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Microsoft 365

Score8.6 out of 10

8,094 Reviews and Ratings

What is Microsoft 365?

Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) is a Microsoft Cloud subscription service that includes Microsoft Office products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access). The software can be installed across multiple devices and ensures that users always have the most up-to-date version of the included Office applications.

Categories & Use Cases

Microsoft 365 Comfort at its finest

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Microsoft 365 for all our email and official documentation. The main problem that this address is that before everyone would use different document programs and this would cause formatting issues and issues with opening and editing a document. Now that everyone is using Microsoft 365 there are little to no formatting issues and you don't have to search for a downloadable program to open someones document.

Pros

  • Universal document types
  • All the programs are very well known by every one
  • Every seems to be using the programs (Word, Excel, Outlook, etc)

Cons

  • New Outlook is difficult to use compared to the old Outlook
  • sometimes too many options isn't a good thing
  • access to the address book in the new Outlook is impossible to use

Return on Investment

  • digital security of data
  • uniform documents
  • programs that everyone knows

Usability

The gold standard for corporate office productivity

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Microsoft 365 is an all-in-one super product which supports business users to get along which their individual needs which range from emailing needs which can be solved by Outlook, word processing needs which can be accomodated by Word, record keeping/calculation/tracking type needs which can be solved by Excel, business presentations and pitches which can be created with PowerPoint and lastly the key internal and external world collaboration needs which can be addressed with convinience with Teams tool. Further to the above we use SHAREPOINT as our web-based central data repository/content sharing and management system. Using SharePoint supports us heavily with maintaining and uplifting our compliance standards, such as GDPR. Teams immensly boots out speed is 360 customer and internal communications. Organization wide automation needs such as maintaining registers, etc could be easily attained by creating flows with power automate and forms which saves hours of repetitive human effort. Last but not least we also use Forms tool for running internal assessments, statistical information gathering with ease. The different tools and features provided within Microsoft 365 can be easily and conveniently distributed for different user groups by license management.

Pros

  • Provides easy to use predefined templates for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Forms
  • Central all-in-one communication and collaboration via Teams
  • Compliance Data repository/content management system via SharePoint
  • Easy and fast data and statistical data gathering via forms

Cons

  • Forms lack comprehensive features and parameters for detailed questioning for example cannot be directly linked with Power BI
  • Outlook email filters are not handy to use and require more detailing in terms of location past emails
  • Teams requires substantially large amounts of system resources which could be finetuned

Return on Investment

  • Immediate ROI and value based on qualitative measures can be expected within 1-3 months post implementation
  • Quantitative measures can take well over 12 months for large organizations
  • Direct and actual ROI are based on optimizing your on-premise and cloud operations for directly targeting your usage which can be expected immediately but based on intelligent streamlining of usage

Usability

Alternatives Considered

WPS Office, Slack and LibreOffice

Other Software Used

WPS Office, LibreOffice, Slack, Zoom Workplace

The Go-to App

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Microsoft 365 Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for presentations. Makes it easy and super convenient to use and ensure efficiency. I'm able to store files in the OneCloud Storage, which ensures security for and safety. I love the fact that all the apps I need are in one place and it's user friendly as well.

Pros

  • Transforming a word document into a PowerPoint presentation
  • Tagged "confidential " documents cannot be printed or screen captured
  • OneDrive saves every change, which allows me to go back to a specific time, even a month, if I made a mistake.

Cons

  • The Web version of Word lack some advanced features and specific formatting tools
  • Slow updates when coming co editing in desktop app

Return on Investment

  • Improved efficiency and deadlines are met
  • Security features and cloud storage saves cost whiles ensuring safety as well
  • All documents and presentations are organised and in one place which has helped

Usability

The platform to use when scaling your business globally

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Great for global companies to collaborate with. We use Teams for internal meetings, Outlook for every email, Word docs for drafting marketing briefs, Excel for hundreds of planning topics, Powerpoint for every single pitch deck, and OneNote for occasional personal notes. The mobile apps are very intuitive and great for business leaders on the go who need a fast way to respond to their messages. CoPilot is also embedded into every tool which makes it easy to summarize or re-write messages.

Pros

  • Global Collaboration
  • Teams Web Meeting Platform and chat
  • Easy to review/comment/share in any platform
  • Custom Chats and Teams Channels for better segmentation of the chats
  • AI Copilot summarizing and acting as your assistant

Cons

  • Slack is 1000x better than teams. Why put a 250 limit on a chat? Our company hasn't moved fully to channels and it's making us lose transparency. Plus, the teams channels we do have nobody is going to. 90% loss in visibility and engagement.
  • Teams for web meetings. I think the UI/UX should match Zoom which is the standard for all our customers. They don't like it when we use Teams.
  • Chats and Channels need to somehow be on one screen automatically without having to choose that view because majority of our company hasn't opened Teams Channels and only stays in chats.

Return on Investment

  • 1600+ users have adopted Microsoft 365 in our company. We even created enablement sharepoint pages for every department and for new hires to go to as the source of truth or see what ERGs to join.
  • Huge time saved with the meeting scheduling assistant especially when trying to book time with busy leaders.
  • Copilots meeting summaries and email summaries are amazing. We can even use your own AI within Teams and ask it questions about our customer accounts, HR questions, etc. right within the Teams platform.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Google Gemini, Google Forms, Google Sheets, Google Slides and Slack

Other Software Used

Slack, Google Gemini, Salesforce CMS, Userflow, Navattic

Microsoft 365 Essential For Our Small Business

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Microsoft 365 as the foundation of our business communication and administration. All members of staff will use Outlook for email, Teams for remote meetings and calls, plus Excel and Word are in use by most people every day. We are then expanding our use to include SharePoint, Power Apps, and Power BI with connections into our main Microsoft 365 systems.

Pros

  • Email and calendar planning using Outlook.
  • Microsoft Excel for data analytics and basic automation.
  • Microsoft Teams for remote calls.

Cons

  • Microsoft Teams can sometimes be glitchy and can be frustrating.
  • There is a push to move to Outlook (new) which is missing a lot of the functionality that is available in the main version.
  • SharePoint has been promoted as the best way to manage files and share data, but it is extremely hard to set up and is very unstable.

Return on Investment

  • Having all our users on the same Office 365 tenant has saved time in sharing and collaboration in the business.
  • The return on investment has been measured in months. Without Microsoft 365 we could not provide the services we need for our clients.
  • Working within the Microsoft 365 environment has given us credibility with external clients, who prefer to use trusted systems.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Google Workspace

Other Software Used

SAP Crystal, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Power Automate