Office 365 is it what your business needs?

Many calls come in from clients asking if Office 365 is a great solution for their company. For some clients, yes…it is perfect. They are using outdated Office products, using IMAP or POP for their email and really need a team collaborative document sharing system. But for many of my clients, they are already using Office 2013, have a good file sharing system in place and really only need Microsoft Exchange, just one of the six products Office 365 offers.

Before you jump in and buy Office 365, my guide might be able to help you decide what you need.

• If you have Office 2010 or Office 2013, you do not need the full Office 365 package. The Office 365 Business Premium package includes the full desktop application. If you have Office 2013, you would be buying this product twice. So consider the Office 365 Business Essentials package if you are going to go out and buy this yourself.
• If you want Microsoft Business Class email (aka…Microsoft Exchange), then you can get this stand alone and do not need to buy Office 365. It’s the best product of the Office 365 suite, but as a technician, I opt with buying from a vendor.
• If you do not need real-time collaborative document sharing, you do not need the Office 365 Business Premium package. Their document sharing is SharePoint and it only works great in the browser. I am in the process of moving past clients from SharePoint to Dropbox for Business. SharePoint is great for larger corporations who need real time authoring of documents and advanced systems.
• Do you need OneDrive and 1 Terabyte of space? (I mean WOW that is a lot of data to put up on the cloud) Not many people do and many people already are using iCloud or Dropbox for their file sharing needs.
• Does your team need whiteboard sharing and chat? Lync is their offering and not many small businesses take advantage of this so if you buy Office 365, you might not use it, therefore it’s not something you need to buy.
• Yammer is not a product most small businesses would use. In fact, I have only had one client ask for help setting it up.

That’s it folks, in a nutshell. Office 365 can seem very confusing to some, but if you figure out what is working right for you now and what is wrong, it’s easy to select what to buy. If you need my help, just let me know! You can call 612-865-4475 or fill out the form below. Thanks!