How Office 365 Can Benefit Small Businesses

Written on 30 October, 2017 by Iona Yeung
Categories Small Business

More and more small-to-medium-sized businesses are adopting Microsoft Office 365, and for good reason. Since its launch, the service has helped many businesses streamline operations and enhance productivity.

In fact, Office 365 has more than 60 million users to date – a figure that is only expected to grow. What is it that makes Office 365 a cut above the rest? In this article, we look into a few of its key features.

Work anywhere at any time

There’s no denying that the traditional 9-5 work day has shifted dramatically over the past decade. Thanks to digitisation, employees are now crunching numbers, writing reports and creating proposals in their own time at their own desired locations. Operating as a cloud-based service, Office 365 incorporates all those Microsoft programs we’ve come to love and adore (including Word, Excel and PowerPoint), thereby gifting you the opportunity to work on, share and edit these programs wherever you are. As long as you have an internet connection, you can easily access all the files you need from the cloud.

Easily collaborate with your co-workers and clients

If you work on projects that require collaboration, Office 365 makes it an extremely desirable platform for small businesses. You can oversee your colleagues’ work-in-progress in real-time and discuss upcoming projects with clients, even if you are thousands of kilometres apart.

Store bulk emails thanks to a large mailbox

A further benefit of Office 365 is the enhanced storage space compared to other systems. In the past, we’d often find ourselves having to sift through our email inbox and give it a good clean-up when it got too full; with Office 365, you no longer have to worry about this kind of housekeeping. With 50GB of email storage space, you have much more room to store and preserve your email messages.

Gain peace of mind with built-in security and continuous compliance

Data security and control remains a huge issue for small businesses, with cyber-attacks harnessing the power to give your foundations a hearty shake-up. In fact, stats released earlier this year indicated that 43% of cyber-attacks target small businesses, and only 14% of those small businesses can adequately mitigate cyber risks and vulnerabilities. The Microsoft creators have taken this into account in creating Office 365. Herein, data security in the cloud is no longer an issue: with built-in security and continuous compliance, your small business can continue running smoothly with the knowledge that your data is safe and only accessible to those who have permission. Furthermore, if you happen to lose or break your laptop, you won’t need to worry about losing all your data: it’s already sitting in the cloud, out of harm’s way.

Get organised with email, calendar and contact synchronisation

Running a small business means finding ways to optimise your organisational skills and refine your schedule. Office 365 is all about fine-tuning your task management to the best possible abilities. The service instantly synchronises all important info across all your devices. Say you update a contact on your mobile phone, Office 365 will update it everywhere else. Want to save a document on your PC but continue working on it on your tablet? No problem – Office 365 has you covered. Say farewell to gaps in communication and turn your small business into a powerhouse.

Bid farewell to licensing headaches

Last but not least, the beauty of Office 365 is that small business owners no longer need to worry about navigating their way through the nightmare of software licensing. With all licensing already included, Office 365 can be deployed across the company, meaning everyone has the same version and receives the same updates at the same time.

In addition to a professional email, Office 365 can give you the apps and tools your business needs to simplify the day to day of your business.

If you’re interested to see what Office 365 can do for your business, learn more.

Need help finding a plan suited to your business? Get in touch with our team of online solutions advisors.

 

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