Work Anywhere
One of the biggest advantages of Office 365 is the ability to work from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection. Because it’s entirely cloud-based, you can access your email, files and Office programs (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) from any location and any device. If you have a plan that includes a desktop version of Office, they can be installed on up to 5 devices per user.
This is especially helpful for companies with remote employees, multiple locations and companies with employees who travel often.
Collaborate easily
If working in teams is at all a part of your company, you’ll appreciate the collaboration features of Office 365. The biggest advantage of this? You get one version of the truth.
Everyone who needs to contribute to or edit a document (or spreadsheet, or presentation, etc.), can work on the same version (and get real-time changes) rather than having multiple version floating around that have to be combined.
You can also share direct access to your files, rather than send files as attachments. This means people can make changes to one file rather than having multiple copies. Versioning is included in case you need to go to back to an older version.
Always Have Access to the Latest Versions of Programs
With Office 365, you’ll also have access to the latest versions of Office at no additional charge. You’ll get the latest and greatest features without having to uninstall and reinstall Office on everyone’s machines. Besides, Microsoft is constantly making upgrades to features across programs – you’ll get access to those, too. Check the Office Blog to get an idea of what kind of upgrades you get with an Office 365 plan.
Mix and Match Plans
There are several different Office 365 business plans available with different programs and features. Not everyone in your company is going to need the same thing. You can mix and match plans so you don’t have to pay for more than you need. It’s pretty easy to switch between plans, too, if you find that an employee needs more or less than what they have now. You can check out a breakdown of the different plans here.
Subscription-Based Payment
Office 365 is a subscription-based service, meaning you pay a low monthly fee (per user) rather than a large lump sum up front. This can be helpful from a cash flow perspective. Plans are typically paid month-to-month (though some places will do yearly subscriptions, sometimes for a discount), so you turn off what you’re not using to save money.
Security Features
One of the biggest misconceptions about the Cloud is that it’s not safe. In reality, it isn’t necessarily any more or less safe than an on-premise system. It’s all in how you use it and what security measures you put in place. Office 365 has a lot of built-in security features to keep your company’s data safe. Some of our favourites include:
- Encrypted email: This keeps anyone other than the intended recipient from reading your email
- Data Loss Prevention: This is a set of policies that check and prevents sensitive information (like social security numbers) from leaving your organization via email.
- Mobile Device Management: These features allow you to control Office on your employees’ phones to protect company information. If an employee’s phone is lost or stolen, it can be remotely wiped to prevent anyone who shouldn’t have access from getting to company data.
- Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA): ATA uses analytics and machine learning to detect and alert you to suspicious behaviour on your network. Our favourite part of this? It will scan emails as they come into your network for malicious links and attachments and if it detects something fishy, it’ll prevent the malicious attachment from getting in. Your employees will still get the email but will get a message explaining why the attachment isn’t there. This can go a long way to preventing a data breach due to human error.
These certainly aren’t all the security features available in Office 365 – just a small sample. Please note, these aren’t available on all plans. To have everyone in your organization covered, you’ll need to get them all on plans that include it or purchase it as an add-on