Microsoft 365 (M365) adoption in Australia has hit new heights in 2024, with 150,000 organisations in Australia using M365 as their primary productivity platform. Many businesses migrate to M365 expecting increased productivity, reduced costs, more effective collaboration, and higher employee engagement. And for good reason; a Forrester study found that SMBs that successfully integrate Microsoft 365 throughout their organisation can achieve a 163% ROI within three years of migration, enabling employee time savings in areas such as collaboration, communication, reviewing documents, designing and building presentations or spreadsheets, and waiting for feedback.
However, many organisations find these benefits aren’t fully realised. In fact, 52% of SMBs state that a lack of in-house staff expertise is challenging their organisation’s operations in the public cloud, and 74% feel that their organisation does not have the capability or capacity to train employees as the cloud grows in complexity.
Let’s examine the challenges surrounding M365 optimisation and how partnering with a managed service provider (MSP) realises critical cost savings while elevating productivity, employee experience, and security.
M365 Guidance and Strategy: Optimising Your Microsoft 365 Investment for Maximum ROI
Any new technology introduced into an organisation’s existing infrastructure needs a planned, measured process with appropriate introduction and training.
While business leaders are often financially and operationally invested in the M365 tech stack, a lack of proper governance and training means they are underutilising valuable tools such as Copilot and SharePoint, which can radically improve productivity and efficiency.
SMBs must allocate sufficient time and resources to developing a comprehensive M365 governance strategy. For businesses that have already migrated but feel the process was rushed and policies are lacking, it may be time to step back and reassess from a broader perspective. This is where Lindentech really excels. We can assist in developing a robust governance plan, ensuring proper setup, user training, and ongoing maintenance to optimise your Microsoft 365 environment.
Lindentech’s Approach to Microsoft 365 Governance includes:
Comprehensive Assessment: We begin with a thorough assessment of your current Microsoft 365 setup to identify gaps in policies, compliance, and best practices.
Customised Strategy: Based on the assessment, we create a tailored governance strategy that aligns with your business goals and compliance requirements.
Implementation Support: Our team assists with the deployment of necessary governance policies, ensuring a smooth transition and minimal disruption to your operations.
Training and Education: We provide extensive training to ensure your team understands and adheres to the new governance policies, enhancing overall efficiency and security.
Ongoing Management: Continuous monitoring and maintenance of your Microsoft 365 environment to adapt to changing needs and ensure compliance.
Partnering with Lindentech helps businesses:
- Through consolidation using Microsoft 365, licensing costs can be cut by more than 60% per user compared to a patchwork of point solutions.
- Consolidate complex licensing structures while reducing IT costs.
- Eliminate redundant capabilities.
- Benefit from seamless, native deployment.
- Cut consulting, deployment, and integration costs with a single unified solution.
Security as a Service: Comprehensive Protection for Your Microsoft 365 Environment
Security is a top concern for Australian businesses given the rise in cyber threats and data breaches, which now cost Australian businesses an average of $4.03 million average according to IBM’s Cost Of Data Breach Report 2023.
However, worrying about security is one thing; managing it is another issue entirely. While Microsoft 365 offers solid basic security setups by default, once your team starts using the tools, vulnerabilities can begin to creep in. For businesses with minimal IT expertise, this becomes a challenge, particularly for those with a hybrid workforce. Adding a good layer of protection to your tenant from the get-go is therefore crucial.
Lindentech partners with enterprise-level security providers to deliver a bundled security-as-a-service product that offers end-to-end security for remote users. Our services include:
- Malicious Website Protection: Scanning and verification of every link that a user clicks on their PC.
- User Education: Proactive testing and educating users on the latest threats, ensuring your team is always prepared and aware of potential security risks.
- Policies and Compliance: Creating and distributing user policies and ensuring compliance.
- Enterprise-Level Email Scanning: Robust email scanning to ensure malicious emails are eliminated.
- Password Management: Management of shared passwords across your dispersed team.
- Multi-Factor Authentication Management: Securing users with multi-factor authentication for remote access to your systems.
- Enabling Zero Trust: Enable a Zero Trust security model to help reduce data breach risk by as much as 50%.
Lindentech’s Advantage: Flexibility, Protection, and Cost Efficiency for Your Business
Partnering with Lindentech delivers value and cost savings to businesses in the following areas:
- Flexibility: Give digital workers the ability to securely work from anywhere.
- Protection: Lessen data breaches and protect identities, devices, apps, and data.
- Cost Efficiency: Reduce security costs with consolidated identity, endpoint management, and security solutions to advance Zero Trust architecture.
Create a Plan to Manage Data Sprawl: Optimise Your Microsoft 365 Environment
One of the great benefits of moving your team to M365 is that Microsoft designs and advocates for its apps to be leveraged by all users to create sites, pages, or teams easily. This is particularly true for SharePoint.
While SharePoint has great powers to enhance collaboration and efficiency, poor management often sees businesses struggle with data sprawl due to unstructured, outdated, and redundant data accumulation.
Data sprawl increases security risks by scattering sensitive information and creates compliance issues as organisations struggle to enforce policies without knowing where all content is stored. Similarly, efficiency suffers, as recent reports found employees spend an unnecessary 20% of their workweek searching for information.
Here’s how we work with you to address these issues
- Define content ownership for accountability.
- Implement naming conventions for easier organisation.
- Set precise permissions and access controls.
- Establish retention policies to manage document lifecycle.
- Train and educate users on best practices.
- Automate workflows and system updates for efficiency.
Maximising the value of Microsoft 365 requires a strategic approach to governance, security, and management. By partnering with Lindentech, SMBs can overcome the challenges of M365 optimisation, reducing IT management costs by up to 40%.
Book a free SharePoint consultation and demo today and discover tailored solutions that drive your business forward. Don’t miss out on the chance to enhance productivity and security with our expert support.
