You can learn a lot in a couple of weeks.
For instance – at my previous post, with a software company that was perfectly willing to sell endless consulting engagements, but highly reluctant to pay for software consulting – we’d converted to Office 365 several months ago. As was company policy – there was a rapid install followed by a decent rollout – our internal IT guys managed it pretty well – but we were very hesitant to bring in anyone outside to work on the project – and it showed.
Especially at first, we mistakenly called it “Office 360” and the joke around the water cooler was that it worked pretty well except the other 5 days of the year – and today must be one of those days.
Flash forward to today, I find myself at a firm that specializes in the rollout and continued consulting for a host of Microsoft products – including Office 365.
The difference is night and day.
From a user perspective, I’m seeing connectivity and cross-platform features that I had no idea existed. It’s easy to cross reference from Outlook to CRM. Sharepoint 2013 acts like you would expect Sharepoint would work all these years but somehow never did.
In my former business world, we tried Lync for the better part of a morning before scrapping the whole thing and going back to Go-to-Webex-for-Meeting or whatever we were using at the time. Here everyone lives on it and Lync meetings are saving a ton over outside services.
It’s so simple and easy – the productivity spike starts on day one just continues. So if you’re thinking about that productivity spike – across every worker in every location, at every desk, tablet, smartphone and day-in, day-out, I’m thinking you probably shouldn’t skimp on getting someone who knows what they’re doing to help you roll out Office 365.
It’s just one service line here at my new offices – but it shows the difference between a company that focuses on delivering ROI for internal and external customers and a company that pinches the bottom line.
Here’s some other interesting links:
David Gerwitz from ZD Net on “Why I Picked Office 365 over Google Office.
Slideshare from Microsoft on “Top 10 Reasons to Choose Office 365.
And you can Google search about a billion more – or heck – if Office 365 is working this well, you might even try Bing.
You can reach gh@genehammons.com