Are you getting the most from Office 365?
Moving your IT infrastructure to the cloud has great benefits over traditional on-premise only networks such as greater reliability, improved security, and scalability. However for the majority of businesses once they’ve realised these benefits it’s back to business as usual. For the businesses who have moved to Office 365 that could mean a massive missed opportunity to transform their business into a modern workplace with tools they’re already purchasing on an annual subscription sitting dormant.
In some instances products providing the same functionality are additionally purchased. Even worse, due to the workplace not modernising, employees find applications that help them work more efficiently outside of the corporate IT structure, this creates shadow IT which is unknown and unmanaged by the business. Important documents and information which should belong to the business sits in personal silos with no governance, or corporate ownership.
Once a business has migrated to the cloud it’s time to embrace it. Take a look at all the products available, and see if these products could benefit your business, explore what your current licences give your users, and understand the ecosystem to which you are now a member.
The following is a list of Office 365 applications available to Business and Enterprise clients. If you are already an Office 365 subscriber, are you making the most of the products available to you? If you are still hosting your own infrastructure, you can see what you are missing out on!
Office 365 Applications
Microsoft OneDrive is used to store, sync and share documents. It can also be configured to work with SharePoint document libraries providing sync’d storage of your SharePoint content
Microsoft Teams allows for instant communication between business users around a central goal with shared tooling. Built in features such as instant messaging, voice and video enables users to work naturally with users around the globe.
Soon to be fully integrated into Teams, Skype for Business is an enterprise level communications platform for IM, Calls and online meetings. Includes active statuses of your contact list and ability to receive and make external calls.
SharePoint is the digital home of your organisation and a portal into the other applications of Office 365. Often deployed in the form of an Intranet, it provides document management and business process capabilities.
Enterprise social network for company wide communications and knowledge sharing. Post articles and announcements, great for informal corporate communications and can be consumed as feeds within SharePoint.
Automated workflow, allows for automation of user tasks and information flow. A flow can be triggered by most actions within Office 365 and connectors to other platforms. Flow can automate time consuming tasks that are repeated regularly.
Analytics platform that can display data from a wide range of sources. The output can be consumed in most of the other MS products providing a great insight into any business process.
Build custom applications for your organisation for consumption in the PowerBI app on phone, tablet, or from with other Office 365 applications like Teams and SharePoint. Works well with Flow and PowerBI for an immersive and complete application platform
Newsletter of online presentation creation software that’s simple and intuitive to use. Great for generating newsletters that are shared throughout the business or simple guides and documentation.
Securely host internal video content to share across your organisation and embed in SharePoint, Yammer, and Teams. The combination of search and auto closed-captioning enables users to find content in videos easily.
Centralised profiles of all users in your organisation. Learns the way you work and with whom and provides a proactive view of what you may be interested in delivering content that’s relevant to you.
Create surveys and quizzes that can be shared and completed by members of your organisation. One the survey or quiz is complete you can display the results through the inbuilt UI or design your own with PowerBI. Great for employee surveys or polling to see which coffee is going down well in the canteen.
Office 365 Business Centre
Office 365 Business Premium subscribers based in the UK and US may also benefit from additional applications provided by Microsoft via their Office 365 Business Centre. These applications include:
- Bookings
- Invoicing
- Connections
- Listings
- Customer Manager
- MileIQ
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