365 Solutions Group: Digital Transformation through Office 365

The thing about an on-premises solution is that it doesn’t keep up with the times. It is static and eventually needs to be upgraded to remain current.

Maybe that is the reason Satya Nadella spent the past five years building up Microsoft’s cloud business, which lets customers avoid having to buy and run their hardware and applications. “I dreamt of doing things for our customers and partners that are now only possible because of widespread adoption of the cloud, proliferation of data, devices, and sensors, and agile development environments,” he said on LinkedIn.

However, for businesses, especially the small ones, to find the right solutions, they need an expert who can help to sort through the solutions that are out there, so they can adopt a robust suite of tools that will enable them to achieve more.

Enter 365 Solutions Group from Brisbane, Australia.

Focusing on Microsoft Office 365, Dynamics 365, and related technologies, 365 Solutions Group works with customers to identify bottlenecks, inefficient processes and double-handling of information, then designs and implements cost-effective solutions to fix them. The company specializes in helping small businesses use the same tools large enterprises have been capitalizing on for years.

“We cover everything from Microsoft with 365 in the name,” says Tristram Morgan, Managing Director of 365 Solutions Group. As a digital transformation specialist, Morgan and his adept team leverage Office 365 as the focal point for integrating with a whole bunch of other systems. Most professionals spend a lot of time working with Outlook, Word, Excel, and OneDrive, and perhaps Teams and SharePoint, and believe that’s where Office 365 ends. 365 Solutions Group helps those businesses to understand and make use of the full value of the applications stack, which includes more than a dozen additional tools for collaboration, communication and business intelligence.

The company ensures that the appropriate configuration of these tools is the top priority so that clients can achieve the three core goals of Office 365, being to protect their data from cyber-attack, streamline their operations and measure their performance against core metrics.

One of the huge immediate benefits of using Office 365 for document storage instead of an on-premises server is that you can have both a local copy on your machine and a cloud copy that is backed up and always available. If a user happens to lose his/her device, all he/she needs is a new device to log in, and they are back up and running in no time.

Instead of SMBs buying a new server for US$20-30k when the old one needs replacing and patching it with operating system updates, 365 Solutions Group assists clients to migrate to the cloud and make use of all the extra features included with a proper document management system. Additionally, Office 365 grants enhanced visibility and control over all of the corporate IP, tracking who does what with documents and keeping a full version history for fast recovery.

The company has built its own bundled solutions on top of Office 365, particularly for SMBs. “We offer a SharePoint Starter Kit, which is a full document management system and intranet that is built on a template,” adds Morgan. It is very affordable and can get clients up and running in SharePoint within a week. The firm has also built an HR induction system, an asset register, and a Dynamics CRM Starter Kit that offers simplified pipeline management out of the box. 365 Solutions Group is building more applications that add value beyond what Office 365 does natively.

The key differentiating factor when building bespoke solutions for customers is the unique 5-step methodology that the company has developed for project implementation. This begins with auditing the current technology environment through surveying staff post-implementation to ensure everything is working fine and identify opportunities for further improvement. This gives clients real certainty around their starting and finishing points, and the difference that 365 Solutions Group has brought for them.

For instance, one of their clients, Volunteer Marine Rescue, had an ecosystem where they were utilizing several applications for administration. 365 Solutions Group paved the way to its client’s digital transformation journey by replacing their old Access database with SharePoint and integrating their website, finance application, security system, and email marketing platform with SharePoint. By leveraging Office 365, their entire business was digitally transformed.

“We will continue to focus on helping small businesses to stay safe online, to secure their data, to streamline their processes and integrate systems, and to save costs by driving efficiency and reducing reliance on third-party tools,” concludes Morgan.