In today’s era of digitally-powered business, it’s important for all businesses to choose their software and apps carefully. Picking the wrong software can seriously impact an organisation; whereas picking the right software just makes everything run more smoothly. This is why a lot of the business IT support London based organisations pay for will involve helping the client find the right type of software for them. We spoke with a provider of these types services – TechQuarters – about what they feel is the right software for small businesses. Their answer was Microsoft 365.
Most people in the business world are familiar with Microsoft 365, or at the very least, they are familiar with Microsoft – which, considering they are one of the biggest and oldest business technology companies in the world, should be expected. According to TechQuarters, M365 is used by many businesses as the foundation of their digital organisational structure.
What is Microsoft 365? (formerly known as Office 365)
This group of products has gone from a number of names over the decades. For a long time, the collection of apps and services that would eventually become Microsoft 365 were known as Microsoft Office. Then, Microsoft Office because known as Office 365 when it was transformed into a cloud-based service. This was when Office 365 consultancy became a popular service for business. Now, the line is known as Microsoft 365, and it includes a wide variety of functionalities, such as:
- Word processing (Microsoft Word)
- Spreadsheet editing (Microsoft Excel)
- Presentation creation (Microsoft PowerPoint)
- Cloud file management (Microsoft OneDrive)
- Enterprise-grade emailing (Microsoft Outlook & Exchange)
- Cloud Note-taking (Microsoft OneNote)
- Unified Communication (Microsoft Teams)
Where Microsoft Office used to be a package that businesses and individuals needed to pay for upfront, Microsoft 365 is a pay-as-you-go service where, for a nominal monthly fee, you get access to all products, including all future updates and new products and services.
6 Reasons Why Small Businesses Choose Microsoft 365
- It’s Cost Efficient
As we mentioned earlier Microsoft 365 is based on a subscription model that gives organisations access to all the latest (and most up-to-date) apps and services. Microsoft 365 has many different types of licenses that are suitable for different types of organisations – no matter how small (or big) your organisation is, and no matter what level of functionality you need, there will definitely be a license to suit you.
- It Has Great Security
Microsoft 365 has loads of great cybersecurity measures built into it. For example, the products are all integrated with an antivirus software, spam filter, privacy policies, and the ability to setup multi-factor authentication. Furthermore, all the apps and services are hosted in Microsoft’s global Cloud, which has some of the best security in the world, and so all Microsoft 365 customers are beneficiaries of the time and money that Microsoft has invested into reinforcing their cloud environments.
- World-class Collaboration
If Microsoft 365 is known for one thing, it’s the communication and collaboration features it offers organisations. Firstly, the email services (courtesy of Outlook & Exchange) are best-in-class, and are used by even the biggest enterprises. Furthermore, Microsoft Teams offers chat, calling, and videoconferencing all within a single platform. All the apps and services in Microsoft 365 integrate with one another very easily, which means that the flow of information within an organisation is unrestricted, which is one of the keys to effective collaboration.
- It’s Easy to Use
Microsoft have been in the business for over 40 years, now. They have actually pioneered many of the prevailing trends in software design, user experience, and user interface. What does this mean? Simply put, Microsoft 365 is highly intuitive to anyone that has any kind of experience with desktop computers. Microsoft even offer loads of great (and free) learning resources to get people using Microsoft 365 as efficiently as possible.