Aug 08, 2018

If your organisation is looking to move to Office 365, it's important to plan exactly what steps you want to take, when to perform them, and who will perform them. This article provides a series of resources which will help you as you plan and prepare for a migration to Office 365.

What is Office 365?

Firstly, what is Office 365? Office 365 refers to subscription plans that include access to Office applications plus other productivity services that are enabled over the Internet (cloud services). Customers familiar with Office 2016 might be wondering what the difference between 2016 and 365 is. The biggest difference is that Office 365 is subscription based and provides year-round updates, features, and new products. This means that a subscription to Office 365 provides you with the most up to date versions of Office, currently 2016 but soon to upgrade in October/November of this year to Office 2019. Along with being up to date Office 365 is designed around the idea of multiple devices. With every Office 365 subscription comes free cloud storage in OneDrive and the ability to run Office apps like Word and Excel both online or through mobile/tablet apps.

You can watch a short video here that explains “What is Office 365?”

Planning your transition to Office 365

If you’re already interested in rolling out Office 365 then you might want to think about the best way to approach it. Have a look at Microsoft’s Deployment planning checklist for Office 365. An example of enterprise level deployment is provided focussing around the stages of determining your deployment goals and finding the best approach for your specific business. The sample checklist covers tasks like:

• Determining your deployment goals
• Inventory your current environment and make key deployment decisions
• Fix potential deployment blockers
• Set up Office 365 services to work for your organization
• Roll out to users

The last step is more important than you might think. Transitioning to Office 365 might result in cultural anxiety. Change affects people, manage that change well and you’re set.

Help staff get the most from Office 365

When you’re managing big changes in an organisation it’s important to know how to examine the transition process and understanding their own, and others’, needs and responses to each phase. A change management course is a sound investment to grow your ability to successfully manage any change in your organisation.

It’s important to keep in mind that rolling out the software is only the first step. The biggest part of any system change is getting staff up to speed on the new systems. Think of how you can effectively train your staff to use the new systems. How can you improve your staff’s ability to work effectively and efficiently with the new systems? Staff training is invaluable at this stage. The return on investment is obvious. New Horizons offers an incredibly flexible, modularised Office 365 training solution. Office 365 select allows you to select only the training that your organisation needs. Save time and money and get your team up to speed quickly.

New Horizons has just launched a new Office 365 Select training program. It’s perfect for those rolling out Office 365. Your ability to increase adoption and maximise productivity during change is critical. Let us help you achieve that.

Transition to Office 365 at UTS- Faculty of Law

UTS has recently rolled out Office 365 across their departments. Most staff in the Faculty of Law had no prior knowledge or training on the suite of applications available to them within Office 365.

New Horizons delivered an awareness training session on Office 365 and introduced the different apps available to them within the suite and how they could help increase collaboration and productivity in their faculty. 

Staff have now a better understanding of Office 365 and its suite of applications, and look at new ways of working through Office 365. Furthermore, as they have their own processes and way of working, they will continue to see how O365 can shape and change the way they work on a daily basis.

New Horizons provided a fabulous introduction for our team to the range of applications offered within the Office 365 suite.  They worked closely with us in order to develop a training program that was targeted specifically at our needs, and equipped us with the skills to adopt all that Office 365 has to offer.  Thanks to New Horizons we are now Office 365 fluent.

Monica Read – Manager Academic Services at UTS Faculty of Law

Visit www.nhaustralia.com.au/365 to find out more about Office 365 Select and how it can get your staff ready for the big change.