Debbie Mayo-Smith: How much of your MS Office investment are you wasting?

Here are the three useful programs most businesses are not using.Photo / 123RF

What software are you using for work? I ask this question for all my speaking and training engagements. 90 per cent of the replies are Office 2013 or 2016. Yet delving deeper in how they are using their software (what IT has set up) is surprising.

There are so many features not being used. What a waste!!

Office 2013 is also synonymous with Office 365. Which is the online (cloud) capability of the software. Depending on the plan you buy; most companies are underutalising the vast power of what they have at their fingertips.

Microsoft offers Business basic - which includes 1 Terabyte of storage online with OneDrive. If your company has Business Premium, it also includes though not of concern to you Exchange (email delivery) and SharePoint (document intranet).

What most businesses are not using are three useful programs:

1. Skype (it used to be called Lync). This is phone calls, meetings, chats and webinars you conduct using VoIP (placed through the internet instead of the phone).

2. Yammer - your own companies equivalent to a private Facebook.

3. Teams (brand new) - team chat/messaging to each other - instead of emailing in a common space. The benefit is it keeps the message trails, allowing teams to work together on projects.

The difference between Yammer and Teams? Yammer is companywide. Teams is for specific groups. Let's use organising a company conference as an example.

The marketing team chats together on Teams planning the conference. They would place announcements and photos, videos etc on Yammer to keep the whole organisation informed of the plans. Solicit advice for what they'd like for content. See the difference?

Debbie Mayo-Smith aka Ms Effective, gives speeches, seminars and trains on sales and personal productivity. Debbie helps you get more done in less time and increase profitability. Sign up for her monthly quick tip newsletter here.