Summary 

By using Microsoft 365 as a sole source of truth with its vast array of applications accessed through a single webpage, a business owner simplifies all his user’s work, making them happier and more productive employees. The possibilities are infinite in what you can do to optimize your team’s efficiency. 

By Ron Vaughn 

    If you are like most people, you have had your share of frustrating experiences with logging into multiple cloud applications that do not talk to each other. Often, entering the same data repeatedly because all your business information is held in different application silos. This brief article is to outline one way to simplify your business processes, making you and your teams more productive within one suite of tools that you are probably already using to some extent. 

    In today’s business world, there are a plethora of applications provided by multiple vendors that do not interact with each other. Costing the business owner and employees considerable time and money buying many licenses, logging into various applications, and trying to move data from one data silo to another. By using Microsoft 365 as a sole source of truth with its vast array of applications accessed through a single webpage, a business owner simplifies all his user’s work, making them happier and more productive employees. Microsoft 365 has a single sign-on solution that allows users to access all their Microsoft 365 apps and data through a single webpage. This is a huge benefit for businesses, as they have one less headache to work through with the diverse applications, they have available to them. Accessing everything from a single sign-on page makes it much more efficient for employees to find critical information and tools without having to remember multiple usernames and passwords. Below is an example of what this could look like. 

 

The possibilities are infinite in what you can do to optimize your team’s efficiency. If you want to get an idea of how vast this corporate universe can be, look at https://lookbook.microsoft.com. This will show you a wide variety of templates that you can choose from or just get inspiration from and build your own from scratch. If you do not have the time or inclination, then we would be happy to help.  

  When thinking of all the distinct types of applications that you may already be using and paying for look at some of Microsoft’s offerings that can replace your many disparate applications. 

 

 

Cloud App               Microsoft Equivalent 

Slack                                                                                                                                                           Teams 

Zoom                                                                                                                                                          Teams 

Calendly                                                                                                                                                 Bookings 

Drop Box for Business                                                                                                                         SharePoint 

Google Drive                                                                                                                                          OneDrive 

Zapier                                                                                                                                                   Automate 

JotForm                                                                                                                                      Microsoft Forms 

YouTube                                                                                                                                                    Stream 

Salesforce                                                                                                                          Microsoft Dynamics * 

Asana                                                                                                                   Microsoft Planner or (Project*) 

Todoist                                                                                                                                         Microsoft Tasks 

Tableau                                                                                                                                                   Power BI 

    Evernote                                                                                                                                                    OneNote 

Adobe Scan                                                                                                                                Microsoft Lens * 

Gmail                                                                                                                                       Exchange/Outlook 

Chrome                                                                                                                                                          Edge 

 

*- Denotes M365BP 

    All the above apps are included in your M365 Subscriptions, so if you are using any number of these applications, you should be able to derive savings and efficiency by implementing an M365 environment. If you are concerned about having to train your employees to use this new portal, you can encourage adoption by making it each user’s default homepage in their browser.  

 I believe it would be safe to say that most companies are already using many if not most of the Microsoft products mentioned here. This may be a new way for your team to enhance and collaborate in a new and efficient way. If you have any questions, thoughts, or ideas about these things, feel free to contact me at 405-267-4999.  

Ron Vaughn is a Microsoft SharePoint and Teams Consultant for Paradigm Solutions which is a division of EMSCO Solutions. He enjoys helping businesses develop a customized roadmap on how to best utilize technology for their benefit. Vaughn states, “By thinking outside of the box I can create simple solutions that turn traditional technology from a necessary evil into a strategic asset.”