Automate Governance. Prevent Oversharing. Maximise User Experience in Microsoft 365.

In today's digital workplace, effective governance is crucial to maximising employee experience while minimising risks. With the rise of remote and hybrid work, platforms like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace have become central to organisational operations. However, poor governance of these digital workplaces (DWs) can lead to significant risks. Here’s an analysis of the key risks, approaches, and solutions to enhance DW governance.

Digital workplace governance is a challenge

A lack of platform ownership and accountability can lead to unmanaged growth and inconsistent practices. When there is no clear ownership, accountability is absent, allowing for uncontrolled expansion and random methods. This can create significant security and compliance risks. Poor governance often results in non-compliance with legal and regulatory standards, exposing organisations to data breaches and legal penalties.

Moreover, poor business adoption is another critical issue. Ineffective governance can hinder the adoption of digital tools, thereby reducing productivity and employee satisfaction. This inefficiency is further compounded by spiraling storage, vendor, and licensing costs. Uncontrolled use of data warehouse (DW) platforms can lead to escalating costs without delivering corresponding benefits.

Citizen development also poses significant concerns. Unregulated development by non-IT staff can introduce security vulnerabilities and operational inefficiencies. Additionally, DW platforms that are not providing business value highlight a misalignment between digital tools and business goals. Without strategic alignment, these tools may fail to support the organisation's objectives effectively.

Finally, there is often a temptation to fully lock down DW platforms. Faced with the risks of sprawl and over-sharing, IT departments frequently respond by shutting down key DW collaboration features, which can hinder the potential benefits of these platforms.

Enhance employee experience, don’t undermine it

1. Establish a Governance Structure
   Create a clear governance framework with defined roles and responsibilities. This includes forming committees for social and ethics, nominations, remuneration, audit, and risk, alongside executive management for asset oversight.
   
   
2. Promote a Balanced Governance Model
   Avoid the temptation to fully lock down DW platforms. Overly restrictive measures can stifle collaboration and drive employees to use shadow IT solutions, increasing risks.
   
   
3. Develop a Digital Workplace Product Team
   Appoint a digital workplace product owner responsible for the DW roadmap, risk management, and business relationships. This role ensures a holistic view of the digital ecosystem, aligning it with business needs.
   
   
4. Implement Iterative Governance Processes
   Governance is not a one-time setup but an ongoing process. Regularly update policies, manage licenses, and monitor security controls to adapt to evolving needs and threats.

Solutions to improve your digital workplace

Centralised governance provides clear ownership and accountability, enhances risk management, improves business engagement, strengthens vendor relationships, and reduces costs. It also increases user productivity and adoption of digital tools.

Third-Party tools like BCC Affirmatic can enhance workspace governance. These solutions offer features such as workspace provisioning control, naming conventions enforcement, and automated user access management via Self Service.

Developing communities of practice to engage users, share best practices, and gather feedback is essential. This approach facilitates two-way communication between IT and business units, ensuring the digital workplace meets organizational needs.

Implementing a multi-layered data protection strategy is crucial. This includes data loss prevention (DLP) policies, conditional access, sensitivity labels, and audit logging, which collectively protect sensitive data across different digital workplace components like SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams.

Educating employees on governance policies and the importance of compliance is necessary for ongoing success. Continuous training ensures that users are aware of best practices and the rationale behind governance measures.

Implement effective governance with BCC Affirmatic

Effective governance of the digital workplace is essential for maximizing employee experience and minimizing risks. By establishing a structured governance framework, promoting balanced policies, leveraging third-party tools, and fostering user engagement, organizations can create a secure, efficient, and collaborative digital environment. This not only enhances productivity and compliance but also ensures that the digital workplace delivers real business value.

These insights have confirmed our commitment to providing a holistic Microsoft 365 governance and management solution as a native Teams application.

BCC Affirmatic is your single point of access for all Microsoft 365 resources to provide precise governance and guest user management as a self-service. It is available as public SaaS, private cloud or virtual machine.

Microsoft 365 Groups Management

• Microsoft 365 Group Management to control access and security to M365 resources, including approval workflows, automated processes, and expiration dates.

Self Service for Microsoft 365

• Delegate Teams management tasks to helpdesk or users themselves via "Self Service Portals" without compromising security.
• Our template-driven approach ensures that each new M365 resource is created consistently with the organization's required features and capabilities.

Managing external users in M365

• Simple request for external user account management and approval workflows, automated processing to create Azure AD accounts.
• Add users to Teams, Groups, and/or SharePoints.
• Monitoring expiration dates and grace periods to govern the lifecycle of external users.

Administrative workflow automation

• Create standard solutions for your specific administration tasks.
• Automate manual workflows with custom PowerShell Scripts.
• Securely and centrally execute custom PowerShell Scripts.

Security and Compliance

• Accurate audit trails of changes made to electronic systems are required.
• BCC Affirmatic offers comprehensive logging, giving you a complete record of all admin changes made within the M365 resources.

Customizable web interface

• Our customizable web interface allows you to adapt to your corporate design and integrate M365 management into your existing corporate IT portals.

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