More than Email: Unlocking the Full Value of Office 365
Businesses seem to be hearing the “call of the cloud” loud and clear if a pair of recent studies concerning Office 365 are any indication. According to research by Barracuda Networks, Inc., , while 49% of those who aren’t yet doing so plan to within the next six months. Meanwhile, in a separate study, this one executed by Gartner, 61% of those surveyed said they use Office 365 while another 23% plan to roll it out within the next six months. Those figures depict an upward trend from the 35% and 31% Gartner captured back in July 2014. The thing is, once in the cloud, many are encountering an age-old question: “What now?”
A closer examination of Gartner’s study finds Office ProPlus and Exchange sitting at the top of the Office 365 pack in terms of both usage and perceived value. This makes sense given the desire to shed email management duties as well as gain access to critical business applications while on the go are both quintessential cloud migration motivators. However, even as usage remains high among utilities such as OneDrive for Business, SharePoint, and others, their perceived value took a sizeable dip.
What gives? Are these technologies simply unworthy of an organization’s time? Far from it. In a blog analyzing the results of this study, one analyst concluded: “… this isn’t a judgment on the quality of the technology, but rather it is an indication of how much work is ahead for organizations to learn how to best use these newer technologies and slowly change working behaviors.”
This rationale is something Arraya has seen come to life in numerous real world cloud migrations. Office 365 applications like Teams and OneDrive are natural disruptors, tools specifically built to change the way employees approach their jobs in order to make workdays easier and more productive. Successful adoption of these types of tools necessitates as much a cultural and operational shift as a technological one. Without a tried and true cloud expert overseeing those shifts, organizations may struggle to extract full value from Office 365 licenses.
Cloud productivity expertise – as a service
Organizations can bring that expertise in-house, but doing so can prove costly. Arraya’s Digital Advisor – Productivity offering stands as an alternative, making expert-level Office 365 knowledge and experience available as a service. It’s an ongoing partnership that connects organizations with Arraya’s team of solutions experts to ensure a maximum return on investment on Office 365 as well as other productivity tools.
Specifically, Arraya’s Digital Advisor – Productivity service can:
- Analyze existing procedures in search of gaps that can be plugged via the tools and technologies included within Office 365
- Evaluate existing staff workflows, using information gathered from team members themselves, in search of ongoing productivity roadblocks
- Facilitate organization-wide demos and training sessions to help employees from all levels and focus areas feel comfortable incorporating Office 365 solutions into their workdays
- Work with representatives from both the business and technology side of an organization to formulate Office 365 deployment strategies geared toward both short and long term success stories
If you’d like to learn more about Arraya’s Digital Advisor – Productivity service, or any of our other solutions and services designed to help your business evolve beyond its legacy borders, visit us at https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/.
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