The Impressive Benefits of Office 365 for Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses (And How You Can Get Them)

Office 365 is Microsoft’s best productivity suite to date.  A cloud-based platform comprised of multiple signature programs such as PowerPoint, SharePoint, and more.

Millions of businesses and individuals all around the world use this as a one-stop system which can handle anything from word processing to email management to online storage and even your calendar.

To that end, Office 365 is the ideal solution for small- and medium-sized businesses like yours that want to increase efficiency and cut costs. Here are some of the major office 365 benefits:

#1. Cloud Benefit

Like we mentioned, Office 365 combines many functions and abilities of the original Microsoft Office to the cloud. This means you get access to web-based versions of Word, Excel, and other Office applications while you’re on the move.

Additionally, the cloud also allows for better collaboration and communication between your employees, leading to an overall increase in business performance.

#2. Familiar Environment

Office 365 builds upon previous iterations and only keeps features most relevant to your small- to medium-sized business.  But, “new” doesn’t necessarily mean “changed”. Office 365 keeps a familiar design, which means there’s less time required to learn the software and fewer trivial user problems to worry about.

#3. Comprehensive Data Security

Business versions of Office 365 come with built-in advanced data security protection systems monitoring and protecting your systems round-the-clock, along with access controls to help you meet the regularly changing compliance regulations of your industry.

#4. Predictable Cost

#5. Simple Management

Much like the previous editions, Office 365 is an all-in-one solution with a wide range of office productivity tools under a single, unified platform that can be managed by a centralized system. This makes management much simpler, especially when the security patches and the (free) feature upgrades need to be installed. Or, when you want to implement corporate policies on all your employee-owned and business-owned devices.

#6. Excellent Email

Office 365 also sets the benchmark for business email. Not only do consumers have access to all the latest features of Outlook, they’ll also get comprehensive email protection, meaning your inbox will be of rid junk mail and phishing scams automatically.

It will also identify malicious attachments and links, and alert you of them immediately!

Furthermore, it has a detailed analytics system for you to track your email marketing campaigns, improve your strategy, and acquire more leads.

How You Can Get These Benefits

We’ve established that the myriad benefits of the Office 365 platform make it a must-have addition to your existing IT infrastructure, but how can you get them? To fully implement this top-of-the-line suite, you must undergo a “migration”.

In the tech world, data migration is the process of moving from an old, inefficient operating environment to new, efficient operating environment – in this case the cloud-based Office 365.

The process of shifting your database and sensitive files to the cloud, however, needs to be executed correctly,and small- to medium-sized business leaders often shy away from it. This is mostly because of the time, resources, and the potential downtime involved in case the migration doesn’t go exactly as planned.

That’s where JIG’s Office 365 migration services can help.

Other benefits of migrating with JIG include:

  • Premium email storage – 50GB of storage per user, and the ability to send messages up to 25MB, with built in anti-malware and anti-spam filters.
  • Anytime online meetings –  Hold virtual meetings with video, voice-only, or connect with collaborators through Skype integrations, and add up to 250 people on an HD video conference call.
  • Easy collaboration –  JIG’s Microsoft Office 365 solutions also come with Cloud File Sharing, offering you the ability to edit documents online collaboratively, from anywhere.
  • Stay constantly synced – With up-to-date emails, calendars, and contact info, your team can access your message history across any device they are using.

What’s more, migrating to Office 365 with JIG means your data will be stored in our state-of-the-art facilities which are protected with the latest threat prevention software and guarded by certified security experts, giving you an extra layer of protection.