As we are starting a new decade and contemplating ideas on how to thrive versus how to survive, leveraging technology should be one of our main options. Although this is a wide and deep subject, I want to concentrate on the fact that many small businesses continue doing the business as before and not embracing new technologies. The reasoning behind it can be many folds, lack of know how, lack of budget, disliking change and getting out of comfort zone, staff training and many more. The result is lack of growth and competitiveness that ends up in going out of business or not having a satisfactory profit.
The new norm is exceeding the customers expectation not meeting it. The good news is that nowadays we can spend a little capital and employ the latest technologies and achieve better productivity and greater efficiency and implement processes that produces higher quality products and services.
One of such product is Office 365 Suite of products designed to bring enterprise level technologies to the small businesses at an affordable cost. Office 365 is a set of messaging and collaboration solutions hosted by Microsoft. It offers secure, anytime-anywhere access to email, calendars, Microsoft Office Suite, instant messaging, video conferencing, SharePoint and file sharing, secure messaging and much more. The pricing starts from $5 per month per user. Below are some of the relevant and affordable solutions for small businesses:
Cloud-based email (Exchange Online)
This product can be purchased by itself or in combination with Office suit (Word, Excel, Power Point, Outlook, Access, etc.). The features include:
Shared calendars
Configurable anti-spam filtering
Active Directory synchronization
50 GB user mailboxes and ability to send attachments up to 25 MB
Microsoft SharePoint
SharePoint is one of the most popular components of Office 365. It empowers your business to seamlessly share and collaborate online with colleagues, third party partners and customers . Not only can you share files, you also share knowledge and applications. The end result is a streamlining of your teams and business processes, secure files and folders, and the ability to manage all business apps in a centralized platform. These are the
Microsoft Azure
Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure, created by Microsoft, Azure for building, deploying and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed and Microsoft partner hosted data centers.
Small businesses can easily and inexpensively adopt this affordable Cloud service. Any application, database or data can be hosted on Azure servers. Therefore there is no need to purchase expensive servers and maintain them.
OneDrive for Business
OneDrive for Business allows you to store files from your computer or device into the cloud, and access them from any device as well as store, sync, and share your work files. It also includes a Sync Offline tool, which allows users to continue working when a connection isn’t possible.
Yammer
Yammer is a private social network within your business that that connects you to co–workers, allows users to share information, collaborate and manage projects.
Delve
Delve is a tool which allows you find documents and people across Office 365. Within Delve you can see your own documents from across Office 365, and documents that your colleagues are working on, but not any private documents.
Power BI
Power BI allows you to connect your data and create beautiful and interactive dashboards. It is a business intelligence service for sharing, managing, and consuming data queries and Excel workbooks that contain data queries, data models, and reports.
Planner
Planner allows users to create a dashboard for group tasks. You can assign projects, track progress and rearrange responsibilities directly from the dashboard, and whenever someone makes a strategic change, group members receive a notification.
Power Apps
Not necessarily a part of Office 365, but plays a big part in it. Power Apps helps you create Workflows on your content stored in various data sources including SharePoint and OneDrive for Business. It also helps you create mobile apps easily that connect and talk to SharePoint and other Office 365 products.
And more
For further information please call us at 818-501-2281 or visit us at: www.ceocomputers.com. We have set up many of our clients on Microsoft Office 365 and they are enjoying all the benefits of these service.
We serve Los Angeles, CA or any of the surrounding areas such as, Arcadia, CA, Burbank, CA, Chatsworth, CA, Culver City, CA, Downtown LA, Encino, CA, Glendale, CA, Hollywood, CA, Los Angeles, CA, North Hollywood, CA, Pasadena, CA, San Fernando, CA, Santa Monica, CA Sherman Oaks, CA Tarzana, CA Universal City, CA, Van Nuys, CA, West LA, Woodland Hills, CA and more
