At one point or another, everyone has wondered what they’d do if they stumbled upon a genie in a bottle and had three wishes afforded to them. Well, with the most recent version of Office 365 we feel like three magical requests for productivity software were granted to us and with the advent of these product improvements, there’s really no excuse for not using the software at your small and medium sized business.
There’s a lot of vendors that ostensibly claim to offer the cure to all of your document creation needs, but they simply don’t cut it. We’ve always loved Microsoft's Office suite, but they went ahead and answered all of the wishes we didn’t even know we had. Let’s take a look.
Collaboration and Productivity Features
Arguably, the biggest draw for SMBs to adopt Office 365 is it’s collaboration and productivity enhancements. The newest update is really centered around the ‘live’ editing functionality that allows multiple users to view and edit a document simultaneously. And because it’s situated on a cloud-based platform, employees don’t need to be at their desk to participate in the collaboration.
Did a co-worker leave a comment on a draft of your monthly presentation, but then leave the office for an offsite meeting? Follow up with them by adding a question to their comment and they can view and respond to it on their mobile device from the taxi, meeting room or even home.
However, if you feel that just having cloud-based access to these documents and their tracking features doesn’t really facilitate the quality of communication you need for effective collaboration, look no further than Yammer and Skype for Business. Both are fully integrated into 365 and give you the opportunity to start project-centered conversations using everything from chat conversations to high-definition video calls.
Another great collaboration tool that sometimes gets buried beneath the more popular ‘live’ features is Office Delve. With this, you can see which projects users are currently working on and search your archived documents and their history in one centralized location. This is helpful for keeping everyone busy and making sure company time is efficiently spread across all of your projects and priorities.
Another 365 feature, called Groups and Connectors, has made team and project management so intuitive and simplistic that you’ll wonder why it’s taken this long to create them. Since all of the Office applications are linked together within one platform, creating groups only needs to happen once and is as simple as clicking ‘Join’ on a conversation, project or group listing. Gone are the days of setting permissions for each document and each user. Furthermore, with the recent addition of Connectors, this functionality extends to third-party software as well. Once they’ve been ‘connected’ to the group, all of the members have the same access and rights to shared non-Microsoft apps like Twitter, Trello and Mailchimp.
Usability
Can you guess our second wish? Features and tools are all well and good, but they’re really only as beneficial as the core service they’re built on. Thankfully, Microsoft stuck with what they knew worked and didn’t make any world-shattering changes to the foundation of the Office suite. All of your beloved applications are still there with all of their hallmark usability. If anything, Microsoft continued their 25 year march of patiently adding core competencies without upending a product that is known and loved for its reliability.
This comes with the addition of mobile apps for iOS and Android for the entire 365 suite; Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, it’s all there with a whole lot more. With the creation of mobile apps and the pivot to a cloud delivery system, Microsoft knew they had to promise users a certain level of security. In addition to some really detailed administrative controls, constant monitoring and frequent security patches means that your data is as safe as technologically possible.
Scalability and Affordability
With wishes spent on innovative collaborative features and excellent usability, what’s left? How about scalability and a subscription plan that makes all of this enterprise-level software well within the reach of small- and medium-sized businesses? Traditionally, software vendors have required companies to purchase licenses right out of the gate. This meant hefty upfront expenditures for licenses that may not be used as efficiently as they could be if there was a little more flexibility.
Office 365 uses a ‘pay-as-you-use’ model that allows you to only pay for as many licenses you need at that moment. And since it’s delivered entirely over the internet, you can save even more money by eliminating onsite servers and lengthy update/patch installs -- Microsoft takes care of all of that on their end.
Honestly, there are very few software providers that offer worthy competitors to the Microsoft Office suite. Adding exciting productivity and usability features, delivering it via the internet, and making it more affordable means 365 is a no-brainer for small- and medium-sized businesses. Whether your staff need the ability to work remotely, your company needs the ability to add licenses quickly or you just need to give your team a collaboration booster, 365 is the way to go.
Here at Onsite Computing we love the way Microsoft’s newest version of Office creates opportunities for both freedom and safety, and we’re experts in making that happen for you too. If you’re interested in bringing any of the aforementioned advantages to fruition at your business, you don’t need a genie or a magic lamp -- call us today and we’ll make all of your wishes come true!
