For small businesses, keeping employees productive by giving them the right tools helps in achieving business goals faster. In fact, 40% of small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in the United States who don’t help employees to be more effective won’t reach their growth targets.

Most of these SMBs said that their biggest obstacle is finding the right technology that enhances employee productivity.

You may already be using office productivity tools in your business — including Microsoft Office Word, Powerpoint, and Excel. While these familiar applications are part of Office 365, Microsoft’s cloud-based solution offers so much more.

If you’re unsure how it can help your business grow, check out these top five benefits of having an Office 365 subscription.

1. It enhances teamwork.

Staying on top of projects and tasks involving multiple employees is easier with Microsoft Office 365 applications.

• With OneDrive, you can create, share, and edit documents securely in real time from your desktop, laptop, or mobile. You can also make edits offline then pick up where you left off once you’re back online.

• Microsoft Planner — their project management tool — allows you to create, organize, and assign tasks. The organized boards and drag-and-drop feature makes it easy for users to change or update tasks.

Members will have access to files and conversations related to a task, promoting visibility and transparency.

Meanwhile, email notifications ensure that members are updated on any incoming tasks and deadlines.

2. You get access to enhanced email features.

Productivity expert Merlin Mann suggests the Inbox Zero approach to effectively manage your email inbox. The goal is to empty your inbox by doing any of these actions: delete, delegate, respond, defer, or do.

If you struggle with a cluttered inbox, you can take advantage of the new Microsoft Outlook features to reach an Inbox Zero status.

Conversation Cleanup prevents redundant messages in an email thread. This feature evaluates the contents of a conversation and deletes certain messages that are already contained in a particular email within the thread.

• Keep your inbox clear from irrelevant messages using the Ignore Conversation feature. Activating this feature moves unwanted email threads — and future conversations related to it — to your Deleted Items folder.

3. You can have peace of mind with cloud protection.

Data breaches don’t just happen to large organizations — they occur in small businesses, too. In fact, small businesses account for 58% of data breach victims in 2018.

Office 365 has at least 16 security features to protect your users, devices, and data. Some of these features include:

• Multiple encryption technologies — such as BitLocker, service encryption, and transport layer security — ensure that your data is secure in rest and in transit. When a breach does happen, unauthorized persons would be unable to read your data. You also have the option to remotely wipe your data in case your device gets lost or stolen.

• Microsoft Exchange Online Protection keeps email security threats at bay by blocking spam, viruses, and malware.

4. A subscription makes more business sense.

You have two options for purchasing Office 365: as a one-time purchase or as a monthly subscription.

Investing Office 365 upfront gives you a perpetual licence. However, it does require a major financial investment, which is something that small businesses may not be willing to make. Another downside is that when a major release comes around, you would have to pay the full price to upgrade your software.

Monthly subscriptions, on the other hand, lets you spread out your cost over time while enjoying the latest versions of Microsoft’s productivity tools. You can pay per month based on the number of users in your organisation and add additional slots as needed for your expanding business.

Thus, when making an annual cost comparison between a perpetual licence and with a monthly Office 365 subscription over three years — the latter makes more sense financially.

5. You don’t need a large IT team for deployment.

The Office 365 installation process doesn’t have to be complicated. Even with little to no IT background, you can install the entire software within minutes.

Apparently, Office 365 makes business operations a breeze. Since a lot of people are familiar with Microsoft Office applications, your IT team won’t have to invest a lot of time and effort in training your employees on how to use these tools.

Business made easy

Office 365 has robust collaboration and security features coupled with easy implementation and a tactical payment option. This makes it a viable tool for small businesses looking for a complete office solutions software that gives them value for money.

Check out Vodien Microsoft Office 365 plans today to see which best works for your business.