Cost Reduction Tips to Save Money on Microsoft Office when your Staff is Working from Home

With the pandemic wreaking havoc everywhere, in the current business landscape, most companies are encouraging the work from home (WFH) trend. While this is proving to be the safest and most effective way to continue office operations without much disruption, it has given rise to a demand for various software and online tools.

Remote employees need to use a variety of digital platforms and systems to work from home, communicate with their teams and carry on with business. The WFH concept may be the best way to conduct business, but it’s suddenness has also left many employees, IT staff and management teams unprepared for this transition.

Systems Needed to Work from Home

Work-critical and core systems like Microsoft Office are required for many functions, and not all offices are fully-equipped with these tools. But in time of coronavirus, companies are also looking for ways and means to cut costs, even while they struggle to maintain their business commitments and deadlines.

Getting Microsoft Office to WFM employees isn’t all that easy. If your office is stuck with perpetually-licensed, on-premises solutions hybridizing infrastructure, shifting some of it to the cloud can be challenging. And if your IT hasn’t had sufficient experience dealing with workers operating from remote locations, the learning curve can be steep.

It can mean training them to manage these aspects and upgrading systems to ensure that remote workers can use these systems correctly. But the main issue continues to be the costs associated with these systems.

Tips to Save Money on Microsoft Office

If your office has been using Microsoft Perpetual, you know that once you opt for a volume licensing deal, it can be used only on specific PCs and is tied to the device and not the current user.

So if the devices are in the workplace and the employees have to work from home, no Office licenses would be available for workers to install on their laptops. But there are some simple ways to use Microsoft Office without spending vast amounts on it, such as:

Subscribe to Office 365 or Office 365 E1 Business Essentials

The latter plan is for companies that sign up 300 or fewer seats, and the former plan is for firms of any size. Both these plans are inexpensive- for Office 365 E1 you will have to pay only around $8/per month for each user (check terms and conditions as these low rates are applicable only when you pay for the entire year in a single lump sum).

Office 365 Business Essentials is cheaper and costs $5 per user for the month (again, when purchased as an annual lump sum). These plans offer web versions of Word, Outlook, Excel, and PowerPoint. They both have Microsoft’s collaboration/video conferencing software-Teams, which many businesses have now begun using to meet with and communicate with WFM employees.

Some other cost reduction steps you can take to save on Microsoft Office include:

• If your company relies on Office 365, select the by-subscription service in which you pay an ongoing fee monthly or annually to Microsoft for the right to run that suite and various services.
• If all that some workers need is a smartphone for their jobs, then do not buy licenses for desktops and laptops.
• Microsoft also has a program – “Microsoft Teams Exploratory” which enables employees with an email address managed by the Azure Active Directory to request a Teams license. This is a no-charge license that will be valid until the company’s next subscription renewal or enterprise agreement anniversary during or post-January 2021.
• Pay on a per month basis.
• Opt for free-trial offers.