Item: Microsoft 365
Rating: 9
Author: Mathew Mandeltort

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

MS Office 365 was the office productivity platform of choice for the entire organization. As the organization relied heavily on spreadsheets for analytics, Excel was the front end of our SAP data system. The ubiquity of Microsoft products insured that individuals, regardless of department, had a basic working knowledge of Excel. More advanced users were able to take advantage of macro and VB scripting as well.

Pros and Cons

Seamlessly integrate a suite of Office tools.
Accessible to users across a broad spectrum of capabilities - from basic to advanced.
Facilitates remote work by virtue of being so common.

Tends to be "bloated" with features that are rarely invoked or ill-suited for the purpose. Is there anybody who would create a web page using Word's ability to save as HTML?
Overly complicated once simple functions. What MS did to Mail Merge is a crime.
PowerPoint lacks the ability to automatically convert presentations or slides created by users in another country to the format native to different users. For example, if using a PPT template created in Asia, the template will rely on the original grammar roles not the current grammar rules of the current user (i.e. word wrap in text boxes). Need to upload the appropriate language pack and to manually make changes to default formatting which has been "appropriated" by the original language.

Return on Investment

The ability to utilize Macros & VBA coding in Excel was instrumental in allowing the company to calculate and monitor buy down of equipment in the field (previously not done) so a significant return on investment was gained.
Use of Excel streamlined and semi-automated the process of uploading equipment in the field data into our SAP system saving significant man-hours incurred by previously using a manual process.
PowerPoint was the default application for department presentations and sales enablement materials. The ease of use resulted in lower creation and editing costs.

Key Insights

Do you think Microsoft 365 delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Microsoft 365's feature set?

Yes

Did Microsoft 365 live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Microsoft 365 go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Microsoft 365 again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Zoom, Adobe Acrobat DC, Audacity

Likelihood to Recommend

It works well in virtually every organization from small to medium to enterprise. Though there are a number of open-source equivalents that work well and even handle MS Office files easily, MS Office is clearly the market leader (something like 90% of the email and authoring market according to a 2020 Gartner study) so generally the learning curve is not steep.

Support Rating

MS Support has been very responsive and effective. As a rule, little action was ever required.

Microsoft 365 Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Quick Initial Response	Not kept informed Support doesn't seem to care

MS Office 365 - Food Service Distributor Perspective

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365)