If you are a real estate industry professional, chances are you use Microsoft Office 365. Most people are familiar with Microsoft Office 365 applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint for document creation and Outlook for email. Beyond its use as an everyday platform, Office 365 is an advanced ecosystem that encourages a more level playing field for small and mid-sized companies.
Although the basic capabilities of Office 365 are in the hands of the user, there are robust capabilities that serve to benefit your entire company. These require configuration on the organizational level.
Here is a brief description of key features of Office 365.
Productivity Microsoft Office, One Drive, SharePoint, Teams, Office 365 Groups, Project, Planner, Delve and Yammer are all tools designed to enhance the productivity of an organization by promoting collaboration.
Workflows, Systems Integration and Business Intelligence Flow, PowerApps and Power BI facilitate a smooth execution of business processes, interconnected systems and executive dashboards. They each improve data visibility and decision making.
Security & Compliance Protect your data and documents while enforcing regulatory and internal compliance via Active Directory, User Management, Data Governance, Threat Protection and Information Protection capabilities.
The unseen benefits of Office 365
Collaborate using a WiFi connection. Do everything from text and talk to review documents and data with Teams. Teams is available on the web and as a desktop application and mobile app.
Create an O365 Group for your department or the colleagues with whom you confer most often. Consider adding more features with the Planner app to track your departmental projects and tasks.
Leverage O365's workflow capabilities with Flow to enable your organization to integrate different business processes and systems.
Configure SharePoint, a web-based collaborative platform, as your departmental portal, complete with libraries for your documents.
Integrate Office 365 tools with each other such as Outlook and document libraries. You can even integrate any external system with any of the O365 tools such as SalesForce with a SharePoint app, or integrate any two external systems with one another.
Consider adding more features to your new site with Planner, an app that tracks your departmental projects and tasks. Use Yammer as your social networking tool to connect across your company. Keep your personal digital notebook on One Note.
Why keep your data in the Cloud?
When configured appropriately, your organization's data is highly secure on the Cloud. It will not get lost or corrupted. It is in a centralized location accessible to your internal staff as well as external partners, vendors and tenants. Compliance tasks are easily facilitated through use of the Cloud.
Be mindful of the downside
When adopting a new means of communication throughout your organization, be sensitive to those with whom you will be communicating. Whenever possible, include them in the decision to ensure everyone knows how to access and use the tool.
Streamline your process so it makes sense. There's nothing worse than creating a situation in which your team is scrambling to find a document or email because it could live in too many different places.
Encourage familiarity with the chosen tools before you share documents and workflow. This will help prevent delayed responses and missed opportunities.
How we can help
As a seasoned Managed IT Service provider, QualIT One has deep expertise in Microsoft Office 365. We are here to help you configure this powerful tool to your company's exact specifications, allowing you to take advantage of its extensive capabilities. Your data and documents will be safe while your team's workflow will be kept simple and streamlined.
Our proprietary real estate productivity solution CRES is highly and easily configurable with Office 365. CRES enhances many of O365's capabilities to consolidate your real estate data, documents and business processes while providing advanced business intelligence.
Contact us for a complimentary consultation.
About Robyn Russo
QualIT One, Business Development
Robyn is a pragmatic, solutions-driven business development specialist with a professional history in commercial real estate development, leasing and acquisitions. Her clientele includes CRETech startups on their way to becoming powerful industry forces.