How Your Company Benefits from Office 365

Migrating over to Microsoft Office 365 isn’t always easy, but it’s always worth it. When your organization finally make the switch, you’ll reap the many benefits that it offers.

1. Working From Anywhere

Obviously, one of the biggest strengths of Office 365 is the fact that it’s cloud-based. For you and your employees, that means that having an internet connection and a capable device are the only two things you need to login and access your files from anywhere in the world.

Office 365 inherently offers an impressive amount of portability as well. You can easily download Office 365 applications to your laptop and mobile devices to use fully supported workspaces that will keep you connected anytime, anywhere.

2. Enhanced Productivity

Traditional server storage required employees to be physically present at a network computer, meaning that they could only work when in the office. If they wanted to work remotely, they had to deal with complex virtual private networks (VPN) that limited access to their files through flimsy connections. Cloud-based Office 365 changed the playing field for businesses of all sizes.

Office 365 reintroduced portability, which goes hand-in-hand with productivity. Global studies show that employees who believe their workplace effectively uses mobile tech are more creative, satisfied, and productive at work. Giving employees the opportunity to continue working from anywhere is beneficial because it improves work flexibility and simply offers more chances to get work done.

3. Better IT Budgets

6.9% of revenue goes to IT at the average small company and 4.1% at the average midsize company. Meanwhile, the share is just 3.2% at larger companies. With a very limited budget size, it’s critical that companies spend their money on services that matter.

Office 365 offers multiple plans to fit into just about any budget. Because these plans are priced on a fixed year, per-seat basis, they are easy to budget around by offering predictability in your IT spend. That gives organizations the power to expand and improve on their current IT infrastructure without worrying about fluctuations in their Office 365 license costs.

4. Scalability on Your Terms

Organizations change quickly, so it’s important to use services that can keep up with changing demands. Office 365 puts you in control of your own software management with an easy-to-use administrator panel.

With it, you can efficiently add or remove users as you see fit. You can also use it to upgrade your plan level. For example, if your business is only using an Enterprise E1 plan, you don’t have access to downloadable Office programs. When your company grows more, it can easily switch to an Enterprise E3 plan via the administrator panel. In other words, you can gain access to features as you grow – your Office 365 plans grow with you, at your pace.

5. Improved Security

Improving cybersecurity efforts is a chief concern of many modern companies. Global spending on cybersecurity products and services are predicted to exceed $1 trillion over the next five years, from 2017 to 2021. As viruses and malware become more advanced, businesses continue to turn to industry leaders to keep their data protected.

Office 365 offers native security policies that keep your files safe from would-be attackers. They include user management through Azure Active Directory, data-at-rest and data-in-motion encryption, multi-factor authentication, and much more. Viruses and malware will continue to evolve as time goes on. But with Office 365 on your site, so will your protection.

6. Solid Reliability and Uptime

When your files are hosted in a secure data center, you can rest assured that they are backed up and mirrored for redundancy. For your organization, that means being able to access your data whenever you need it. Unlike traditional on-premise servers, all maintenance of the actual servers is the responsibility of Microsoft.

In practice, that translates to having a legally binding service-level agreement that guarantees a minimum of 99.9% uptime.

Let Your Business Benefit from Office 365

In our blog series, we’ve talked about everything from the history of cloud-based applications to the benefits of Office 365. This suite of programs and services is truly one of the most helpful and innovative products on the market today.

At Visual Edge IT, we want to help your organization implement Office 365 so that your business can grow better. Regardless of the size of your business, Office 365 can give you the tools you need to compete in larger markets and deliver higher-quality work to your clients.

So let’s begin your transition. We’ll help you plan for your migration, migrate over your data, and implement each service effectively – while providing support along every step of the way.

Ready to get started? Feel free to contact us with any questions on Office 365 migrations or the next steps you should take.

Thanks for reading our blog series! Missed out on the first one? You can read it here.