SMBs Benefit from Office 365 Business Premium Enhancements

Office 365

Office 365 Business Premium is a comprehensive productivity suite designed to help businesses streamline their operations and increase their efficiency. This cloud-based infrastructure service from Microsoft offers a range of powerful tools and applications that can help teams collaborate, communicate, and work more effectively. With features like email hosting, file sharing, online meetings, and more, Office 365 Business Premium is an all-in-one solution that can help businesses of all sizes improve their productivity and achieve their goals. In this era of remote work and digital communication, Office 365 Business Premium is a valuable asset for any business looking to stay ahead of the curve as they improve their managed cloud services.

Key Benefits of Business Premium Office 365

There are several benefits of using Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium for your business. Here are some of the key advantages:

  1. Cloud-based productivity: With Office 365 Business Premium, your team can access their files, emails, and other applications from anywhere with an internet connection. This allows for greater flexibility and remote working capabilities, which is increasingly important in today’s digital world.
  2. Collaboration and teamwork: Office 365 Business Premium includes a suite of powerful tools for collaboration and teamwork, such as Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive. These tools enable your team to work together on documents and projects in real-time, regardless of their location.
  3. Scalability and cost-effectiveness: Office 365 Business Premium is a subscription-based service that can be scaled up or down as needed, allowing businesses to easily adjust their plans based on their changing needs. Additionally, Office 365 Business Premium can help businesses save money by reducing the need for on-premises infrastructure and software.
  4. Security and compliance: Microsoft takes security seriously, and Office 365 Business Premium includes a range of security and compliance features, such as data encryption, multi-factor authentication, and advanced threat protection. These features help protect your business from cyber threats and ensure compliance with data protection regulations.
  5. Constantly updated: Office 365 Business Premium is a constantly evolving platform, with new features and updates being added on a regular basis. This ensures that your business always has access to the latest tools and technologies, and that you can stay ahead of the competition.

New and Existing Enhancements to Office 365 Business Premium

One of the value propositions we see with Microsoft Office 365 is the aggressive manner in which Microsoft continues to add services, features, and apps to the service without changing price.

Recently, Microsoft announced the addition of two new capabilities to the Business Premium license:

Outlook Customer Manager

A simple CRM tool for small businesses, Outlook Customer Manager lets you track your customers, contacts, sales activities, and important events from your Inbox.

Microsoft Bookings

Microsoft Bookings offers convenient, flexible online options that make it quick and easy for customers to schedule appointments with your small business clients. A customizable public webpage allows customers to find available times and book appointments, anytime. A private calendar enables your small business clients and staff to manage their schedules; automatic confirmations and reminders help to save time.

Team Drives Launches for G Suite Business, Enterprise, & Education

Google DriveMost file storage solutions weren’t built to handle the explosion of files that are now created and shared in the cloud — because they were initially designed for individuals, not teams. With this amount of shared data, admins need more controls to keep their data safe and teams need to feel confident working together. Team Drives deliver the security, structure and ease-of-use enterprises need by making it easy to:

  • Add new team members. You can manage team members individually or with Google Groups and give them instant access to relevant Team Drives.
  • Keep track of your files if a team member leaves. Team Drives are jointly owned by the team, which means that anything added to Team Drives stays there no matter who comes or goes. Whirlpool Corporation, for example, uses Team Drives to manage file access. Says Troy McKim, Collaboration Principle at Whirlpool Corporation, “If you place files for a project in Team Drives, you don’t have to worry about losing them or moving them when files are re-owned.”
  • Understand and manage sharing permissions. Team members automatically see the same files regardless of who adds or reorganizes them. You can also manage share permissions by defining the restrictions for editing, commenting, reorganizing or deleting files.
  • Manage and view Team Drives as an admin. Admins can see Team Drives for a user and add new members if necessary: “Team Drives also ease the speed at which a team member can onboard and become effective in their new role,” says McKim.

Team Drives are now generally available to all of our G Suite Business, Education, and Enterprise customers.

Which Cloud? Let Your “Line of Business” Apps Be Your Guide

Should your CRM, ERP, or Warehousing system guide which email service you use? Yes, and here’s why …

Many SMBs think of Office 365 and G Suite (formerly Google Apps) as an email service or collaboration tools for emails, files, and chats. Both Office 365 and G Suite are, however, collaboration suites focused on individual and team productivity. Once in place, your productivity cloud becomes the cornerstone of your cloud services and your IT ecosystem.

In deciding which cloud, your line of business systems should guide your decision. Whether you choose Office 365 or G Suite, your productivity cloud will provide the platform that your line of business systems will use to present information and that you will use to view, share, and analyze data.

Born in the cloud, G Suite is built on a cloud-centric philosophy that promotes the use and integration of cloud (ie, SaaS) business apps.  G Suite does not include CRM, project/task management, data analysis apps, or other tools.  With G Suite the expectation is that you will use the capabilities of Google Cloud Platform, other Google services, or third party apps to meet these needs.  The G Suite model centers on your picking “best of breed” or “best fit” cloud-based solutions.

While Office 365 integrates with dozens, of third party, the Office 365 philosophy is to provide an integrated suite of solutions.  Delve, Power BI, Planner, Sway, and Teams are all examples of value-add solutions that Microsoft includes in the Office 365 suite to go beyond basic communication and collaboration.  With the addition of Dynamics 365, you have many line of business, data analysis, and planning functions covered without looking to third party apps.

Where Do Your Line of Business Apps Fit in the Decision Matrix?

If your Line of Business (LoB) systems run on premise with MS SQL Server Database, will run hybrid on-premise and in-cloud, or will continue to run in a Microsoft ecosystem, Office 365 comes with the ability to connect business intelligence, data analysis, reporting, and communications tools directly to your systems.

If you are running, or moving to SaaS-based systems for LoB solutions, your business intelligence, data analysis, and reporting solutions will likely be cloud solutions as well. G Suite provides and ecosystem for pulling these together in a manner.

Both Office 365 and G Suite integrate with on-premise and hybrid cloud solutions.  Both work with many third party solutions.  But Office 365 and G Suite each have their own strengths and philosophies. While you should not be limited by your current infrastructure, the nature of your current and planned LoB systems should, therefore, be an important factor when you decide which cloud is right for you.


For a better sense of which cloud is right for you, get a free assessment and consulting session by completing our Productivity Cloud Questionnaire. The survey takes 30-40 minutes to complete. We will respond with an analysis and recommendations report, and a free Cloud Advisor session to review our findings.