As a business owner or project manager, you want success for your undertakings, right?
Then having a system that can help improve organizational performance on what matters is essential. Fortunately, Microsoft 365 can sort you out.
It goes way beyond your ordinary Excel, Word, and PowerPoint software network by offering an intelligent and comprehensive contemporary workplace solution. Here we take a look at 13 Ways Microsoft 365 can boost your productivity.
Let’s dig right in:
1. 24 Hour 7-Day Availability
One of the most outstanding features of Microsoft 365 is its unlimited availability. You can access the program at any time of the day, seven days a week, without a hitch. It’s all thanks to its cloud storage.
Furthermore, you can access the system from whatever location you’re on, even on five different gadgets that are synchronized together.
These are essential features for any organization with different branches spread across multiple locations to enable effective communication. Besides, you can remotely work or take on work while traveling to save time for other important business duties.
2. Easy to Use
The good thing with office 365 is that there is nothing out of the blue in this package, making it easier to work with. For instance, you’ll find your typical office applications such as Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, among others in it.
This allows your team to effectively work without having to shift from one platform to another, increasing the effectiveness of your organization. Besides that, it makes it easy for you to recruit new members into the system as it has a shallow learning curve. Alternatively, they can go through a Microsoft project tutorial to learn more quickly.
3. Automates Office Applications
Performing time-consuming and repetitive activities can waste your time and make your workers shift their attention to other things. However, Microsoft 365 system integrates Artificial Intelligence technology that can automate the day-to-day activities to enable your team to focus on important things which can boost productivity.
For example, it helps in the following ways:
- Enables users to fill in, evaluate, and produce valuable information in excel data types
- Automatically develops design ideas you can select from, as well as makes sure the content aligns in the background in PowerPoint designer
- Automates calendar booking and triage mail by providing suggestions when team members can meet and reminders to enable follow-ups
4. Enables Teamwork and Collaboration
Similarly, as a cloud product, Microsoft 365 allows teamwork stemming from the fact that colleagues can take a look at a document, edit it, and work on it simultaneously.
As such, you and your teammates can communicate with each other regardless of whether you’re outside or inside your organization.
Besides that, you can collaborate with your workmates by providing them with your Microsoft 365 credentials rather than sending them individual files.
In the end, you have a common work center irrespective of your location.
Another collaborative feature is the office 365 planner which can enable you and your workmates to improve your collaboration through the planning of your workflows.
For instance, project management tools allow you to perform a variety of all essential tasks.
Such include the development of plans, the assigning and organizing of tasks, the provision of status updates, the setting of due dates, and the sharing of files.
In Excel, you can right-click on the data sets to add comments. Also, outside of the dedicated applications, Excel documents, a specific word can be pinned to a chat or channel in teams to allow immediate access.
Similarly, you can comment on a document in word, enable direct feedback from your workmates, and help start a meeting. Lastly, upon uploading your document to one drive, you and your team can access and edit it simultaneously.
5. Flexible and Scalable
How would you feel about a business deal that allows you to expand or reduce it at will? Great, right? Microsoft 365 provides you with a flexible solution. With it, you can choose the best pricing that fits your budget and business requirements.
On top of that, the program comes along with several add-ons such as Teams, Grammarly, FindTime, etc. You can incorporate these into your office software to make your workflow smoother and easier.
Not only that, but you also get maximum flexibility with payment. You may choose to pay every year or monthly, depending on your contract. Doing so prevents you from any unexpected surprises when paying for your subscriptions. Other than that, you can scale your business up or down, depending on your needs.
6. Provides Enterprise-Level Security
Without question, the increased level of cybercrime calls for a comprehensive system that can also take care of security.
Thankfully, Microsoft 365 offers your organization or project robust built-in security features to guard your information and data against external threats.
Microsoft 365 ensures that in the following ways:
- Offers secretly placed and optimally secured physical servers
- Uses machine learning and Advanced Threat Analytics to discover any suspicious activity on your server
- Encrypts your data using SSL and BitLocker over IRM and HTTP to deny unauthorized access to your data
- Provides you with an option of erasing all the data from the gadget if you lose it and at the same time be able to access it in another one
All these attributes take care of your security needs, leaving you ample time to increase your organization’s or projects’ productivity.
7. Offers Professional Support for Your Business Needs
A company worth it’s salt should include professional support for its products or services. In this line, Microsoft experts are at your service, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, ready to deal with your questions.
Besides, they also provide you with whatever technical support or information service you might require before or at the purchase of the software. This ensures that your business is protected from any unforeseen circumstances.
8. Offers Automatic Updates
Office 365 will get an automatic update without you paying any single extra penny like any other Microsoft product. Thus, you’re absolved from paying any other fees in subsequent updates.
You only have to license the software once; besides, you benefit from all the updated features that come with the product.
9. Enables File Sharing Using OneDrive
With the latest OneDrive feature, you can consistently share different types of files across Microsoft 365. Besides, its latest “Add to OneDrive” feature will make it easy for you to add your shared folders into your private OneDrive folder list.
When logged into your office account, you can share your file’s link with your workmates, allowing them to share it as well and download it. With particular office 365 plans, you can be given up to 1 terabyte of space to store your documents. Lastly, you can store your documents in OneDrive as well. This serves as a backup of your personal computer.
10. Utilize OneNote to take Drawings, Notes, and More
This constitutes a digital notebook you can use to organize ideas in journal form and take notes, among many other functions. OneNote 2016, which is its desktop version, can fit in well with Outlook. It can enable you to gather your emails inside a notebook for easy marking and organizing.
Using this feature, you can develop Outlook tasks that can help develop your day-to-day workflow. With its Microsoft store variety, you can solve mathematical problems, change the paper color, and all sorts of things that would help you work more efficiently.
11. Use Outlook to Organize Your Calendars and Emails.
If you want well-arranged and neat calendars and emails, Microsoft 365’s Outlook could do the magic for you. The dedicated outlook application found in a majority of the Office 365 subscriptions enables you to carry out a variety of functionalities. Some of these include the customization of your calendars, the creation of contact lists, and the addition of numerous email accounts for your different needs.
Besides that, you can utilize the integrated Outlook calendar to develop email calendars. All these will enable you to stay on schedule in whatever endeavors you wish to engage in.
12. Integrates the Offline Work Feature
If you can’t access the internet or don’t want to spend a lot of time online, then this feature comes in handy. You’ll be able to work on your documents while in offline mode and upload them when the internet is back. Instead of putting the work aside as you wait to find a network connection, you get to keep working and save time for other tasks.
This saves your organization lots of time and money for increased productivity. Your device will immediately reconnect to the internet once it is available. All the changes will be updated automatically and it happens instantly. The new version of the new document will then be available on all the connected devices.
13. Provides Several Themes and Templates
Instead of coming up with your own themes or templates, you can check out hundreds of pre-developed themes in office 365.
Just go to the template section and search for the type of document you want. You’ll then be given a list of available themes for that document.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, Microsoft 365 provides a plethora of useful features that can increase your work productivity. As such, you can peruse the software’s services to determine the best subscription that will fit your needs.
