How does Microsoft 365 weigh in against its competition?

Joshua White

Last updated on 08/11/2021

Microsoft 365 is a mind blowing platform when you really get to know just what it provides; the classic Office apps, that being, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook, barely even scratches the surface of what Microsoft 365 brings to the table. When you stack up Microsoft 365 against its other competitors, only then will you truly realise why it’s the best tool out there for productivity, collaboration, and getting things done.

Productivity & Collaboration

The simplest benefit of utilizing Microsoft 365 is for the features that bring out the best in your business’ teamwork. The classic Office apps all allow you to work on the same document in real time, updating changes across all users’ copy instantly. You don’t even need the Office app installed – it’s available on the web at no additional cost. Additional apps such as Teams, an instant messaging, conference calling, and project management application, helps your employees stay connected. Teams has seen a great deal of investment poured into it from Microsoft since the global COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. And finally, SharePoint natively integrates with the rest of Microsoft 365, acting as a central intranet (or multiple intranets!) and document repository, with a simple yet advanced permission system, ensuring users only have access to what they are allowed – with the potential for hiding sensitive documents even from IT admins and/or users with global administrative rights.

Cost Effective

Microsoft 365 is sold on a per-user, per-month basis, with basic licenses starting as cheap as a cup of coffee. This license gives your users access to nearly everything, if not everything, it needs to get business done, day in, day out. Microsoft essentially pays this money back to you – a hundredfold over – simply by saving you time, energy, and resources.

The Power Platform

Microsoft Power Platform, an advanced, low-to-no-code business application platform, is hosted directly within your Microsoft 365 tenant. Setup a timer job within Power Automate, or instruct it to perform an action when specific content is created / updated within SharePoint; create bespoke, dynamic, applications with Power Automate – and design it to run your Power Automate Workflows; and create beautiful, interactive reports with Power BI, which can feed data from literally anywhere: Excel, SharePoint, SQL Server, Salesforce, SAP, your own website – the list is endless. Just like Microsoft 365, the Power Platform is available at a low cost relative to what it offers. Our advanced Microsoft experts can’t wait to help see where you would benefit from the Power Platform.

Extendable

As if the constant investment into the whole Microsoft ecosystem wasn’t enough – with over 30 new features added to Power BI alone in October 2021 – Microsoft 365 is a development platform; SharePoint & Teams allows you to create bespoke web parts using the SharePoint Framework APIs for TypeScript (a superset of JavaScript), the classic Office apps are open for you to create advanced extensions and macros, and you can create custom visualisations & API actions for the Power Platform.

Microsoft Is Here To Stay

Microsoft Office has been around since the 90s and has had a huge amount of investment poured into it, moreso in the last decade since it became an online platform as well as an off the shelf software. Microsoft 365 natively integrates with the entirety of the Microsoft ecosystem, and unlike one of its major competitors, none of its services would be suddenly and silently discontinued after being around for only two years, meaning you won’t be cycling through three or four business IM apps throughout your tenancy on Microsoft 365.

Are You ready for Microsoft 365?

The market leader of productivity and collaboration software is ready for you. Furthermore, our experts are ready to help you get the most out of your subscription, and may be able to help you find additional services on top of Microsoft 365, at your discretion of course. We offer a really powerful Microsoft helpdesk, on top of running a team of keen, intelligent intranet developers. Feel free to get in contact with us today for more information about setting up your Microsoft 365 tenant.