Why Microsoft 365 is Such a Valuable Resource For Your Online Business

Whether you’re on your desktop at home, your laptop in a café, or your phone on the go, Microsoft 365 gives you everything you need right at your fingertips — empowering colleagues to work and collaborate from virtually anywhere in the world. While the tried and trusted tools like Word and Excel are great, they’re really just a small part of what M365 is capable of today. Let’s explore how Microsoft’s suite can revolutionise productivity and collaboration, both in the office and beyond.

 

Give your productivity a boost

As one of the most widely used cloud productivity suites, with over 500 million users globally, you’ve undoubtedly come into contact with Microsoft 365 at some point in your life. One of the best features of Microsoft 365 is that it offers online versions of their most popular products – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

Whether you’re drafting a letter in Word, compiling a spreadsheet in Excel or building a presentation in PowerPoint, Microsoft 365 plays an important role in the everyday running of a business. Stats suggest M365 can save up to 30 minutes of productivity loss per day and increase revenue by up to 33%.

In addition to the most well-known apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Microsoft 365 offers a range of other helpful tools to support your business. These include Teams for communication and collaboration, Planner for managing tasks and projects, and OneDrive for secure cloud storage and file sharing.

You’ll also find tools like Forms for creating surveys and quizzes, and Bookings to help schedule appointments. These additional tools make it easier to stay organised, work efficiently, and manage everyday business tasks.

 

Real-time communication

Working on a project with colleagues across different locations? No problem! Microsoft 365 lets you and your team collaborate in real-time. Everyone can edit documents simultaneously, making teamwork smooth and efficient, no matter where you are.

Microsoft Teams is there for you to chat, make video calls, share files, and collaborate on projects with your team members, all in one place. This makes it easy to stay connected and productive, no matter where you’re working.

Reliable communication tools are an invaluable asset for any successful business, as businesses with connected employees could see productivity rise by 20-25%. Co-ordinating your appointments can be a particularly time-consuming task, especially when it comes to the to-ing and fro-ing of correspondence.

Microsoft Bookings offers a quick and easy way for users to schedule appointments, allowing them to choose a time that’s best for them. What’s more, it can help to reduce the amount of missed appointments by automatically sending reminder emails, further reducing the unnecessary waste of your business’ time and resources.

Following on from this, even something as simple as managing emails is bolstered by Microsoft 365, as Outlook allows you to access your emails across multiple devices. Important — given that 85% of employees rely on more than one device at work.

However, by far the most powerful communications tool at Microsoft 365’s disposal is Microsoft Teams. With over 500,000 businesses using the platform – including 91% of the Fortune 100 – Teams allows employees to host meetings with users across multiple locations, using secure and reliable chat, video and voice tools. Available in 181 markets, along with support for more than 40 languages, it’s easy to see why so many large, international businesses have taken it on-board.

 

Masses of storage

One of the biggest headaches for productive employees is often the hassle of sending and storing large files. Microsoft 365 offers a solution to this problem with OneDrive, a secure cloud storage platform. With OneDrive, you can easily store and access your documents from anywhere. Enjoy a generous 1TB of storage space, allowing you to share files by sending a link via email, text, or social media. Even when you’re offline, you can still access your files, for productivity at all times.

See also: 5 ways Microsoft 365 can save the day for small business owners

 

Collaboration made easy

There’s nothing worse than working for days on a hefty task, only to find that it’s not what the client asked for. If this sounds familiar, you’re certainly not the only one as 86% of employees cite ineffective communication or a lack of collaboration as a major role in workplace failures.

To help combat this, Microsoft Planner allows you to create a flexible work board, populated with simple tasks and plans that extend towards an overarching goal. Compatible across all devices, you can easily assign and organise jobs, share files and discuss tasks, helping to avoid any confusion or misinterpretation among your employees.

Another great collaborative tool that Microsoft 365 has to offer is SharePoint: a web-based platform that allows multiple users to securely work on documents at the same time. You can also see each other’s changes in real-time, allowing teams to synchronise their work, easily. With all this in mind, M365 can help take your business to the next level and maximise your online potential.

 

Serious security

Microsoft 365 has a number of simple but strong security features to protect your data. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) adds extra security by requiring multiple proofs of identity when logging in, while activating encryption protects your data in transit — keeping it unreadable if accessed by the wrong people.

Microsoft’s security feature called Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) works like a real-time guard against malware, and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) gives you control over exactly who can access docs. For email specifically, Exchange Online Protection (EOP) helps keep your inbox safe by filtering out spam, viruses, and phishing attacks.

 

Automatic updates

With automatic upgrades, you get all the essential apps like Word, Excel, and Outlook, which work online without needing any software installation. Updates happen automatically at set intervals, so you don’t need to worry about keeping everything up to date—it’s taken care of for you. In other words, you won’t have to buy new software separately because the updates should usually be included in your M365 subscription!

 

New AI Features

M365 is revolutionising productivity for today’s world with cutting-edge AI, helping everyone accomplish more with less effort. The new M365 is packed with smart features that boost productivity, while new updates are coming out all the time.

AI now integrates with other Microsoft services like Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint, creating a unified ecosystem to streamline your workflow.

With the launch of Windows Copilot, M365 is ever more integrated with other Microsoft products and services, making your workflow smoother. M365 also integrates well with a number of popular third-party apps, so you can easily connect to the tools you love.

See also: Microsoft 365: Top New AI Features and Tricks 2024 

Learn more about everything Microsoft 365 has to offer