“Shadow IT” can be a divisive subject depending on how long you’ve been in the IT field. There is a legacy attitude within many IT teams that shadow IT must be controlled – but it can bring significant benefits to an organization. Modern IT teams understand these benefits, and focus on balancing shadow IT’s value and risk. Moving past that legacy attitude and developing a modern IT mentality in your organization can be difficult.

These are unprecedented times. All around the world, as more and more countries start the process of responding to COVID-19, companies and employees are trying to make the shift to remote work so they can keep work going. For many people, this means working remotely for the first time — and getting used to the challenges of working from home is going to be a bit of an adjustment. But even people who are used to working remotely are finding it hard right now. Because this is different.

As millions of teams adjust to working remotely full time, many are searching for ways to stay productive without compromising work-life balance. Finding time for deep focus, reducing digital distractions, and fighting the constant deluge of app toggling and notification checking are all top priorities for workers—and for good reason. According to the Anatomy of Work Index, nearly three-quarters of workers experience burnout every year.

Building and maintaining great customer relationships is at the core of any good business model. But staying on top of who your customers are and what their relationship with your business is at any given moment is difficult. And that’s true across the board—whether you’re a small business with a hundred customers or a large one with hundreds of thousands.

Over the past 30 years, the term customer relationship management (CRM) has evolved with the times—what was once seen as a tool designed to provide visibility into a company’s sales pipeline has morphed into something much more powerful. At its heart, CRM is about managing current and potential customer relationships by collecting and analyzing data.

What do your customers want? This question has been asked more than any other question in today’s competitive business world. Undoubtedly, this era belongs to customer experience, and every company is striving to provide the best possible experience to its customers. While it is crucial to understand your customers, it is equally important to explore the fundamentals of customer interaction. Every great business works on the rule of thumb of seeing the world through the customer’s eyes.

Against the backdrop of the novel coronavirus pandemic, different business operations have adopted a new style of working (work-from-home) and have started functioning remotely to maintain business continuity. Customer support teams too have started supporting customers from the safety of their homes. Amidst the uncertain times, as Jack Ma said, you have to adopt new practices, change existing processes, and do it quickly.

COVID-19 has forced tons of companies to have their employees work from home. But for those who are new to remote working, this transition can be difficult. However, with the right remote work tools, you’ll have no trouble working in or running a remote team! To help you get started, we’ll cover some of the best remote work tools for your business. We’ll highlight their key features, pricing and their alternatives to help you choose the right tool.

Using the right tools, working remotely comes with numerous benefits. It gives employees independence, enables the company to hire talent worldwide, saves time and money with transportation, reduces ecological footprint and can boost team productivity. In order to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the majority of organizations are asking their stakeholders to keep digital relations.

Suddenly, your whole operation had to move into a remote scenario. As a manager or business owner, you may feel completely lost and unprepared to deal with it. When globally scaled issues like COVID-19 happen, we realize the importance of keeping a business going through challenging times. However, staying productive online requires defining the right tools. Check below the main ones (even internally used by our team at Rocket.Chat) to help your team stay collaborative and efficient.