Is Microsoft 365 worth the investment?
I spent the last 10 years of my career focusing on Microsoft cloud services. At first the Business Productivity Online Suite […]
I spent the last 10 years of my career focusing on Microsoft cloud services. At first the Business Productivity Online Suite a.k.a. BPOS, afterwards Microsoft 365 and Azure. Fascinating technologies, real game changers. And yes, I really adore the Microsoft cloud and strongly believe the best is yet to come. Call me a believer!
It is fair to say that Microsoft makes it very hard, almost impossible, to remain on premise with their business productivity tools. And that is a good thing … just look at the world we live and work in during the COVID-19 crisis, where digital is the new normal and were businesses who did not move to the cloud often encountered tremendous challenges to collaborate. Microsoft Teams became the standard communication and collaboration tool for lots of organizations in a very short timeframe. Microsoft shared that Microsoft Teams usage exploded with almost 800% in the last month.
No what about the budget you will spend as an organization when you use Microsoft 365? Just multiply the subscription price by the number of users in your organization and calculate the total cost for 3 to 5 years. That’s a lot of budget! And there is no way to lower that cost since pricing is rather nonnegotiable and completely user based. The only thing you can do is maximize the return of your investment.
I have 2 recommendations for you …
- Deploying or adopting to Microsoft 365 is not a technical project. It is a business project! The current Microsoft 365 suite consists out of almost 30 different cloud services. You should take time to investigate what cloud services are relevant and valuable for your end users.
- Build your network of Microsoft 365 ambassadors. They will be your voice in the company to drive adoption to a maximum. They will increase the return of your investment They will come up with new use cases of one or more Microsoft 365 cloud services.
Microsoft 365 governance is key. Don’t migrate and consider yourself done. Make Microsoft 365 adoption an infinite process. Define KPI’s, hit them, define new ones. Keep on looking for new use cases, look at ‘MyAnalytics’ to influence the way your end users get their work done, question yourself how you can digitize and automate processes by using Power Apps and Power Automate.
And finally, #staysafe. Microsoft 365 offers you enterprise class security. Traditional physical networks don’t exist anymore: the number of devices exploded, they are not always managed and people connect from everywhere. So please leverage the security features Microsoft offers you. My 2 cents? Microsoft 365 is here to stay! And you will need your end users to make adoption a success. Microsoft 365 governance is an infinite process. Ensure you have got the basics right!