Can Teams Replace Email for Corporate Communications?

Talking about Email and Teams

On October 17, I had the opportunity to speak at the Modern Workplace Conference at the Microsoft conference center in Paris. My topic was a discussion about whether Teams can replace email. I’m pretty definite that Teams can’t, but it certainly can replace some of the email traffic that circulates within Office 365 tenants today. The percentage of traffic that moves to Teams will be higher in some organizations than others, as it all depends on culture, training, and the flows of communication. For instance, a company that has a high percentage of its traffic going to external parties won’t see that traffic drop through Teams.

As always, it’s best to try and extract most value from all the technologies at your disposal. That means good preparation, intelligent choices of tools, user education, and ongoing management. Given that these factors are in place, I think Teams and email can live together well and complement each other in most organizations. But if Teams is launched within a company with poor preparation and no user training, it’s unlikely to be successful. At least, not as successful as it can be.

A Sketch Note

I am indebted to Luise Freese for coming to the session in Paris to generate a “sketch note” from my comments.

And the Presentation

For those wanting my slides, here’s a copy of the deck Can Teams Replace Email for your downloading pleasure.

Editor’s note: the deck is updated to reflect the content presented at the European Collaboration Summit in Wiesbaden, Germany on May 28, 2019.

---

For more information about Teams, head to Chapter 13 of the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook, where you’ll find 80+ pages of practical and insightful information to help plan your deployment.