Sunday, July 3, 2016

Taking Office 365 to New Heights



Office 365 is the most popular cloud service in the world. It has 70 million business subscribers and 22 million Home customers. And these numbers are growing fast. But these numbers are just a portion of its actual potential. If it  add at least  half of its traditional office subscribers to Office 365 , Office 365 will alone top the combined revenue of Salesforce, Amazon WebService and Google App for work. Let us formulate some strategies for this. And as market share increases profitability will also increase. Because R&D,Data center and similar costs won't increase as customers grow.

Make Office 365 an offer that can't refuse for SMBs
SMBs don't like multiple contracts with multiple vendors. So if they get all required software from a single vendor, as a single suit,  they will surely love it. Microsoft recently made a tricky move . They have a developed a cloud ERP product code named Project "Madeira" aimed at small and medium business customers.  But as far as I understand it will be available only through partners. That is bad move , SMBs won't like that usually. But if Microsoft make madeira vailable through directly and through partners it will be a great value addition.

What else?  Adding CRM and HCM for SMBs will be a nice idea. Why not Dynamics CRM? Dynamics CRM is an aged product and also need some expert consultant to setup. But if Microsoft can offer a CRM like Pipedrive it will be great deal. Pipedrive web app and Mobile apps are well rated. So acquiring pipedrive will surely benefit Microsoft.

Coming to HR/HCM software Zenefit is the King for SMBs but their pricing model won't  suit with Microsoft. Either Microsoft has to change that or should look other players like Gusto. Or Microsoft can even build their own.

Again adding Customer Service Cloud app like Freshdesk,  Expense management app like Expensify etc ,to the arsenal will also become a  catalyst for Office 365 growth among SMBs. An d these are not wild picks. I  did a research and these are the best rated apps among SMBs.




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