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Office 365 – Untapped Potential for Small and Midsize Businesses
Chelsea Sauder • January 14, 2019
Office 365 adoption continues to grow in businesses of all sizes. Which businesses get the most “bang for their buck” out of the investment and which ones are leaving something on the table?
For large corporations, the journey to Office 365 often involves the migration of existing on-premise systems to the cloud to reduce investments in hardware, data centers, and technical employees. For these organizations, the systems remain very similar to what they’ve always had but they can take advantage of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) benefits such as licensing elasticity and reduced support staff. Those benefits, while potentially significant monetary value, often do not contribute to a significant acceleration in these organization’s ability to conduct business.
Alternatively, for small and midsize businesses, Office 365 has taken previously out of reach capabilities and brought them into the realm of possibility. Systems and services which were too expensive and cumbersome are now available at your company’s fingertips with no upfront cost and no complex installation. Additionally, the teams that were once required to keep these applications up and running are a thing of the past; our condolences to the Database and Server Administrators. Equally important for a growing organization is the licensing elasticity – the ability to scale your license needs up and down on a monthly basis. The combination of these benefits can empower your organization to do more with technology than you ever have before.
Office 365 setup and adoption follows a few typical patterns and generally includes the need for corporate email (Exchange), corporate instant messaging and audio conferencing (Skype), and data storage (OneDrive for Business). While these three very common components are significant enablers for many small and midsize businesses, there remains substantial untapped value in the platform and licenses that you’re already paying for if that’s all you’re using!
A few of the key features we often see missed are:
• Internal Company Portal
• Intuitive Document Management System
• Business Process Automation
• Task and Project Management Capabilities
• Robust Reporting and Data Visualization
Is your Office 365 implementation taking advantage of these features? Have questions?
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