Supercharge Your Business. Getting Small Businesses Ready for 2025 with Microsoft 365
How Microsoft 365 is Empowering Small Businesses In the ever-changing world of productivity and collaboration tools, Microsoft 365 continues to shine as a vital tool for small businesses. With a treasure trove of applications designed to boost efficiency, security, and innovation, Microsoft 365 rolled out some game-changing features in 2024, earning high praise from industry experts. Last year was a rollercoaster for business owners and their customers. They faced rising inflation, tighter budgets, and the AI revolution. Through it all, Microsoft 365 was the trusty partner that helped businesses run smoothly and operate productively. The suite introduced exciting new features, integrated smart AI capabilities, and laid out a promising roadmap to tackle current trends and challenges. Recapping An Exciting 2024 Here are some notable new features we released in Microsoft 365 -- starting with Teams and Teams Phone: We introduced the Queues App in the fall, a Teams-native solution designed to empower organizations to manage Teams Phone engagements directly from within Teams. With it, they can manage call queues, auto attendants, get real-time metrics, and see reporting – to ensure they’re conducting customer engagement efficiently. We introduced Shared Calling, which makes a single phone number and calling plan sharable by a group, so teams can better manage calls in coordination. We enhanced survivable calling with the Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA), a backup solution designed to keep your phone services running smoothly, even during network outages. It now supports call transfer, forwarding, and incoming calls during network outages. In Microsoft Excel, we added some powerful updates: The ability to automatically sync data from Forms to Excel for the web. In real-time, responses can be synced between the two apps, ensuring data is always up-to-date. There’s seamless integration so if you go to an active Form and the Responses page, you can click “Open results in Excel” to create an Excel worksheet in OneDrive to do deeper manipulation of your data. The addition of checkboxes that can drive and be driven by existing Excel functions. With Interactive Checkboxes, they automatically check or uncheck based on the value of another cell. And finally, we integrated Python into Excel for users to have the ability to manipulate data in the familiar Excel environment but now with access to powerful Python's libraries and plots to make even deeper analysis possible. We made generally available a brand new Outlook: It has an exciting, newly redesigned interface, new productivity features, and integration with Copilot. Small and medium-sized businesses currently on Microsoft 365 are already moving to it but the choice to keep using classic Outlook will still be available. To help small businesses conserve their marketing budget, we introduced Microsoft Clipchamp in the fall of 2023 and Microsoft Designer in the summer of 2024. Clipchamp is a user-friendly video editor for creating professional-quality videos without needing technical skills. In Clipchamp, we rolled out over 100 pre-built templates, transitions, noise-suppression, background removal, auto-compose, and text-to-speech – saving users tons of time in making videos that may have taken many hours to do before. Designer is a powerful, AI image-generating and graphic design tool that can help any small business create professional-quality visuals with ease – without needing technical skills. Key updates were: We integrated Designer into Word and PowerPoint so users can generate images and use those images within these apps. In addition, Designer will suggest design templates for your slides. A Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription is needed and unlocks the use of Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps. And lastly, in 2024, we empowered SMBs to see how AI could make them more productive by expanding Microsoft Copilot into our popular apps like Outlook, Word, Excel, and Teams. Users can now summarize emails, generate insights in Word and Excel, and unlock powerful meeting insights in Teams. Among many new AI-powered features, we introduced Intelligent Call Recap in Teams which serves up AI-powered insights and recaps for your VoIP and PSTN calls in Teams, helping you stay on top of important details. Microsoft’s Continued Recognitions With Analysts and Customers As a testament to our excellence, Microsoft was once again crowned a Leader in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications for the sixth year in a row! Here’s what Gartner called out: Microsoft Teams is the top pick for businesses, especially when using it for internal collaboration. With a super reliable 99.999% uptime, it has solid telephony services to keep you connected. Teams is perfect for global cloud telephony, offering flexible PSTN options. Plus, Gartner called out our Operator Connect feature, which allows businesses to connect their existing telephony services directly to Teams, is now available in over 96 countries, including India. Copilot in Teams and Teams Premium brings cutting-edge AI features to meetings, chats, and calls. Gartner said that for those seeking the latest in AI, Microsoft is rapidly innovating. Teams now has over 350 million monthly active users. This growth highlights the platform’s continued popularity and widespread adoption among businesses worldwide. If you haven’t tried running your meetings on Teams, there’s no better time to. And over on G2 Reviews, Microsoft 365 currently has 4.6 out of 5 stars. Users like its ease of use, seamless integrations, and the extensive suite of tools it offers. Small businesses have praised the platform’s ability to streamline workflows and supercharge productivity. TechRadar also recognized Microsoft 365 as “the original and best office productivity suite” in December 2024, giving it 4.5 out of 5 stars. We’re thrilled that they said: “What ensured that MS Office became a market leader is the comprehensive way data can be covered by different applications and moved between them, making working more efficient and hassle-free.” Transforming Operations: How ICG Build Scaled with Microsoft 365 ICG, a startup construction firm, has successfully leveraged Microsoft 365 to establish and streamline its entire operations from day one. By utilizing Excel for budgeting, Word and PowerPoint for creating branded templates, Outlook for managing emails, Power BI for data visualization, and Teams for communication and collaboration, ICG has been able to scale its business efficiently. Here are some insights from their experience: Nick Masci, Principal & Co-Founder at ICG, shares: “Having everything in Microsoft 365 makes finding information fast and easy. Microsoft 365 has been instrumental in setting up our entire operations, from budgeting in Excel to managing emails in Outlook.” Melissa McEwen, Principal & Co-founder at ICG, adds, “Using Microsoft 365, we’ve been able to create branded templates in Word and PowerPoint, which has streamlined our client presentations and enhanced our professional image.” These testimonials highlight the transformative impact of Microsoft 365 on ICG’s operational efficiency and client engagement. Navigating 2025 Together Small businesses are in for another exciting ride in 2025 as they face trends like the continued integration of AI into our lives, a shift to returning to the office, and the continued need to be as efficient as possible. Microsoft 365 is here to support you with tools that boost productivity like Copilot; Teams and Teams Phone to support all work models, and powerful features that come included in our core apps like Design Ideas in PowerPoint that gives you multiple layout and design options to help you get your new slide started. Curious to learn more? You can read more about how to choose the right plan here. Are you a small or medium business owner/decision maker currently using Microsoft 365? We'd like to hear from you! We invite you to apply to join the Microsoft 365 SMB Customer Advisory Board. Applications accepted until February 28th, 2025. See aka.ms/SMBCAB for more details.Microsoft Excel—the workhorse for so many jobs
Microsoft Excel is one of the core apps in the Microsoft 365 suite and is quite familiar to many small and medium business (SMB) users. But are you getting the most out of Excel? Excel can do much more than create and edit spreadsheets Customers who explore Excel’s features a bit more find that they can apply it to many tasks. You can quickly learn to use it as a data analytics tool, and it’s also great for building quick custom dashboards. You can also design a custom template so that your work is always on-brand. Excel can do a lot, by being a little inventive in how you use it. Bandido Solutions uses Excel to talk to customers Jimmy Davidson, owner of Bandido Solutions and Bandido Woodworks uses Microsoft 365 to support his business. He’s found that Microsoft Teams is key for working across three locations and Microsoft OneNote helps his team make sure that punch lists are continuously managed and up-to date, but most of all, he looks to Excel to run across his business and directly communicate about complex projects with his customers. “If I had to pick one app in the Microsoft 365 Business suite, it would be Excel,” Davidson says. “It’s the root of our organization.” Davidson stands out because he not only uses Excel for its core spreadsheet features, he also uses it as a communication channel with his customers. And he especially values how Excel allows his work to be transparent to his customers. By sending breakdowns that list the tasks and timelines for a kitchen or bath remodel to customers in Excel, Davidson can show them how their estimates were built, line by line. Since many of his customers are already familiar with Excel, using it allows Davidson and his customers to discuss the work together and quickly clarify any concerns or adjust schedules. The openness of communication builds rapport and trust and helps move projects along more quickly. By using Excel’s template capabilities, Davidson can design a reuseable document format that lets customers see their breakdowns visually, using dashboard graphics to make the project schedule easy to understand and act on. He can still include the source spreadsheets in supplementary tabs, but what the customer sees first will be an easy-to-consume summary of the project that they are looking to his company to do for them. That new kitchen or bath now seems like a reality. Resources Find the right Microsoft 365 business plan for your business. Learn more about how to set up and use your Microsoft 365 subscription and find tips and templates to help you accomplish your business tasks. Get free resources, tech training, and guidance to keep your business thriving and growing. Partners can access training resources, customer decks and deployment checklists to do more with Microsoft 365.Reduce Support Costs with Business Assist Forecast Service Excel Add-in
Business Assist Forecast is a tool that enables quick and confident forecasting of future support volume based on historical data, which can save time compared to manually analyzing past trends and volume levels. We are pleased to announce that the Business Assist Forecast service, now in PREVIEW, is available as an Office Excel Add-in, providing an easy-to-access entry point for users.Introducing Office – Your new go-to mobile app for getting work done
February 19, 2020 Update: The Office app has now reached general availability and is free for anyone to download through the App Store for iOS and the Google Play Store for Android. Please read our latest post on the Microsoft 365 Blog for more information. Today we are excited to share a new vision for how people get work done on a phone – a new app that’s ambitious enough to simply be called Office. Download for Android (public preview) Update on iOS public preview: Per the terms of Apple’s TestFlight program, the public preview for iOS apps is restricted to a maximum capacity of 10,000 users. We saw extraordinarily strong interest in the Office app and reached the capacity limit for iOS within a few hours of today’s announcement. We are thrilled and flattered by the interest and look forward to reaching general availability of the app for everyone to use. The public preview for the Android version of the Office app is not subject to the same download limits and continues to be available for download. Vision for working on mobile devices We all rely on mobile devices more than ever for getting work done whether that’s at a job, at home, or at school. There are many great mobile productivity apps available such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to help us do that, however we still believe an opportunity exists to create a more mobile-centric experience for these types of apps. The new Office mobile app represents our vision for what a productivity solution would look like if first built for mobile devices. In designing this new experience, we first considered how people’s expectations differ when using a phone versus a computer, so we set out to optimize for simplicity, efficiency, and common mobile needs. Next, we explored how to better incorporate the unique ways that people input data and create content on a mobile device – essentially turning the phone form factor from a liability for doing work into an asset. Finally, we needed to ensure that this app met the high expectations people already have for Office solutions. This solution should feel familiar to the people that know and rely on them today and instill a sense of confidence that they can accomplish their work with the high degree of quality and security that they have come to know. A new mobile productivity experience We are excited to introduce to our solution to this endeavor. The Office app provides a simple, integrated experience that puts the tools you need for working on a mobile device at the forefront of the experience. We started by combining the existing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint mobile apps into a single app. Doing so brings all of your Office documents together in one place, reduces the need to switch between multiple apps, and significantly reduces the amount of space used on your phone compared to multiple installed apps. We then added new capabilities that harness the strengths of mobile devices, such as the camera, to enable you to create content in uniquely mobile ways. Finally, we added a new Actions Pane that helps you accomplish many of the common mobile tasks you need to do all from one place. Whether using it for personal or professional reasons, Office is designed to be your go-to app for getting work done on a mobile device. Let’s take a closer look at what makes it different: Simple, integrated experience Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all in one app with all of the mobile features you already know and use. Easily get to recent and recommended documents stored in the cloud or on your device, or search for documents across your organization if using a work account. Easy access to Sticky Notes to jot down quick reminders and ideas. Create content in uniquely mobile ways Snap a picture of a document and turn it into an editable Word file with the press of a button. Transform a picture of a table into an Excel spreadsheet so you can work with the data. Let PowerPoint help you design a presentation by simply selecting the pictures you want to use from your phone. Create automatically enhanced digital images of whiteboards and documents with Office Lens features integrated into the app. A new Actions pane for common tasks you may encounter on a mobile device Create PDFs with your camera, using photos on your device, or from Office documents. Sign PDFs by simply using your finger. Scan QR codes to open files and links. Easily transfer files between your phone and computer or share instantly with nearby mobile devices. Now available in public preview The Office mobile app is available in public preview starting today for Android and iOS*. It is super easy to get started with the app – anyone can download and use it for free and we don’t require a sign-in to start using it. However, logging in with a work, school, or personal Microsoft Account gives you access to your files stored in the cloud, and you can sign in with more than one account to make it easy to get to all of your documents in one place. The app is currently available only on phones, although we will bring this experience to tablets as well. Since this is a public preview, we are very interested in hearing from you about what you like, don’t like, or would like to see in the app so we encourage you to provide feedback through the “Help & Feedback” tool under Settings. We continue to work hard on making the app an even more powerful tool for getting work done, so keep an eye out for more to come with Office. We know many people are probably wondering, what does this mean for the current mobile apps? In short, we will continue to support and invest in the existing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint mobile apps. We are proud that millions of people use and depend on these apps every day and we believe everyone should decide which experience works best for them on their phones. However, we do encourage everyone to give the new Office app a try – we think it will change your expectations for what you think a mobile productivity experience should be. No other app combines the simplicity, efficiency, and capability for getting work done on a phone quite like Office. Get started now on Android and stayed tuned for further updates on availability for iOS*! * Please note: Per the terms of Apple’s TestFlight program, the public preview is capped at 10,000 users. We reached this limit on the first day of availability and the public preview for iOS is no longer available to new users.
Add and Explore Office Add-ins easily with our new entry point
We’re excited to announce that a more easy-to-access entry point for Office Add-ins is now available online. By accessing the new entry point in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, you’ll have an upgraded experience without worrying about managing all your add-ins or choosing the fit right add-in among the thousands available in AppSource and the Office marketplace.
