Find yourself multitasking during video meetings or checking email during conference calls? While doing more than one task at a time can be tempting, toggling between tasks costs up to 40 percent of your productive time, according to the American Psychological Association. Even though each task switch might only cost a few tenths of a second, keep it up all day and you’ll lose valuable time.

Fortunately, smart cloud communications technology can make us more productive. 8x8 Work is a cloud-based app that brings together voice, video, and chat—making work better and life easier. 8x8 also puts global communication into context by embedding it within other applications like Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, and ServiceNow.

That SINGLE app is the first step in curbing your task-switching habit. It replaces your separate communications apps so you no longer have to constantly juggle between your video app, your team chat app, your phone, Salesforce, and so on. The reality is that more tools = more confusion.

Organizations and employees are looking for a better way to be more productive, which is why we are launching a series of blogs, surveys, and eBooks over the next 8 weeks to help achieve higher productivity. You’ll have a chance to learn about operating from anywhere, building custom communications experiences and using cloud communications to do it, and how even small businesses can have it all with the advantage of enterprise-grade communications.

I will spend the next 8 weeks talking about making communications more convenient and helping workers become more productive and thoughtful. As Microsoft Teams continues to proliferate, I’ll focus on how to embed better voice communications into Microsoft Teams, the options to consider, and how real companies have brought enterprise voice communications to their Microsoft Teams environment. Think of this like a Jack Reacher series of stories, but for communications software… OK, maybe not.

On that note, the first chapter of the new eBook Connect Everywhere: Better Voice Communications for Microsoft Teams will be released on February 8, as part of a 4-book series with essentials for every type of business working and collaborating in the new digital workplace. Please join me, follow along, and let us know what you think.

While you’re waiting, get a jumpstart by joining our Microsoft Teams Trends for 2021 webinar.