What is a Digital Workspace?
Looking back to the late 1990s, the concept of an ‘intranet’ brings back memories of blinking, ancient desktop computers and painstakingly slow archives of company information. Intranet systems were rightly criticised as being clunky, text heavy and totally devoid of visual appeal. Indeed, it wasn’t until the power of the internet was fully applied to the world of business that more accessible and user-friendly intranets were introduced.
Intranets have undergone considerable transformation since then; but despite this, many organisations continue to use old systems, failing to see the progress that has been made in the interim. Gone are the days of uninspiring, non-interactive intranets with the arrival of Happeo: an all-in-one system that offers a truly digital workspace. But what do we mean by this?
Whilst this term may have baffled many less than ten years ago, its meaning is rather simple. In a nutshell, the concept of a digital workspace allows businesses and their employees to access the tools and systems they need from any device, regardless of time or location. However, enabling employees to work remotely isn’t the only function of a digital workspace. Indeed, collaborative working has become an essential in modern business, and having an ‘online office’ has become extremely desirable.
Connecting Collaboration
Collaboration is the key winning feature of a digital workspace, yet continues to be one of the most underutilised and underrated workforce practices. Despite this, collaboration tools have risen in popularity, including Happeo: the collaboration platform that engages, informs and connects your global workforce.
Like many of the products Damson Cloud specialise in, Happeo is a certified Google Partner. A unique platform, Happeo comes as a social intranet solution for Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), community-powered and ideal for businesses and organisational leaders who have little experience using intranet portals. The all-in-one platform empowers internal communicators to connect with employees in new ways; bringing intranet, collaboration and social networking functions together into one accessible and unified solution.
The objective of this neat platform is to accelerate growth from within, harnessing the skills and talents of businesses to overcome common silos. Users can create visually appealing and dynamic intranet pages with ease, whilst sharing breaking news and announcements as they occur with the superb Channels function, discussed in our demo video above. Meanwhile, companies and organisations can fully integrate Google Suite programmes whilst obtaining a new, automatic people directory.
An Integrated Ecosystem
In workspaces internationally, the platform has been recognised as one of the most promising innovators from the world of tech as it continues to attract users across every sector of industry. Indeed, the system’s unification of a company’s digital toolset into one integrated ecosystem continues to see it gain traction in Europe, where The Next Web and Adyen named Happeo as one of the EU’s hottest start-ups. For its many users, the reasons for this are obvious: Happeo minimises distraction and breaks down informational silos, with huge companies including BMW and Randstad Sourceright using the system to transform their internal communications. But what is an intranet, and what can it do for your business?
An intranet is a private network based within a business or organisation that is used to share information and computing resources in a way that is stable, safe and secure. The technology is also commonly used to facilitate group work and teleconferences. However, the public perception of an intranet is of a system which is slow, clunky and lacking in visual appeal: an understandable criticism given a lack of innovation in the field. Our chosen methods of interacting with software have transformed over recent years; but the central function of an intranet has remained the same.
Encouraging a Happier Workforce
With Happeo, the founders of the platform have brought real innovation to the market, equipping companies with the engagement tools of an intranet through some really unique social features.This has resulted in a platform that has combined communication and collaboration through a comprehensive integration of Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) tools. Independent of location and device, Happeo drastically reduces time spent searching for tools and company information, as well as time spent on internal emails. Consistency is encouraged and fostered between a business’ offices and locations, whilst the practice of ‘shadow IT’ is eliminated. Overarching all of these benefits, however, is the creation of happier, more engaged employees along with enhanced employee retention and collaboration.
The success behind the unifying platform can be attributed to its huge range of features, as well as its seamless integration with some of the world’s most popular applications (including Google Workspace, Slack, Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar). One such feature is the enterprise search function, allowing users to retrieve company files, significantly reducing file loss and the average time spent searching for information each week, (currently estimated at 9.3 hours by McKinsey). This is a huge benefit of the cloud-based solution, giving users the flexibility to communicate on the move using any connected device. Thanks to the platform’s removal of top-down communication, a free flow is introduced, allowing you to connect with the person you need.
Compliance and Security
The user-friendliness and visual appeal of Happeo is matched by its levels of GDPR compliance and cyber security. All user data is stored within Google Cloud, meaning it benefits from ultra-secure international infrastructure used by leading corporations including Coca-Cola and Phillips. The security of this infrastructure was recognised in the Forrester Public Cloud Platform Native Security Q2 2018 report, where Google Cloud was named as a “leader” in the field. Beyond the endorsements of this report, Happeo has achieved ISO 27001 certification – the international standard for the practices in information security management systems. The system is also natively GDPR compliant and holds full SSO authentication.
As a longstanding member of the Google Cloud Partner program, Damson Cloud specialise in bringing people and ideas together through new ways of working. We champion change management and digital transformation using some of the internet’s most trusted solutions, including Google Workspace, Happeo and Jamboard. To find out more about our services, check out our library of tutorial videos or our blog.
