Whether you’re a small business looking to expand or a sizeable company trying to increase the productivity of your staff, Microsoft 365 can cater to every task thrown at it. Microsoft 365 offers a full suite of your favourite Office applications that can make the running of your company easy, flexible and more efficient.

So many applications...

Microsoft 365 includes a huge range of appliances including Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Access, Microsoft OneNote and Microsoft OneDrive.

What’s the difference between Microsoft 365 and Office 365?

It’s easy to confuse Office 365 and Microsoft 365 or even assume that they’re the same thing. They’re not.

Office 365 is a cloud-based suite of useful applications such as Outlook, Powerpoint and much more. Microsoft 365, on the other hand, is a collection of services which includes Office 365, as well as other services like Windows 10 Enterprise.

Windows 10 Enterprise offers a range of benefits to business users, such as Enterprise Data Protection, Device Guard, Microsoft Passport, Mobile Device Management and much more.

The theory of productivity

Microsoft 365 offers pretty much every digital tool that a modern business could possibly need. If your business is expanding you may be faced with tasks that you didn’t anticipate. Suddenly required to do a presentation for a client? Microsoft PowerPoint is there for you. Need to analyse a huge amount of information that a conventional spreadsheet can’t stomach? Fire up Microsoft Access. If you are faced with an unforeseen task, odds on Microsoft 365 will have the tool for the job.

Ease of communication between workers has never been more important than it is today. Thankfully, no matter how large your office premises are, or whether all of your staff are working from home due to lockdown, Microsoft Teams can make liaising with work colleagues easier than ever. Instant chat and video conferencing combined with the capability to share common resources such as files and tools, can improve productivity by saving time on travel while making sure every member of the team is reading from the same hymn sheet.

Another major advantage of Microsoft 365 is that everyone in the company will use the same software and the same versions. Without any compatibility issues to slow work down, business operations will likely run more smoothly.

Boost your security

Microsoft 365 can boost the protection of your business by allowing management to monitor and control security all in one place via its Security Centre. With quality virus and spam protection as standard, Microsoft 365 protects the security of important business data.

Another benefit of Microsoft 365 is automatic updating of applications with their latest versions. Not only does this ensure that each tool is running as efficiently as possible with all the latest features; it also helps prevent any security vulnerabilities caused by older versions.

The flexibility of a Microsoft 365 business

As the appliances that come with Microsoft 365 are cloud-based, you can rest assured that your workers will have the tools for the job – wherever they go. This is more than simply being able to work on a different laptop or finish that task in the quiet of a spare office. Being able to access emails, files and Office programs like Word, Powerpoint and Excel pretty much anywhere with an internet connection, a realm of possibilities is opened up for a company’s workforce.

If a train has been delayed, a commuting worker can simply log on and effectively bring their office to the carriage, for example. In more pressing circumstances such as amending a proposal to reflect new information just before a big presentation, the flexibility of cloud-based tools could be the difference between winning that important proposal or not. Every Microsoft 365 application is optimised to work on a range of different devices so that as long as you have an internet connection, you can work anywhere.

It also almost goes without saying that the flexibility of Microsoft 360 has greatly helped businesses operate when much of their workforce has been forced to work from home because of the pandemic.

The management benefits with a Microsoft account

As Microsoft 365 offers a cloud portal that can be accessed on any device anywhere, the supervision of staff is both easier and quicker. The integrated email and calendar capabilities of Microsoft 365 ensures that everyone in the company can be in the right place at the right time.

With any business, the hustle and bustle of a busy schedule can sometimes form divisions between the management and staff. Thanks to Microsoft Teams, however, personal one-on-one communication between the different levels of a company is just a click away. Workspace chat, video conferencing and application integration combined with handy file storage can bring people together, quickly and efficiently.

Microsoft Forms is also a featured application that allows managers to make questionnaires, surveys, polls and quizzes that can be easily shared. Participant responses can be tracked by management to gain real-time results that can be analysed for business insights.

Fasthosts offers Microsoft 365 as a key part of its services while offering expert customer support. With 24/7 services, we can ensure that you can make the most out of your Microsoft 365 package.