J. Walter Thompson sees Microsoft Teams beating its rivals in the team collaboration space

Earlier today, Microsoft announced that its Teams collaboration app was now generally available to Office 365 customers. The new chat-based workspace in Office 365 has been available in preview since November, and more than 50,000 different organizations have already started using it.

One of them is J. Walter Thompson, a global marketing communications agency. In a new guest post on the Office blog, Jamie McLellan, chief technology officer at J. Walter Thompson explained how embracing Microsoft Teams allowed the company to improve collaboration among its 12,000 employees. According to him, Teams can really appeal to anyone already using other Office 365 apps:

Microsoft Teams connects our organization with an interface that supports the way we work, and I have seen firsthand how diverse working styles and demographics can all flourish within the Teams framework. For the employees in our company who are excited about technology that mirrors the software they use at home, the immediate chat-based collaboration and feedback across devices and the engaging Teams interface are very familiar and appealing. At the same time, employees who prefer a structured working environment, or who are concerned with policy, find that Teams fully meets their needs as well. It’s the best of both worlds and it’s not often that you find a single tool that has such a wide appeal.

The CTO also praised the advanced Office 365 security and compliance capabilities, adding that high-security standards also matter for the company’s clients. “Clients are likely to feel safer interacting with us in a Microsoft platform like Teams as opposed to a third-party or start-up program,” he added.

Overall, McLellan expects Teams to beat its rivals in this highly competitive space. “We see it outpacing third-party tools that are not designed for enterprise collaboration, and enticing users back onto a single platform,” he explained. You can learn more about how J. Walter Thompson uses Microsoft Teams by reading the full case study.