Most of us have used Microsoft Office for years and are familiar with the platform. However, we generally use it for editing documents or creating spreadsheets or presentations.
Today’s Office 365 offers much more than text editing: Office 365 has matured to become a full-scale business and education tool that can do everything from tracking inventory to facilitating learning to helping increase productivity.
Boosting productivity is a non-stop goal for most businesses.
Here are 5 ways that Office 365 can help boost productivity, be it for students or any kind of business.
1. Multiplatform Support
In the digital age, most people use a wide variety of devices to access information from virtually anywhere they have an internet connection from. In addition, the world is firmly divided between entrenched Mac and PC users that often want to use devices on their platform of choice.
Thankfully, Office 365 bridges this divide and works across all types of platforms on all kinds of devices. This is also useful for e-learning and education or for businesses that use freelance or contract employees that bring their own devices. You can even create a spreadsheet at home on your Mac and then edit it on-the-go with your Windows tablet.
2. Ease of communication
Whether it’s sending an email, quickly notifying the team that you will be late for a meeting or holding a conference via Skype, Office 365 has a wide range of communication options that have all your needs covered.
With Office 365, you can even conduct classes, workshops, and lectures via Skype to make the world your classroom. Students and colleagues can also communicate with each other via the wide variety of communication tools Office 365 offers.
3. Widely Used, Many Are Familiar
As a globally available platform that has been around for years, many are familiar with Microsoft Office and have grown up using their document editor and making presentations. Even so, in addition to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Office 365 offers more functionality for personal and business use.
There are new apps that might take a little more time to learn and master, but they ultimately help students and lecturers by providing higher efficiency and more immersive experience.
4. Cloud-Based Storage and Sharing
Remote work is on the rise and Office 365 is poised to help businesses and educators around the globe offer better perks and education opportunities. Cloud-based storage and sharing options help facilitate e-learning and education opportunities because groups can collaborate on projects from wherever they are.
Such a system helps instructors, as they can distribute notes and updates, send and receive assignments and send additional resources offered to students as they become available. Students and employees can even set alerts for deadlines or to notify them when new documents or information is available.
5. Project Management and Analytics
The standard workweek was developed early in the 1900’s as being the most efficient means of doing business.
Today, we know that people all have an individual rhythm and pace that they operate best at. Project management and analytics can help businesses determine exact time spans when employees are most productive which helps them assign tasks optimally. Such analytics also give instructors a better overview and a fuller picture of exactly where their students are struggling, so they can offer additional help or improve their courses in those areas.
Office 365 analytics offers an almost unprecedented ability to tailor your work and projects for an optimized learning experience.
Office Education Solutions for Learning
Office 365, aside from business, is also a powerful education tool. With Office 365, academic research teams can share information and collaborate remotely. Research teams around the globe can share their findings and work and update the same project in real time.
With Office 365, students also have access to an immersive classroom experience directly at their home. Attending a lecture at Harvard or collaborating on a robotics project at MIT from anywhere offers opportunities to those who can’t attend in person.
Even in the classroom, however, Office 365 can help instructors meet the needs of both visual and audial learners. Class notes can be accessed via OneDrive, which also cuts down significantly on waste and costs. There are even dedicated Windows devices that come preloaded with Office 365 for Education.
In both, the office and the classroom, Office 365 can help boost productivity and increase the efficiency of e-learning. Analytics helps project managers keep projects moving smoothly forward and help instructors provide a better learning experience.
Collaboration and communication tools can help keep everyone on the same page and help students and workers with providing better access to a broader variety of information. From medicine to science to industry, Office 365 is helping move the world forward in better and more efficient ways.
Lisa Michaels is a freelance writer, editor and a striving content marketing consultant from Portland. Being self-employed, she does her best to stay on top of the current trends in business and tech. She already mastered MS Office and wrote a detailed guide. Feel free to connect with her on Twitter @LisaBMichaels.