The Most Important Microsoft 365 Applications For Small Businesses
We're sharing three of the most important Microsoft 365 applications for small businesses, but what is Microsoft 365? Microsoft 365 is an innovative communication and collaboration tool. It is made of over 20 applications and tools, designed to help you and your business work smarter. Included are recognisable applications such as Outlook, Excel and Word. It also contains some lesser known, but no less important (for the right task) applications. You may never had heard of these three, but they will be invaluable once you know about them.
Power Apps
Power Apps is a collection of tools and software that allows you to build custom apps for your business. The remarkable capabilities of Power Apps allow users to avoid learning and writing code for apps. Instead, Microsoft are enabling more people to access the app building experience. Microsoft describe the resulting apps as having responsive designs that can run in browsers, phones, or tablets. There are three different types of apps you can create with Power Apps: canvas, model-driven and portal. As part of access to the creative tools, Microsoft also provide tutorials and explanations. This means app makers can create the best apps. Microsoft say the process feels more like creating a PowerPoint. From in-house expenses reporting to crisis communication, Microsoft have also designed sample apps. You can edit the samples to make them your own and have a fully working app in as little as 20 minutes. This is indeed a powerful tool for a business to have at their fingertips.
Power BI
Power BI is a comprehensive data analytics too. It has a key focus on visuals, allowing users to find and share insights quickly and easily. From the whole organisation, to individual users, Power BI gives real-time business intelligence through connections to all your data sources. The reporting features is one of the highlights of this programme, however. Options include using AI to answer business questions and build gorgeous reports with data visualisation tools. There is the capability to add custom data connections, integrate with other apps and implement AI to access and share meaningful insights. Microsoft recommend using these tools because faster access to easily understood, accurate data, means faster and better strategic decision making. Who doesn’t want critical business decisions to be made more secure and precise? Precisely. This is why we would recommend Power BI as one of our top applications from Microsoft 365.
OneNote
OneNote is a digital notebook that never runs out of paper and can never be misplaced. The app can easily be accessed from different devices and can be used for multiple reasons and shared with different people in the business. OneNote is for organisation and planning but as a tool it is flexible so you can store the information and plans you have in different ways. Upload photos of content examples, alongside bullet points you made in a meeting. Save them with a to-do list, assign tasks to certain people and share all of that with a calendar invitation to a colleague for a chat about your next marketing activity. When you add notes into the OneNote canvas, you can move them around into a different order, share, colour code, outline and annotate them. When working on a project, you do not need an Excel spreadsheet and a Word Document as you can have both in your OneNote by creating a table and making notes. You can also use a OneNote page as a group hub for projects. There, everyone shares links to data, even if you are working with people outside your organisation. When it comes to organisation in your small business, whether that is large projects, marketing content, day-to-day tasks or simple to-do lists, you can’t go wrong with OneNote. Microsoft 365 delivers more than these three applications, but Power Apps, Power BI and OneNote are apps we just can’t do without. Their capabilities make them some of the most important applications within Microsoft 365 for small businesses. Talk to our team for more advice and recommendations on how these apps can work for you.
