For a number of organisations, sticking with Office 2013 makes a lot of sense. Especially, if you want to continue with in-house email for the foreseeable future and enjoy working off a single PC or laptop, Office 2013 comes with a wealth of advantages.
In-house exchange itself is even adequate for small businesses whose employees are largely gathered in one location. It isn’t difficult to grasp, and it isn’t time-consuming either. The pressure, though, really kicks in when you start to experience a few teething problems.
In 2015, more and more businesses are making the move to Office 365. Here are a few reasons why:
Office 365 – It’s Office – But Better
A lot of organisations worry that Office 365 is actually quite limited, and that it doesn’t come with too many features. But this is only true if you opt for the lowest Business Essentials plan, for which you pay just £3.10 a month.
If you choose instead to go with one of the Premium plans, you can expect to pay £7.00 a month, but you can also expect to get a lot more joy out of it. For example, if you want the same applications as the Business and Office Professional Home packages, all you need to do is download them from Microsoft.
Moreover, you can also store your documents on your company servers, as well as your local machine, and you’re as dependent on your Internet connection as you were with Office 2013. You’re certainly not more dependent on it.
You Can Email And Schedule With Exchange Online
As long as you don’t opt for the cheapest Business Essentials plan, your users will each get their own email. They will also get a other few neat features, such as contacts management, as well as a 50GB inbox.
This really is a no-brainer – unless you’re totally stubborn about your in-house email system.
Office 365 makes life so much easier because it lets you hand over your email and scheduling to Microsoft. Moreover, you also reduce the amount of maintenance work that needs doing. Even better, you can use your Android or iOS apps to access your emails.
Office 365 Is Flexible
One of the major benefits of Office 365 email over in-house exchange is that it’s flexible; it’s not just your emails that its covering.
Let’s say you buy Office 2013. It covers just you and your emails.
But if you subscribe to the Office 365 Business Premium plans, any user you add will be able to make the most of Outlook, as well as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and so on.
Essentially, it covers a desktop in your office – and then some.
You don’t need to worry whether you email from a Windows PC or an Apple Mac either, as Office 365 has got you covered.
With Office 365, you also get to customise it for each user. For example, some users might only need it for email and scheduling, while others might need the entire desktop applications. For those who require only emails, you can save the cheaper Business Essentials plan for them.
The Benefits Of Office 365 Mean You Can Work From Anywhere
One of the great things about Office 365 email over in-house exchange is that you don’t even need to work with Office to use Office Online.
You can, though, use OneDrive for Business – which is awesome.
To get started, you just need your laptop and PC and an Internet connection. You can even use Office 365 on Google ChromeBoxes, while a wealth of mobile apps support it. These include the iPhone, Windows Phone, and Android tablets.
There Is Very Little Maintenance Involved With Office 365
One of the biggest gripes people have with in-house Exchange is that updating it can be a pain. They might comfort themselves by saying that at least you don’t have to perform the updates often, but when the time comes it can be a bit of a nightmare.
With Office 365, updates happen automatically; you don’t have to do anything!
Even better, Microsoft sort out the maintenance themselves, and they even take care of patching and securing. This means that your software is water-tight and completely up-to-date without you having to do anything.
This saves an organisation, small or medium-sized, a heck of a lot of time and it also gives you a huge amount of peace of mind.
Office 365 Is Modern
The chances are that you Hardware and Exchange will not exactly be young anymore, and they may very well be quite old.
For a lot of small businesses with old hardware and exchange, the question of what to do next will invariably crop up. If you decide to stick with in-house Exchange, you will need to invest in brand new hardware, as well as new Exchange software. Not to mention the licenses and the technician who will need to install your software.
If faced with the decision to renew your operations, Office 365 makes a lot of sense. As well as the aforementioned benefits, it can also work out a lot cheaper. Just one license for Office 2013 will cost £150 for three years. But you will also need to utilise more than one PC.
Office 365 grows with your business if you opt for the monthly payments. There is no upfront fee, which means that you don’t need to worry about downsizing further down the line. Office 365 might not be for everyone, but if you want to more on more than one PC or laptop, it could be for you.