Microsoft Teams for SMBs (Concept)
Background
After analyzing various job descriptions for Microsoft’s Teams division, I discovered three main goals that Teams is trying to accomplish:
- Drive growth with new segments, especially enterprise and SMB users. Another related segment is creating specialized solutions for first-line workers, including workers in retail, education, financial services, etc.
- Increase user engagement (Activities/session, MAUs, user retention, etc.) Teams’ job description notes that the team has a vision to hit 1M Freemium monthly active users by FY19
- Increase discoverability. Although Microsoft Teams has a great product, many users are not aware of it, or not aware why they should switch over from competing products including some Microsoft services such as Skype for Business and Staffhub as well as competing services like Slack.
Problems
A recurring criticism of Microsoft Teams is that the on-boarding process for small businesses’ is simply too difficult.
- According to Forbes magazine: “One big thing I’d like to see Microsoft improve on is the simplicity of sign up for small businesses”.
- Engadget says Teams “might seem a bit too complex for small organizations”.
- A proposal on Team’s User Voice to create team templates received nearly 1,000 up votes!
With this in mind I defined the main problem for Microsoft Teams to solve as simplifying the on-boarding process for small businesses and the main strategic goal being to drive growth with the SMB segment by both simplifying the on-boarding process, and additionally providing a clear value proposition specifically tailored to the needs of a small business.
Design Journey
Use Cases
The following is a non-exhaustive list of 5 possible use-cases
A) Non-technical small business owner
As a non-technical small business owner, I want to set up my staff on Teams without a hassle.
Scenario 1 : Given that I’m in the coffee business and not as tech savvy, when I sign up for Teams, I should be able to easily and simply create an account with settings that match my industry expectations.
Scenario 2: Given that I’m in the coffee business, when I transfer my business onto Teams, then I should be able to quickly onboard only the features that will be useful for my business.
B) Medium Business Accountant
As an accountant on a team with other accountants and various external stakeholders, I want to be able to use Teams to help me get work done.
Scenario 1 : As an accountant at a SMB there are various tasks I find repetitive, there are certain templates I am accustomed to using for work, when using Teams I should have quick access to these templates.
Scenario 2: As an accountant at a SMB there are various tasks that require collaboration with other accountants, when using Teams, it should be easy to work with others in real time.
Scenario 3: In a small business setting, it is not unusual for the executive team to have my accounting team research new properties for possible expansion. I should be able to have quick access to local real estate listings, and industry trends, to increase the ease with which I can have a report to my boss.
C) Medium Business HR rep
As an HR rep at a medium sized company manage payroll, employee relations, and recruiting new staff.
Scenario 1 : As an HR rep at my company, I am used to interviewing various candidates and managing my interview schedule using a combination of tools such as LinkedIn, Email, and calendar. When keeping track of candidates I should have quick access to my normal toolkit for hiring.
Scenario 2: As an HR rep at my company, I manage the payroll of employees. I consult my calendar and organization’s time keeping platform to release pay schedules on time. When keeping track of payroll, I should have easily accessible information including normal schedules, logged hours, and employee disputes.
Scenario 3: As an HR rep at my organization, I gather feedback on employees and management, sometimes this feedback is transparent and other-times anonymous. When gathering feedback I should have an easy way for employees to log both types of feedback, as well as a way to collect this feedback and automatically sort them based on employee.
D) Sales & Marketing at an SMB
As a salesperson at a small-medium sized business, this sales and marketing teams are combined, so the responsibilities are shared.
Scenario 1 : As a salesman at a SMB I am used to keeping track of inventory and focusing my sales efforts on products that are popular with customers. When I use a service I want easy accessibility to my inventory and if need be access to my venders to follow up with orders.
Scenario 2: As a manager of a SMB, I like to keep track of how my salespeople are performing each month. This includes a monthly bonus to the top salesperson each month. When communicating with my salespeople I would like to be able to track their performance and gather valuable insights into their results.
Hypothesis
If we X, then Y will happen leading to positive metrics Z. Include guesses for size of the win.
- As of April 2018 Office 365 Commercial edition has about 120 million business users.
- As of March 2018 Microsoft Teams has 200,000 organizations and 3 million teams. This suggests the average organization on Microsoft Teams creates 15 teams (larger sized company).
Formula for approximating the number of users of Microsoft Teams.
Note: This formula assumes no intersection between employees across teams, therefore the actual number would be lower.
Total Teams users ~=~ number of teams*(employees/team)
- High Assumption: The average team has 20 employees. If this is the case the total number of users is
3 million teams * 20 employees/team =60 million users
- Middle Assumption: The average team has 10 employees
3 million teams * 10 employees/team =30 million users
- Low Assumption: The average team has 5 employees
3 million teams * 5 employees/team =15 million users
This gives us the ballpark range of somewhere between 15~60 million users. This is again assuming no intersection between employees across multiple teams, to correct for this I would assume every member of a team is a member of one other team. A simplistic assumption to be sure, but one that would probably get our users closer the actual number.
This gives our new range somewhere in the ball park of 7.5–30 million users.
As stated earlier Office 365 has 120 million business users, so the potential untapped market size for Microsoft with users who already own Teams is a staggering 90 million — 112.5 million users. That is to say assuming no additional growth from segments outside of Office 365, Microsoft still has about 90 million users that own Teams who are not taking advantage of these resources.
This is assuming the majority of these 90–112.5 million users are SMBs, but this is likely overestimating the target market. Assuming 75% of these users are SMBs and 25% are large businesses the new market size is approximately 67.5–84.3 million users. Microsoft’s strategic goal for the next 3 years should be capturing the majority of this untapped market, before focusing its efforts on capturing further market share.
As a large part of Team’s value proposition comes from being part of the Office 365 bundle, by focusing on improving its value for current Office 365 users Microsoft will also make Teams a more attractive proposition for businesses’ considering rival services.
Rough Scoping
Version 1 of Microsoft Teams SMB should prioritize creating an on-boarding experience as simple and enjoyable for a small-medium sized business as possible. While I sketched up an idea of the form this can take above, I would want to first validate my hypothesis, making sure I am indeed addressing a pain point for these businesses. I would do this by working with a UX researcher to create a survey or focus group to learn more about the pain points for SMBs with regards to Teams.
If it is indeed the case that on-boarding is a sticking point, then I would work with a UX designer to create a mockup prototype and test the design with a segment of Office 365 users that are not yet using Teams. More likely than not after the feedback from our users, we would go back and revise the prototype using our new insights. Once that iterative process is complete and we validated our design with tests, I would then add this on-boarding experience to the engineering backlog.
Once the project is on the backlog I would evaluate the work the engineering team is doing as a whole, using a combination of quantitative methods (weighted prioritization matrix) and qualitative methods (discussions with the engineers, PMs, designers, etc.) to come up with a realistic timeline in the totality of circumstances.
After version 1 (our MVP) is complete, I would then focus on addressing more niche needs such as those by the different departments within a SMB. V2 will include team specific services starting with accounting. Before starting any work I would first validate my hypothesis by working with a UX researcher to create a survey that can be used to find the paint points for accountants using team collaboration software. I would then proceed by calling accountants at SMBs and testing my hypothesis against these interviews.
If the hypothesis is indeed validated, my next step would be to form relationships with members of the excel team, and once I established some rapport, ask for input on how to best go about creating interactive templates that teams can use. Once we have insights from the Excel team, I would work with a UX designer to create a prototype we can test with a beta segment of Office 365 users as well as a separate study for non users. This would allow us to test both 1) how accounting can fit in with a team already using Teams software 2) testing unique value proposition from a team using a competing (or no) service.
The next versions after this would be focused on expanding team specific services (HR, marketing, etc.). Since the insights gathered during the first two versions of this project would play a pivotal role in how we proceed, so using the insights gathered throughout the project the plan for these versions will be adjusted accordingly to our findings.
Appendix: Research
- https://www.reuters.com/article/brief-rpt-microsoft-ceo-says-office-365/brief-rpt-microsoft-ceo-says-office-365-commercial-now-has-more-than-135-million-monthly-active-users-conf-call-idUSL8N1S3C7P
- https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/16941814-team-templates
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2018/04/02/after-one-year-microsoft-teams-pulls-into-pole-position-for-large-enterprises
- https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/12/microsoft-teams-free/
- https://www.chanty.com/blog/team-communication-tools/
- https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-office-365-now-has-120-million-business-users/
- https://www.techspot.com/news/77799-microsoft-teams-massive-growth-puts-ahead-slack.html
