Addressing Office 365 Adoption Challenges Infographic

Office 365 is clearly popular.  In fact the new Okta 2019 Business at Work report lists it as the clear leader in the cloud SAAS space for the past 5 years.  It’s an incredible commanding lead at this point, but while that may help comfort you in your decision to deploy it isn’t enough to call it mission successful as 76% of customers in their report also some have overlapping solutions including duplicates such Box, Google Apps, and Salesforce.  In addition, in an AIIM report focused on adoption and enhancing Office 365, has concluded in their summary the need to enhance your implementation

Chart Courtesy of Okta Business at Work 2019 – it’s truly a must read… I’ve been following their annual reports, and they are great.

AIIM Research www.aiim.org/research survey for responses from 124 individual members of the AIIM community during the month of November 2017.  In the report, they share Forty-four percent report their users like it.  It makes sense why in a subscription model, Microsoft is so focused on adoption and consumption of the workloads.  The overlapping solutions also were exposed in the AIIM research, “Fifty-five percent of our respondents agree that getting users to manage and share their content in Office 365 and no place else is their biggest on-going issue [while] Forty-six percent feel that lack of expertise is the biggest issue.”

“Use add-on, and auxiliary products and services to supplement out-of-the-box functionality and lack of in-house to maximize your investment and transition to Office 365 and fill the gaps where they are needed.”  – AIIM Research

In my conversations with Apps 365 on their solutions and their success in the ecosystem they shared how they have been addressing Gaps exposed by the product.  It’s not unusual in fact Microsoft has a very rich ecosystem and welcomes partners to address gaps in the product.  These could be considered enhancements or things that may eventually come on the roadmap, but customers who hold their breath waiting for unannounced features may be disappointed and may want to consider proven solutions.  The AIIM research suggested 30% or more customers are looking to implement two or more third party add-ins in the next 12-18 months and more than 20% have already deployed one or more add-ins.

The Conclusion from AIIM research lines up with the emphasis Microsoft has put on it’s rich ecosystem… “Use add-on, and auxiliary products and services to supplement out-of-the-box functionality and lack of in-house to maximize your investment and transition to Office 365 and fill the gaps where they are needed.”

There are really three areas of focus in addressing Gaps in Office 365: Expertise, Staffing Resource, and Tools.

The new certifications can help you with your expertise gaps, as well hope to see you at the SharePoint Conference 2019 use discount code OLESON if you register to save yourself some money, the resources are something the many many partners can help you with, feel free to reach out for local or regional recommendations, and the tools gap is filled by the immense vendor partner network such as in the app store.  Consider these gaps in the graph below…

Apps 365 is sponsoring a webinar where we’ll be diving into the Microsoft Roadmap and in helping you understand the Gaps and Solutions.

New Webinar – 2019 YEAR OF THE LIST: Five Top Futuristic SharePoint List Trends to Follow in 2019

“We’re excited to host our first webinar from the ‘Mind The Gap’ webinar series with Joel Oleson, MVP who will be highlighting the Five Top Futuristic SharePoint List Trends to Follow in 2019.”

When: Mar 13, 2019 1:00 PM Pacific, 4:00pm Eastern

>>Register Now

Here are the 5 Trends we’ll be covering…
1: Automated Transcription and Enrichment
2: File Sharing Compliance Enhancements
3: Search & Findability Enhancements
4: Client-Side Enhanced & Extensible List UI
5: GPS 1and Location Metadata

Community FlashMob at #SPC19 Ministry of Silly Walks

Join @JoelOleson, @EricaToelle, @HeatherNewman, @PaulSwider, SPCPartyPatrol and a bunch more at the community at the SharePoint Conference Ministry of Silly Walk (click here to register to join us).

Apps 365 is providing a bunch of Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks T-shirts.  You can find out more about that on my post about the Ministry of Silly Walks at #SPC19.