Are you seeking a way to save time and money for your business or organization? Are you worried about the security breaches that seem to make headlines every single week? Or are you simply looking for a way to improve the productivity of your employees? If so, then perhaps it’s time you make the switch from your current software and email service to the cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 platform.

Office 365 isn’t new. (It was released in 2011.) However, its constant updates and upgrades have made it one of the leading software and email services currently available and businesses and organizations around the nation are quickly discovering the advantages to the program’s flexibility. To help local businesses and organizations make the switch, our small business IT support team at KDG has become a Microsoft Partner. We can help our clients seamlessly migrate to Office 365 and make the most out of all the great benefits the platform provides.

If you haven’t made the switch yet, it’s something to consider. From its time-saving capabilities to its security reinforcements, Office 365 has the tools you need to make your daily tasks simpler and your future goals more attainable. While there are plenty of benefits to Office 365 (and the program is constantly being updated and improved with even more new features), we’ve  taken the time to cover the basics of the program and list the top four reasons Office 365 is the ideal solution for your business, nonprofit, or other organization.

How much time does your internal IT support team spend fixing outdated servers, managing licenses, and securing systems? Probably a lot. This day-to-day maintenance can create quite a struggle for your IT team. It eats away hours until there are none left in the workday to deal with other issues like WiFi connectivity, VPN installation, and bug fixing.

However, Office 365 makes daily technology maintenance much simpler. The cloud service is hosted and maintained by Microsoft and the tech company is constantly monitoring for issues and system failures. Microsoft also deploys new software as needed and administers patches automatically (as we’ve pointed out before, patches are a sure way to keep your software performing at its best). All of this eliminates the extra work that would have previously been needed by your IT team and allows the team to get back to the work that’s integral to your company and its practice.

While many companies may rejoice at handing over all maintenance to someone else, others may feel uneasy about giving up such a large amount of control. Either way, Microsoft gives subscribers very little to worry about. Office 365 has a 99.9% uptime rate, meaning that it’s available 99.9% of minutes throughout the entire year. There’s very little downtime and 24/7-support is always available, so you should have no trouble letting go of the reins.

There’s one thing everyone knows regardless of whether they work in business or the nonprofit sector: when you save time, you’re also saving money. With Office 365, all of the support and maintenance comes from Microsoft at a monthly subscription fee.  However, your business or organization will be saving thousands elsewhere, making this monthly cost nearly inconsequential to your company’s bottom line.

Servers are expensive and their maintenance is a continued cost that adds up quickly. Small businesses and nonprofits may easily end up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars every few years to replace outdated technology. However, Microsoft estimates that those who have made the switch to its Office 365 services have avoided nearly $600,000 in back-end hardware costs, in addition to saving over $200,000 thanks to the elimination of third-party tools.

These savings come not only from technology, but also mobility and communication. Superfluous manual labor is eliminated. If your business or organization is spread out to different locations, travel costs are cut. The need to pay for several different software licenses is nonexistent. Costs of running your business or organization, even everyday costs you may have not considered before, will be lowered immensely or cut completely. Office 365 has nearly every tool you need in one package.

With so many recent hacks of corporations, celebrities, and politicians, many wonder if the cloud is a safe place to store projects, communications, and other data. However, Office 365 offers enhanced security, making it a lot safer than other programs, perhaps even safer than some of the programs your company is currently using.

Multi-factor authentication is available for all Office 365 subscriptions. This means that company documents and other important data are not only password protected, but also guarded with a code sent to the user via text message or an automated phone call. Office 365 also gives businesses the ability to assign roles to employees and set sharing restrictions on files.

Perhaps most importantly, emails are well protected. In other blog posts, we’ve commented numerous times on the significance of keeping your emails safe. Microsoft has an entire Exchange Online Protection team that dedicates itself entirely to email protection for subscribers. You won’t have to worry about spam, malicious links, or stolen identities because the team has implemented various ways to combat these threats (and continues to administer automatic upgrades as new threats and concerns arise). Office 365 also features real-time threat protection which stops harmful attachments from reaching subscribers’ inboxes, scans and identifies malign URLs, and instantly reports on any known cyber attack attempts against your company and its employees.

Collaboration is easy with Office 365. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote files can be saved to the cloud and shared with people both in and out of your company. Like Google Drive, the latest versions of files are saved online and multiple people can edit the document. Files are simple to find and a “team” site can even be created where files and projects are archived. However, unlike Google Drive, Office 365 allows for more complex projects to be created using a mobile device. It’s a benefit that is very helpful if you or your employees are constantly on the go and it’s a benefit that even PCMag praises in its detailed review of the product.

In addition to simply file sharing, Office 365 also has a collection of other communication tools that will greatly improve the capabilities of any business or organization. The program includes Skype, which is perfect for internal messaging between employees. While emails may get buried in an inbox, questions, comments, and ideas can be quickly shared over the messaging program. Team members and employees can also communicate through HD video conferencing and share screens across devices and locations so that everyone is, quite literally, kept on the same page. With Office 365 and its many features, the cloud transforms into your conference room.

In addition, Office 365’s premium plan gives your organization a more professional look with its very own email system. Every employee will have his or her own personal email, complete with your business’s or organization’s domain name, in addition to shared inboxes, increased storage, and calendar sharing capabilities so that you can schedule meetings, events, and calls with ease.

Everything your business or organization may need to make its daily tasks simpler, from regular maintenance to internal communications, is readily available with Office 365. We understand that the decision to completely make a technology switch can be daunting. Transferring any number of employees to an entirely new system will take time and will undoubtedly cause some issues. However, this is why we became authorized Microsoft Partners. When the time comes to make the change, we can help your business or organization smoothly migrate to Office 365’s services.

Many businesses and organizations in the Lehigh Valley and beyond have already relied on our tech management team to make the switch. Now it’s your turn to discover the many advantages there are to Office 365. Contact us today.