Microsoft 365 is one of the most trusted business productivity tools in the market today, as remote office and work from home arrangements have become the norm. What's more, the product's subscription-based pricing model gives businesses the flexibility to scale up or down with ease, enabling them to pay only for the services they need.
Related article: Microsoft 365 signals a new era of productivity for SMBs
Here are other ways Microsoft 365 helps minimize costs and maximize productivity.
Vendor license consolidation
Microsoft is one of the biggest business productivity software developers in the world and serves a wide range of businesses across different industries. Chances are, you're using or have used at least one Microsoft 365 product in your office. Having several Microsoft products in your system incentivizes your use of the Microsoft suite. It also eliminates the need to deal with so many vendors and lets you draw out the most value from your tech investments.
Vendor license consolidation helps you save costs by reducing the number of vendors you need to deal with, which, in turn, lowers integration costs and improves end-user experience. You no longer need to worry about vendor relationships and resource availability.
Ease of IT administration and deployment
Microsoft 365 is a robust platform that your in-house IT team can easily configure to meet your organization’s IT policies, compliance requirements, and more. The platform also provides thorough documentation for audit and visibility needs.
Moreover, offloading your hardware and software maintenance to Microsoft allows your IT team to focus on higher-value IT tasks such as governance and functionality management. This gives your IT workers more time and headspace to ensure your revenue-generating business components are running optimally at all times.
Cost of risk savings
Being on the Microsoft 365 platform puts businesses in a better position to improve their security posture. This translates to a significant reduction in the severity and volume of successful end-user security attacks that an organization faces every year.
Microsoft 365 offers several tools that you can use jointly to improve your security posture. For example, you can use Cloud App Security and Azure Active Directory’s features to detect unusual user behavior patterns, expand risk-based checks, and enforce user access policies.
Related article: Which Microsoft 365 plan is the right one for you?
Travel-related cost savings
Your 365 subscription automatically comes with Teams, which will enable you to hold virtual meetings while enjoying seamless access to all your files, emails, and business data. Teams also supports rich text editing, chat translations, priority notifications, and third-party chat apps to keep your team engaged and focused on tasks at hand. Teams is a great alternative to constantly traveling from office to office, as the powerful communications suite seamlessly integrates with Microsoft’s different productivity tools.
Even IKEA swears by Microsoft 365’s travel cost reduction effects, as the Swedish furniture giant has adopted new remote working styles to protect employees during the COVID-19 pandemic without sacrificing productivity. IKEA also claims that the reduced travel times have played a positive role in improving the work-life balance of their employees.
Automation and process improvements
Microsoft 365 is equipped with cutting-edge features like machine learning and artificial intelligence that 365 users can leverage to improve their processes.
You can build apps that automatically move processes along on Microsoft PowerApps, and then integrate your apps into Teams where forms can be filled out and automatically uploaded to your HR system. Global logistics firm HAVI did just that, and they claim that it shaved a 2-week process down into one 40-minute onboarding session.
On their 365-powered HR system, new hires simply fill out forms at a Teams-based onboarding portal. Their PowerApps-built app then automatically forwards all paperwork to their in-house HR system. Once manager and HR acknowledge the forms, the system automatically moves the process forward with intro presentations, ID photo taking, biometrics scanning, and more, without having to leave the computer terminal.
Get Microsoft 365 for your organization through USWired today. Our team of experts will guide you through the process and will provide answers for any questions that may arise. Contact us today to get started.
