Is Office 365 Worth the Investment? 3 Business Cases to Consider

In short order, yes. Office 365 is worth every cent you spend on it. Microsoft’s domination in business software is a truth so deeply ingrained in our daily life that it seems irrelevant to even mention. What did we have before Microsoft Office? What else could possibly take its place?

But what makes Office 365 worth your money is its cloud capability and what that means for your business. The Office 365 platform is 100% hosted in the cloud, not on a private business server. This fact alone is what provides Office 365 a robust power return on investment to your bottom line. And companies across the globe have “bought in.”

Office 365 has more than 300 million monthly active users. That number has nearly tripled over the past 5 years.

Why? Because it’s a tremendous value in both productivity and security.

Business Case 1: Office 365 (with Microsoft Teams) offers you significant integration

All the disparate applications available in the Office 365 suite are accessible through Teams, a single interface for all your Microsoft applications like Outlook and Word. It means big productivity gains and no more “oh shoot, that’s on my computer at work and I need it here.”

  • Your email correspondence and contacts can be searched and accessed through Outlook.
  • Your documents can be used through OneDrive and/or SharePoint but accessed on your personal device (desktop, phone, tablet) as if the files live on your device hard drive.
  • Your employees can communicate quickly through Teams using instant messaging, audio/video calling and screen sharing. All meetings can be set through Outlook with the click of a button.

By harnessing the power of the cloud, you no longer need any other technical resource to manage day to day operations.

Business case 2: Office 365 is an operational expense

On top of the productivity enhancements that Office 365 provides, it also streamlines your accounting. Non-cloud business solutions require capital expenditure outlays to buy the server, purchase the software, project labor to set up and install, and then manage and maintain that server and the software over time. Then, you repeat that process with more capital outlays after 3-5 years. This doesn’t account for lost productivity with software features that are “locked in time” until the next release is available.

Office 365 Business charges you a low monthly subscription fee to use the software that you used to pay hundreds of dollars to use. This fee is easily scalable both up and down as the size of your company changes. And when Office 365 is updated with new features or patches, you get those updates immediately, without having to run out and buy the latest version or pay for upgrade labor for a new release.

Business case 3: Office 365 streamlines your IT operations

With Office 365, there is only one renewal period to manage every year. Your staff only needs training for one solution. Maintenance and upgrades happen on the back-end by Microsoft itself – not someone you have to hire. Security costs are scaled as well. Microsoft does a majority of the security legwork on its own. (That is not to say your company does not need its own security strategy – it does. But the cost of securing this one application is built in.)

The only thing your IT team has to take care of is making sure Office 365 is installed on every device and that each user knows how to use it. It frees up much needed time for strategic IT initiatives that would otherwise be missed.

Does Office 365 really make things that simple?

Office 365 is an amazing tool that we encourage all of our clients to adopt. But companies cannot survive on Office 365 alone. There are still business applications that must be integrated and maintained, compliance requirements to meet, security to ensure, hardware to maintain, and the growing dependency on technology to run a business.

The beauty of Office 365 is that it takes the daily grind out of the technology picture and leaves time and money for the important IT initiatives all companies should be focused on.

Applied Tech works with companies to implement an entire network infrastructure and IT strategy – including Office 365 migrations, training, and management.

The capabilities are so vast, you can get lost trying to find the right mix for your needs. We can help – call us at 855-729-1300 or contact us for more information.

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