams can improve the way your team works? Make an appointment with our Modern Workplace Task Force.

About Inova Solutions

Inova Solutions is the Microsoft trusted provider of cloud services in the Caribbean, with an outstanding Gold Partnership. Its mission is to “Empower organizations of all sizes to create business advantage by adopting digital transformation”. Inova Solutions' focus is to help organizations ensure business continuity by embracing the smart use of technology. The main priority is to establish the ultimate customer experience driving transformational change.