What The Big Deal About Microsoft Office 365?
Harley Dixon The world as we know it has turned upside down and, only now, we finally are getting some semblance of normality again. However, what has gone back to ‘normal’ is the necessity of working from an office with some companies actually choosing to relinquish their bricks-and-mortar offices in favour of virtual offices.
Well-known companies – such as Adobe, Amazon and Ancestry.com – have actually allowed their employees to work from home permanently as they saw the success of this strategy during the hard lockdown periods at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is because they see that their employees are able to maintain productivity without the necessity of being in the same location.
The Technology Needed To Maintain A Virtual Office
While employees are no longer gathered in a physical location, they still need to maintain the processes that sustained the physical office. The main two things are communication and productivity.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution has made things like video conferencing that much more accessible as it lowered the price point. No longer does each user have to have specialised hardware in order to take part in videoconferencing sessions.
While there are technologies available such as Zoom and Skype, which work particularly well at facilitating communication between remote individuals, Microsoft Office 365’s integrated offering of packages allows companies to maintain collaboration as well as productivity.
The Usual Suspects
We are all used to Microsoft Office’s standard package of programs, in other words:
- Outlook
- Word
- Excel
- PowerPoint
Those of us who have access to the premium package would have also seen Publisher (which is Microsoft’s DTP program) as well as Access (the program on which Microsoft allows users to build databases).
Office 365 has all of this and, for a small yearly feel, will release updates to you as and when they become available.
This basic set of packages allow your team members to maintain productivity, in other words, to do their work.
Where The Power Lies
With Microsoft Teams, you are able to host your office in the cloud. With this program, you can chat, meet, call and collaborate seamlessly – you won’t notice that you’re not actually sitting in from of the person that you’re speaking with.
Features of Teams include:
- Video conferencing
- Screen sharing
- Custom backgrounds
- File sharing
- Apps and workflows
Employees have been using Microsoft Office products for years, just like many of them love bets for sports online. They are used to them and this ease allows them to remain productive. If they had to learn how to use new products, their learning curve would probably be that much steeper. Thus, depending on how long it takes for them to understand how to use the product, their productivity would be compromised for that length of time.
Integrating this productivity aspect with the connectivity capability that Teams affords the Office 365 Suite makes this set of programs a force that can’t be reckoned with. Although many users complain that Teams isn’t user friendly – like other similar video conferencing products are – in order to make full use of this product it has to be set up correctly by a certified Microsoft -certified professional.