Everything you've come to love and expect with Microsoft Office, plus it's cloud friendly
January 15, 2019
Everything you've come to love and expect with Microsoft Office, plus it's cloud friendly
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft 365 Business
Microsoft 365 Business is used across our whole business, from junior staff in every department through to the CEO.
It solves a number of business problems, we:
- Use Outlook to send emails to our customers. This helps my sales colleagues to close deals and help customers with their support issues.
- Create PowerPoints to share information. Myself and others create PowerPoints to present business cases to management, and managers use them to share information with all employees.
- Analyse data with Excel. To give a small example, I recently download an Excel list of all customers from our CRM and used the tool to analyse the average sales cycle.
It solves a number of business problems, we:
- Use Outlook to send emails to our customers. This helps my sales colleagues to close deals and help customers with their support issues.
- Create PowerPoints to share information. Myself and others create PowerPoints to present business cases to management, and managers use them to share information with all employees.
- Analyse data with Excel. To give a small example, I recently download an Excel list of all customers from our CRM and used the tool to analyse the average sales cycle.
- It offers web versions of the core tools (Word, PowerPoint, Excel etc). I find this useful when I want to work at home or I'm travelling.
- We've upgraded to the Business Premium version, which includes a web version of Outlook. I use this to answer emails and check my calendar while I'm travelling.
- This is probably quite a basic feature, but I like how you can install desktop versions of the software on multiple devices. I definitely prefer the desktop versions of Office, so this is handy again for working at home.
- I also love the Microsoft Office products. I know them well and they do gradually keep getting better. For example, they recently upgraded the icons to give them a modern look. It's a small touch but it shows the product is being invested in.
- If you buy the Premium version, you will get access to the web version of Outlook. While this is useful for basic checking of emails, it is fairly limited in some respects:
- - It's hard to see any folders you use in the desktop version of Outlook. So if you've put an email in a folder, it is difficult to search for it.
- - If you open an email thread in the web version of Outlook, it will mark all emails in that thread as unread in the desktop version of Outlook. Not very useful.
- There's almost too much choice! If you buy the premium versions, you get access to a tonne of software, such as Delve, Sway and Teams. I know some of these are good, but I'm not too familiar with most of them.
- It would be handy if each product had a little 30 second introduction, plus a quick tutorial on how to set it up. There's a lot to learn!
- This is a very minor one, but you can't create a circle shape in PowerPoint! You can create an oval shape, and turn it into a circle. Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems a bit odd.
- I'd like Microsoft to modernise the desktop version of Outlook. The other day, I tried to set up an automatic add of a BCC to every email created (so it would be copied to our CRM). There is seemingly no way to do this, even with VBScript.
- It has helped managers share essential business information, such as project updates and introduction of new recruits and corporate initiatives.
- We've used Excel to improve sales reporting. Now, we have a much better understanding of our customer buying patterns.
- We use Outlook as our main communication tool with customers. Without it, we wouldn't be able to sell to them.
Google's Drive service includes the free Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. I've used each of these tools for work and my personal life. They're good tools and they're useful if you use them exclusively in Google Drive.
But, they fall down a bit once you try and collaborate with colleagues or customers who use the Microsoft stack. They would prefer to receive Microsoft Office documents and sometimes the conversion process doesn't work very well.
It feels like it's best to choose one or the other, and Microsoft Office wins for business use.
But, they fall down a bit once you try and collaborate with colleagues or customers who use the Microsoft stack. They would prefer to receive Microsoft Office documents and sometimes the conversion process doesn't work very well.
It feels like it's best to choose one or the other, and Microsoft Office wins for business use.