A customer asked us recently, “We use Microsoft 365 every day, but we get the feeling we are paying for a lot more than we are actually using. Are we getting our money’s worth?”
It’s a fair question and the honest answer is usually no, not because Microsoft 365 isn’t worth it, but because most businesses are paying for a full toolkit and only opening two or three of the drawers.
The good news is you don’t need to learn every tool. Picking even two or three of the ones below can take real friction out of your week.
The foundation you’ve already partly built
If you’ve moved off a traditional file server and onto SharePoint, you’ve done the hardest part.
We covered last month how SharePoint is far more than just a place to store files. It’s the foundation that many of the other Microsoft 365 tools build on.
Once that foundation is in place the other tools become much easier to switch on.
SharePoint lists – replace the spreadsheet that quietly runs your business
Most businesses we work with have at least one spreadsheet that quietly runs a critical process. Job tracking, equipment registers, project status, asset records, snagging lists, training records, holiday rotas…the list goes on. These are all sitting in a workbook that one person owns and everyone else asks for a copy of.
SharePoint Lists is the proper replacement for that spreadsheet. It looks and feels like Excel, but the data lives in a central place:
- Proper ownership and permissions
- Version history and audit trail
- Multiple people updating at the same time without overwriting each other
- Sorting, filtering and views tailored for each person who needs to see it
- The ability to drive notifications and automation off changes
Plenty of construction, engineering and manufacturing businesses still track jobs and assets through stages in an Excel workbook because they don’t have a dedicated tool for it.
Moving that one workbook into a SharePoint List can pay for the licences on its own.
Microsoft Forms – stop capturing data on paper or spreadsheets
If your team is still capturing information on printed forms or scanned PDFs then Forms is one of the quickest wins available.
You can use it for:
- Site inspection or job sheet returns from engineers on the road
- Customer feedback after a job is completed
- Internal requests such as holiday, equipment or expenses
- New starter information gathering
Forms can capture responses directly into a SharePoint list, so the information lands in the same central register the rest of the team is already working from rather than sitting in a separate spreadsheet that needs copying across.
Microsoft Bookings – take the “back and forth” out of appointments
Bookings is one of the most underused tools in the suite, and one of the most useful for any business that schedules customer appointments, reviews or site visits.
You set out your availability, the services you offer and who provides them, then share a single link.
Customers self book into slots that suit them, the meeting lands in your calendar automatically and reminders go out without you doing a thing.
For any business that runs scheduled customer meetings or site visits, it can save hours every week.
Microsoft Planner – make team workload visible
Planner is Microsoft 365’s task and project management tool. It’s a separate tool from Lists – they don’t share data by default – but it solves the related problem of who is doing what and what is stuck.
Each project gets a shared board, work moves through stages as it progresses, and everyone can see what is on, what is stuck and what is finished without asking.
It works particularly well for:
- Tracking jobs through quote, accept, deliver and invoice stages
- Managing onboarding tasks for new staff or new customers
- Following snagging items or remedial work to completion
- Coordinating a project where several people each own different parts
Instead of progress living in someone’s inbox or on a wall planner, the whole team has the same view. And if you do want Planner and Lists to talk to each other then Power Automate can bridge them.
Power Automate – the small wins add up
Power Automate is Microsoft’s automation tool and despite the name it doesn’t need to be technical.
A typical first use looks something like this:
- A new entry is added to a SharePoint list or Form
- An approval request goes automatically to the right manager
- Once approved, the team is notified and the record is updated
That’s a manual chain of emails and reminders replaced by something that runs itself.
Start small, automate one approval or one notification and build from there.
Microsoft Loop – collaboration that follows you around
Loop is the newest addition to the suite and the one most businesses haven’t yet looked at.
In simple terms, Loop lets you create small components – a task list, a table, a set of meeting notes, a quick poll, that can be dropped into a Teams chat, an Outlook email or a shared Loop workspace. It stays in sync wherever they appear, update it in one place and everyone sees the change.
It’s particularly useful for:
- Live meeting notes that the whole team can edit as the meeting happens
- A shared action list that lives inside the Teams chat about a project
- Quick decisions captured in the moment without spinning up another document
Loop is sometimes turned off by default in newer tenants, so if you can’t see it, drop us a message and we’ll get it switched on.
Copilot Chat – now included in more plans than you realise
Following the recent Microsoft 365 pricing changes, Copilot Chat features are now embedded into several of the standard business plans rather than being a separate add-on.
It won’t replace your team, but it can summarise long email threads, draft a first version of a document, pull together notes from a meeting or answer a question against information you already have in Microsoft 365. For busy owners and managers that is time back on every working day.
Check what you’ve already got
Many of the tools in this post are already included in the Microsoft 365 subscription you’re paying for. So the first step is often simply to start using what you have.
The exact mix depends on which subscription you are on. Business Premium in particular includes everything covered above, alongside the device management and security tools we discussed in April. It is the package we typically recommend for businesses that want to get the most out of Microsoft 365 and tighten their security at the same time.
If you’re not sure which subscription you’re on or what it includes, give us a call.
You don’t need to use it all
This isn’t about turning every tool on at once.
The businesses that get the most out of Microsoft 365 are the ones that pick the two or three tools that fix a real bottleneck in how they work, get those embedded properly, then move on to the next.
The licences are already on your bill. The question is whether they’re earning their keep. Most businesses don’t need more software. They just need to make better use of the tools they already have.
Whatever your IT question – big or small – drop us a message or give us a call. We’ll make sure you get a straightforward answer without the tech-speak.