You’ve heard all the talk about Office 365. Your employees have been dropping hints about it. You’ve even taken a look at all the tools and features and now you’re wondering if Office 365 really is the solution for your small business. The answer is yes. Office 365 can help your employees work together in new and more efficient ways. But, Office 365 is more than just a set of tools. It’s a new way of working. Here are seven reasons small business owners should consider using Office 365.*
1. Stay up and running, no matter what happens. Let’s face it. If your in-house system crashes or your office building is destroyed by a fire or flood, you’re stuck. You have no data, servers or website. Statistics collected in 2015 by the U.S. Institute for Business and Home Safety showed that 25% of small businesses do not reopen following a major disaster. If you send your data to the cloud, all your business documents and applications, such as email, will always available. You’ll be up and running, no matter what happens.
2. Data security and control. Data security in the cloud is no longer an issue. Office 365 has built-in security and continuous compliance so small businesses can focus on the right things. You always know where your data is and who has access to it. You can also remotely wipe all data if you lose your mobile device. So, go ahead and store your data safely in the cloud. Storing your data online also keeps it safe in case something happens. Imagine losing your laptop or breaking it? Thanks to 1TB of OneDrive online storage, your data is safer than ever before.
3. You can work anywhere at anytime. Working remotely used to mean you needed help from an IT friend or cousin to set up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) so you could access your files from the office. With Office 365, this isn’t necessary. You don’t need any special configuration or IT skills. All you need is an internet connection and you can start working. It’s that simple!
4. Get Organized. Meetings, email and contact management are a big part of everyday life in a small business. When you use Office 365, email, calendar and contacts are all synchronized to work together. Update a contact on your mobile phone and it will be automatically updated across all your devices. This is a really cool feature to help small businesses get the most from Office 365. You can also access the same data from any device. Save a document on your PC and continue working on it on your mobile or tablet.
5. Predictable Monthly cost. This one is pretty cool for small businesses. Forget about upfront costs! Office 365 has a flexible monthly billing process that lets you add or decrease the number of users to suit your needs. You’re not locked into a contract and you change plans at any time to suit your growing business needs. This kind of scalable solution might be exactly what a small business is looking for to get started in the cloud. Since you don’t have to worry about upfront costs, it will be easier to fit this solution into your monthly budget.
6. Larger mailbox storage. We all have this tendency to store all our email messages in our inboxes. Sometimes we try to clean it up, but we end up keeping every single email we’ve ever sent or received. With Office 365, this kind of housekeeping is behind you! You can say goodbye to that red popup that reminds you it’s time to clean up your email. Instead, say hello to 50GB of email storage space.
7. No more licensing mess! Sorting out software licenses can be a real headache for a small business owner. One of your employees might be using one version, while another employee is using an upgrade of that same version. The result? You don’t know how to bring everyone up to speed so they’re all working on the same version. Office 365 includes all licensing and it can be deployed company wide. This means everyone has the same version of Microsoft Office, and all users will get upgrades at the same time.
*Sources: SherWeb – December 22, 2015
If you would like to know more, please contact us at 1-800-871-9683 for a free consultation. Also, if you do not have online BDR (backup-disaster-recovery) and anti-virus/malware protection for your business, please give us a call to help you implement the latest systems. Our email address is: markhuffman@creativebusinesstechnologies.com
