Most of us have used Microsoft Office at some stage during our working (and personal) lives.
The latest incarnation of the tech giant’s suite of email, word processing, spreadsheet, and productivity tools is thought to be in use by around 155 million people every month.
This begs the question: why isn’t it being used to its full potential?
If you already have an Office 365 license, think about how you use it. The chances are, you’ll be a daily user of Outlook, Word, and possibly Excel.
There really is an awful lot more to be explored beyond those cornerstone apps, and we’d like to give you a glimpse into the additional benefits Office 365 can offer businesses of all sizes.
Mobile productivity
The Office 365 suite is available in its entirety on most platforms.
For instance, if your daily driver is an iPad, you can use Excel to finish that detailed board report from the comfort of a coffee shop or delve deeply into tomorrow’s PowerPoint presentation from your sofa the night before.
Microsoft’s own range of hardware obviously benefits from brilliant mobile Office apps which are constantly updated to take advantage of new devices and peripherals.
There’s no excuse not to use Office on the move now; long gone are the days when the mobile apps were poor relations to their beefier desktop counterparts.
Office can finally do away with your file server
Good news: you no longer need an expensive file server stuffed away somewhere in your office.
Depending on your subscription, Office 365 should come with OneDrive, which is a brilliant cloud storage service. OneDrive enables teams to collaborate on files no matter where they are and without the need for a server at the office.
Files are stored centrally and can be accessed from smartphones, tablets, desktop PCs and laptops. This aids collaboration by enabling people to share files with one another or even work together in real-time on Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations.
It’s super-secure, too. OneDrive benefits from the latest security updates and practices to ensure there’s no accidental deletions or malicious attacks. Can you say the same about your old file server?
It’ll aid your digital transformation efforts
Digital transformation is something most businesses are working their way through, but it isn’t easy.
The idea of the ‘paperless office’ still feels like an age away for some organisations, but tools like Office 365 will help you get there quicker.
By moving more of your document capture, storage and creation into OneDrive, you’ll vastly reduce the amount of laborious, paper-intensive processes the business relies on.
Office 365 feels inherently mobile, light on its feet and capable of raising your productivity levels considerably. It also boasts interfaces and terminology that most people are familiar with and which enable fast adoption company-wide.
To fully embrace digital transformation, you need to peel back the surface layer of Office 365 and start using the features that reveal exactly where your business is currently inefficient or too heavily reliant on paper.
Microsoft Teams will get you all talking
When Microsoft Teams was launched in 2016, it introduced a brand new, secure way for workers to collaborate with one another, directly from Office apps.
From team-wide to private discussions, this brilliant tool even integrates with Skype. This means that, no matter where you are in the Office 365 world, you can immediately run ideas by colleagues or dive into conversations that require your input.
Direct integration with all Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint – you name it) enables this freedom, and allows participants to share and work on documents, spreadsheets and much more collaboratively, no matter where they happen to be.
How to get started
We’ve hopefully convinced you that there’s a lot more to Office 365 than Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
But how do you get started with the more exciting, transformative stuff?
If you’re based in the West Midlands, the Compex IT team can help you get the most from your Office 365 subscription.
Just get in touch with our friendly team and discover a world of new possibilities.