When utilised effectively, Microsoft 365 is more than just a set of productivity tools; it’s a transformative platform that can optimise business operations. M365 provides a comprehensive solution to boost your company’s efficiency and effectiveness by enhancing communication and collaboration, ensuring data security, and streamlining workflows.
However, many Australian SMEs struggle with common challenges related to M365 utilisation, consolidation, and visibility. These challenges include dealing with fragmented technology, needing more visibility into technology usage and worker productivity, and grappling with outdated legacy systems with poor UX.
This article uncovers how partnering with a Microsoft 365 managed service partner can maximise the ROI from your Microsoft 365 investment to boost efficiency, save money, increase collaboration, bolster security, and free up your business to focus on what it does best.
Optimising Microsoft 365 for Greater Efficiency and Cost Reduction
One key benefit for teams that adopt Microsoft 365 services is the ability to realise cost savings on a comprehensive suite of workloads in a flexible, scalable, and secure solution.
The suite includes productivity workloads, such as Excel and PowerPoint; collaborative workloads, such as Teams and SharePoint; and management workloads, such as Defender and Lighthouse.
However, realising the full benefits of these powerful tools is more complex than just pushing for user adoption within your team. Poor integration and consolidation can result in businesses underutilising some tools while doubling up on others. For instance, employees might end up using both SharePoint and Dropbox for file storage, leading to inefficiencies and unnecessary costs.
Successful deployment and optimisation of your Microsoft 365 suite are vital to ensuring user engagement and maximising productivity. Without proper support, businesses often struggle to integrate Microsoft 365 into their existing infrastructure, underutilising valuable features and facing security vulnerabilities.
Integrating and Consolidating Applications and Cloud Storage in Microsoft 365
Compared to a patchwork of point solutions, consolidating IT solutions with Microsoft 365 can reduce licensing costs by more than 60% per user, simplify management, automate system updates, and reduce IT management costs by up to 40%. Businesses often rely on alternative solutions for crucial tasks like email management, conferencing, and cloud storage rather than fully leveraging the tools offered by Microsoft 365.
However, SMBs often need help with the complexity of integrating various Microsoft 365 applications with their existing tech stack, which frequently includes outdated legacy systems that do not play well with other platforms.
Even after M365 deployment, many businesses still use multiple overlapping applications, leading to inefficiencies and increased costs. Without expert support, ensuring seamless integration and full functionality can be difficult, leading to underutilisation of the technology. By fully embracing M365, businesses can achieve secure data storage and efficient file sharing, thus centralising their operations and enhancing efficiency. Embracing M365’s productivity tools can centralise operations, save money, improve efficiency, and achieve a higher return on investment.
Managed service providers such as Helpdesk Computers work with your team to assess your IT landscape, identifying redundant tools and consolidating them within Microsoft 365. This reduces licensing costs and simplifies IT management by centralising all functionalities under a unified platform. Managed services can streamline operations by integrating applications like Salesforce, UCaaS, and CRMs/ERPs. This integration helps eliminate redundancy, enhances productivity, and simplifies IT management.
Enhancing Security with Microsoft 365: Benefits of Zero-Trust and Managed Services
Microsoft 365 offers a robust suite of security tools that can significantly reduce the need for additional products. These tools include multi-factor authentication, endpoint protection, advanced threat protection, data loss prevention, and more, all designed to provide comprehensive security across the entire digital estate. Research shows that businesses adopting a Zero-Trust security model with Microsoft 365 can reduce the risk of data breaches by up to 50%. However, implementing robust security measures and managing compliance within Microsoft 365 can be daunting without specialised knowledge. SMEs may face increased vulnerability to cyberattacks if they do not have the expertise to configure security settings correctly.
Managed services provide continuous monitoring and maintenance, preventing potential security issues before they become significant problems. This proactive approach ensures that systems are always secure and up-to-date, reducing the likelihood of successful cyberattacks and maintaining a strong security posture.
Optimising Microsoft 365 for Collaboration and Remote Workforces
As remote work becomes more prevalent, teams increasingly need access to cloud-based collaboration tools. Microsoft 365, with its robust team collaboration capabilities, offers significant benefits. SharePoint, a key component of Microsoft 365, promotes connectivity, productivity, and real-time collaboration within a team, making it an essential tool for modern workplaces.
A key advantage of adopting Microsoft 365 is its “access-from-anywhere” philosophy, which allows users to access workloads via apps or browsers from any endpoint. This approach facilitates hybrid working practices with a technology-agnostic solution, enabling seamless productivity regardless of location.
Microsoft Teams, another integral part of Microsoft 365, enhances this by organising teams and channels, leveraging chat and meeting features, and uniting remote teams for seamless communication, collaboration, and productivity. Embracing M365 allows for more unified collaboration, secure data storage, and efficient file sharing.
However, the flexibility of this model also introduces the potential drawback of poor endpoint performance negatively impacting the user experience.
Microsoft Endpoint Analytics recently found that this can significantly hinder efficiency. Metrics reveal that issues like lengthy boot and sign-in times often lead to significant user frustration and reduced productivity, which in turn can increase help desk tickets and IT support costs. To address these issues, optimising network performance, including managing network performance between endpoints and the Microsoft Global Network access points, is critical in ensuring smooth access to Microsoft 365 services.
To ensure optimum network performance and M65 workloads, businesses should look to the following:
- Identifying and differentiating M365 traffic from other internet traffic: this allows for optimised routing, reducing latency and improving performance.
- Continuous Monitoring: Monitoring network and application performance helps quickly identify and resolve any issues impacting remote work.
- Proactive Management: Regular updates, patches, and system configurations are essential to ensure that the Microsoft 365 environment is always up-to-date and secure
Managed service providers (MSPs) can play a crucial role in optimising the use of Microsoft 365 tools by ensuring that endpoints are well-managed and that performance issues are addressed proactively. At Helpdesk Computers, we provide continuous monitoring and maintenance, preventing potential security and performance issues before they become significant problems. This proactive approach helps maintain a high-quality user experience, ensuring that your systems are always secure and up-to-date.
Enhancing your Microsoft 365 environment requires expert integration and optimisation to maximise efficiency and reduce costs. Help Desk Computers offers comprehensive managed services, including M365 application consolidation, improvement, implementation, and support, ensuring seamless application integration across your business systems like Salesforce, UCaaS, and CRMs/ERPs. Our security services cover endpoint protection, configuration, patching, vulnerability management, and more while enhancing remote worker productivity with advanced tools.
Meet with Helpdesk Computers for a Free IT & Cybersecurity Audit! Helpdesk Computers is here to help you maximise your investments and reduce your IT and cybersecurity risk with a no-fuss Free IT & Cybersecurity Audit that is back to you within a week. PLUS, sign up for one of our Managed Service Offerings within four weeks of the meeting, and we’ll give you a month free.
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