If you have a small business and want to scale its operation in the nearest possible time, you need to do one or two things to set the right foot for your business. One of the things you need to do is integrate technology into your business activity to scale and improve your productivity. The last thing you want to do as a business owner is to manage a server individually, where the issue of Cloud services comes into play.
Cloud services help to take away the stress and problem of paying for expensive software and hardware. It also takes away the worries of managing licenses and patching software. Cloud services can also help you automatically answer calls from your angry customers when something goes wrong with your services or products. Microsoft Office 365 is one of the products of Cloud services, and it could be the poster child that you need to set the record straight in your business.
As a business owner, instead of directly managing your SharePoint or Exchange server, you can adopt or implement Microsoft Office 365 to do the difficult part of the job for you while you monitor the situation. For those with larger enterprises, it is now time for you to move your operations to the cloud, and this is where Microsoft online services can help you.
In this article, we will look at the step-by-step guide on how to create Office 365 for your small business. As a small business owner, there is a high chance that you do not have a dedicated IT support staff that will help you set up Office 365 to drive your business operation. But after reading through this article, you will learn the nitty-gritty of what it takes to set up Office 365 for your business use cases.
Let’s take a deep dive
Before You Set Up Microsoft Office 365
Before you move your business operation to the cloud, there are a few things you need to keep in perspective; otherwise, things may not go smoothly as planned. To determine the best approach to create Microsoft Office 365 for business, here are a few questions you need to provide answers for:
1: How many user accounts will you need?
By default, the maximum number of user accounts that your Microsoft office 365 will support is usually pegged at 25. Choose the midsize business plan if you expect your account to expand in the next few years. The midsize business plan can accommodate up to 300 users or more depending on the improvement in the plan in the future.
2: How many users need email and cloud storage only?
Another thing to find out is the number of users that need email and cloud storage only. Keep in mind that each of the accounts that are connected to Microsoft Office 365 will need a subscription. The subscription costs of writing this article are $6 per month on a one-to-one basis.
However, you can get a discount on this amount if you pay once a year. The license for the account that you will be operating is fully transferable, which means if any of your employees resign and switch jobs, you can transfer the license to a new employee, provided the subscription term still subsists.
3: How many users need access to the latest version of Microsoft Office?
It would help if you also found out the number of users that need access to the latest version of Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office 365 includes the same cloud storage and email services. Plus, it gives each user an active subscription.
4: Do you need to migrate data from other servers or services?
Also important is to provide an answer to the question – whether or not you are likely to migrate data from other servers. This setup process is straightforward if you are willing to provide your business with an excellent start so that it can compete favorably with your competitors in the marketplace.
5: Do you anticipate that you will need any enterprise-specific features?
Lastly, it would help determine whether or not you will need any Enterprise specific features as your business scales. Since you’re operating a small business, you do not need to worry about this, but you still need to review the specific details of all the Microsoft Office 365 editions that you’ll be using to ascertain the level of progress and not overlook something important.
If you can provide answers to the five questions we have highlighted above, it is a good start for you to set up Office 365 to drive the growth of your business and position your employee productivity to serve your customers better.
Now let’s take a look at how to set up Office 365.
Step 1: Create an Office 365 organizational account
The first step in creating an office 365 is to create an office 365 organizational account. Creating an organizational account involves only two processes. For the first process, you will need to supply basic information about your business. While providing basic information about your business, including your payment details in this section is important.
You can start by filling in the important information about your business at this stage. The required information is your full name, your company name, your business address, and the names of directors, if you have any. You also need to provide the exact location your business is situated. You may also want to provide your type of business and your business plan.
Once that is done, the next thing to do is choose the sub-domain name you prefer to use. At this point, you need to be very careful in choosing the sub-domain name so that it will not clash with a subdomain name that another business has already chosen. By default, the subdomain name should be closely related to the name of your business. Plus, you can change the name at any time as long as a subscription is still valid.
Also, remember to create a strong password so that cybercriminals or internet fraudsters cannot access your organizational account. Ultimately, it takes less than 10 minutes to complete this step.
Check out: Microsoft Office app is available for Android and iOS devices
Step 2: Purchase licenses
The next step is to purchase licenses for every of your user accounts. While you can skip this step until later, we suggest that you do the license purchasing at once. To purchase the license, all you need to do is click the license link on the dashboard. The link will take you directly to where you can add your licenses. Then you can enter a product key and buy a new subscription using a credit card directly from your dashboard.
Step 3: Set up user accounts and assign licenses
Setting up user accounts is simple. Just click the link under each user and proceed to fill the forms.
Step 5: Make the move
Finally, the next step is to attach the custom domain assigned to your business. The custom domain should be attached to your Microsoft Office 365 account. Then assign email addresses, and you are good to go.
Final Thoughts
Microsoft Office 365 is an excellent solution for small businesses. It helps to remove the problem or challenge of server management. You can reach out to Microsoft 365 Consulting for a professional audit.