Office 365 Sets Your Team Up for Success

5 Unique Cloud Capabilities that Grow Your Business

25 Unique Cloud Capabilities that Grow Your Business

Today’s workforce is more mobile than ever before, routinely working whenever and wherever necessary, using a variety of mobile devices and productivity apps. They expect their tools to deliver the capabilities they need to stay productive and efficient.

But what if they don’t? When a business doesn’t support its workforce with suitable, properly vetted apps, employees will often download and install the tools they like. This trend, called “Shadow IT,” is almost always a recipe for trouble. One-off, standalone apps don’t conform to business strategy and growth plans, but instead create difficulties — security, compatibility, compliance and technical support — that draw resources away from strategic work.

Fortunately, this is a problem that has a solution. An integrated suite of productivity tools can keep workers happy and productive, while reducing the need for standalone apps.

The integrated Office 365 suite delivers what businesses need — scalability, easy implementation and advanced security — as well as flexible, user-friendly tools that help employees generate great results for your business.

¹ Frost & Sullivan. Press Release: “Frost & Sullivan Unveils Groundbreaking ROI Tool That Guarantees Better Business Performance,” December 8, 2015.

In a survey of 4,500 enterprise decision-makers, collaboration accounted for more than 1/3 of the success or failure of a company’s business performance.1

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company-wide discussion feeds connect employees across the organization, encouraging impromptu brainstorming sessions. Yammer groups support seamless teamwork with easy collaboration that’s needed for growth. It does all this while covering your firm’s knowledge management, compliance and risk management obligations.

Some conversations still need to happen in person, but location is no longer a burden. Skype for Business lets people quickly jump on a call, screen-share or video conference from any device. For teams that prefer chat-based workspaces, Microsoft Teams is an entirely new experience that brings together people, conversations and content — along with the tools that teams need — so they can easily collaborate to achieve more. It supports not only persistent, but also threaded chats to keep everyone engaged. Team conversations are, by default, visible to the entire team, but there is also the ability for private discussions. Skype is deeply integrated, so teams can participate in voice and video conferences.

Five features are particularly useful for many businesses:

1. An Integrated Suiteof Communication andProductivity Tools

Today’s businesses are no longer tethered by geography, and neither are your hiring decisions. When distant teams can communicate and collaborate in real time, your business gains the flexibility to build those teams however you need to: hiring the brightest remote workers, using contractors or keeping key employees who must move.

New team members can be easily onboarded with a familiar toolset, and cloud-supported communication apps enable team collaboration.

The Yammer business social network is just one example of how Office 365 ensures team collaboration and individual productivity. Yammer’s tools promote secured collaboration and knowledge-sharing between distributed teams. Its

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Watch how Office 365 helps teams bring an idea from concept to action.

2. Anytime, Anywhere Accessto Information

Businesses often lose data due to hardware failures, employee errors, malware and many other causes.

Any business could fix the problem by taking its data offline and locking it away. But you’d be locking away the data that inspires the “aha!” insights your employees may discover when they have secured access to information.

With OneDrive for Business, you can create, upload and edit files from your desktop, web browser or mobile device. Authorized users get seamless access to data, documents, media and other digital assets; offline access is simple and effective, and users don’t need to worry about version-control. Data Loss Prevention (DLP), a feature that keeps a close eye on your data, grows increasingly important when you look at cloud-based file-sharing tools. Office 365 DLP capabilities extend beyond email (Outlook and Exchange) to cover file-sharing sites (OneDrive for Business and SharePoint) and the documents they hold. This means you can identify, monitor and automatically protect sensitive information across Office 365.

For more robust information-management needs, SharePoint Online team sites are a powerful and flexible option that can support employees as well as contractors, partners, vendors and other outside contributors. SharePoint helps administrators protect sensitive business data by giving them the control and visibility they need with appropriate access, sharing and collaboration.

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With a Data Loss Prevention policy in Office 365, you can flag files with sensitive information, such as health data or credit card numbers. Block files from being sent to outsiders or unauthorized employees, and follow up automatically with an email educating the sender on compliance policy.

4. A Clear Roadmapfor Reliability and Growth

Your technology partners provide key support as your business grows, and it is a relationship based on transparency and trust.

Microsoft maintains a public roadmap that details upcoming Office 365 updates and status reports on planned or in-progress features. In addition, since your Office 365 is a cloud-based suite, it can receive more frequent and predictable updates than a typical legacy application. Users get instant access to the latest features, and IT groups regain time from not having to install, test or roll out an Office patch, upgrade or new desktop installation.

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* FastTrack onboarding and adoption resourcesand services are available with the purchase of 50or more seats of Office 365 Enterprise and Office365 Business SKUs, along with paid Government,Kiosk, and Nonprofit SKUs. Migration assistance isavailable with the purchase of 150 or more seats.

5. Support That Puts Businesseson a Fast Track to Success

The real test for any application investment comes from the users: Will they embrace a new application? Do they use it only when they absolutely must, or do they spend time learning how to take their interaction to the next level?

Smooth migration and rollout play a major role in the successful adoption of technology. Microsoft FastTrack* for Office 365 gives businesses a structured, three-phase process they need for a successful rollout — a key element to building user support and engagement. FastTrack engineers will help accelerate your migration to Office 365. See the impact they had on CSC in our latest customer story.

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