In the past year, Adaris has had the chance to help several clients migrate to Office 365; furthermore, we have started working with customers who had already been migrated to Office 365 by another company but were searching for additional assistance.
There is definite grip towards this service, and rightly so. Unfortunately, however, we find that many don't fully grasp the value of the entire Office 365 ecosystem.
ECOSYSTEM: a system, or even a group of interconnected elements, formed from the interaction of a community of organisms with their environment; any network or system of interconnecting and interacting components, as in a business.
Because that is exactly what Office 365 is! It is not just email and the Office 2013 suite of software, though that is generally what people"start" with. But once"deployed" or migrated, customers often fail the coaching aspect and don't always benefit from everything they have got access to. I liken it to driving a Ferrari (or Porsche, or Lamborghini, take your choice ) rather than getting out of 2nd gear!
We still get a lot of questions from customers about what they would get if they subscribed to Office 365, so here is:
Office Desktop Suite
The majority of the business programs we recommend to our clients include the full Office suite. Several things to note, here: an Office 365 subscription allows organizations to have access to the latest version of Office. As of this writing, we are at Office 2013, and Office 2016 is intended for later this year. Office 365 clients will have access to the most recent version once it is release.
Every user covered with an Office 365 subscription may install Office on as many as five apparatus! They could install it in their work computer, notebook computer, home computer(s)...they can enroll up to five installs.
Compliance! Microsoft has been auditing customers regularly, even little businesses. An Office 365 subscription ensures that you're compliant with all of your Office deployments.
Mobility! All users can download and utilize the Office mobile apps for Android and iOS. This allows them to edit files from anywhere.
Exchange / Outlook
Email is fundamental to any organization -- it's how we communicate! As mentioned, most customers are aware that Office 365 includes Exchange email services. This absolutely makes sense for small businesses -- why do you wish to manage and keep an onsite email infrastructure? Most small businesses cannot afford to engage a full time IT resource.
OneDrive
Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, etc....there are many file syncing and storage solutions out there. Having an Office 365 subscription, each user will get 1TB of personal file storage in OneDrive. They can get their files from anywhere, on any device. The benefit of making them use OneDrive is that if ever they leave the organization, the Office 365 administrator can access their OneDrive and recover any corporate files which are saved there.
SharePoint
The industry de facto standard for collaboration, SharePoint allows organizations and teams to store and manage information which may be accessed from anywhere. Discussions, calendars, documents, tasks, custom forms, etc may all be part of a SharePoint website. This makes it much easier for workers to work together, especially if you have workers in the field or at remote offices.
Yammer
Business social cooperation! Think LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter all rolled up into one, but internal to your company only. Yammer allows all users to find updates, ask questions, communicate with staff across places, create groups for certain subjects, etc..
OneNote
Okay, so OneNote is really part of the Office suite, so why can I listing here? Because once I show people what they can do together with OneNote, I raise eyebrows! We use OneNote extensively within Adaris to store customer purchase orders, vendor invoices, etc.. Our use of OneNote has allowed us to truly go awry -- we scan everything we get and store it in OneNote notebooks which are in SharePoint websites. All content is indexed, easy to find, and organized. I call it"the neglected child of this Office package"!
Office 365 Groups
A new addition to the Office 365 family, Groups enables users to create ad-hoc groups in order to facilitate simple collaboration. Groups can be Open, meaning that anyone in the business may join the group and join forces, or Closed, meaning that the group administrator needs to invite users to the group for them to have access to it. Groups comprise Conversations, Files, a Calendar and a OneNote notebook. Any consumer in the organization could easily create a group, taking the load off the IT section. I call it"a simple, mini-SharePoint website".
Collaboration,  Collaboration,  Collaboration
As you can see, there are many ways that Office 365 allows cooperation. It is almost overwhelming. Every organization needs to determine what works for them: SharePoint? Yammer? Groups? A mix of all of these based on use case is the most likely that the best answer. How many times do we hear employees complain that there is"no communication" in a business? I have heard it time and time again, people whining they're not aware of what is happening in the business. As you can see, Office 365 provides an excellent variety of methods to cure this!
But don't kid yourself! Regardless of the simplicity of use of this Office 365 ecosystem, despite how easy it is to execute, enterprise collaboration and communication entails a cultural shift! It is NOT a switch that you just flip and users immediately start working and cooperating with all these tools. This change has to be championed by upper management, and employees have to be encouraged, mentored, even threatened to use these tools and collaborate. It is sometimes a slow, painstaking process, but certainly worth it once it is part of the organizational culture. Oddly enough, it's easier for new workers that come on board -- when they start, you educate them that"this is how we do things, here", and adoption is generally faster.
microsoft office 365 product keyAdaris has been implementing collaboration solutions for years in all sizes of businesses, from small companies to large, enterprise customers. We understand how to get things going, and the best way to assist with adoption.