Top 10 Benefits and Use Cases of Microsoft 365 Automation

Ever felt bogged down by tedious, time-consuming tasks that drain your team's energy and productivity? Microsoft 365 aims to eliminate these burdens through powerful automation capabilities. As technology advances, the adoption of automation is surging across various sectors, revolutionizing the way businesses operate. M365 stands out with its impressive array of automation features. Let's dive into some of the key benefits that automation with M365 brings to the table.

1. Cost Savings

Cost reduction is a standout advantage of M365 automation, offering a significant edge for organizations. Eliminating the need for manual execution of labor-intensive and time-consuming tasks can significantly boost your budget, thanks to M365's robust automation capabilities for end users. With M365's automation, employees can redirect their efforts and creativity toward more impactful and productive activities, leaving the mundane tasks to the system. This also reduces the need for additional hires and optimizes storage costs, leading to significant savings.

Examples: 

• Content Archiving and Workspace Cleanup: Unlock over $393,000 in annual savings—$134,000 by automating your archiving process and an additional $259,000 by streamlining workspace cleanup. Eliminate the hassle for IT admins of manually tracking down Teams and SharePoint site owners for content ownership and archiving or deletion decisions. With Orchestry's Archiving, you can automate the entire process and seamlessly clean up your workspaces to optimize storage.
• Workspace Discoverability: Save over $45,000 per year with Orchestry's Adoption tools. End users often waste valuable time searching for existing Teams or SharePoint sites before creating or joining a workspace. Research shows that around 20% of users go through this process at least once a month, causing avoidable delays and inefficiencies. 
• Teams Creation and Configuration: Save over $27,000 annually by automating the setup of new Teams with Orchestry's Provisioning tools. Streamline the creation of channels, SharePoint sites, document templates, and user permissions—no more manual processes.

2. Enhanced Collaboration

Microsoft 365, through its powerful tools such as Microsoft Teams and SharePoint, revolutionizes the way your team communicates and collaborates. Teams provides a seamless platform for real-time communication and file sharing, ensuring that all team members stay informed and connected, no matter their location. SharePoint automation significantly enhances collaboration by offering a centralized platform for seamless document sharing and management. Features like automatic updates, workflows, and approvals ensure team members always access the latest information, enabling efficient project collaboration. This automation reduces manual effort and minimizes errors, fostering a more productive and cohesive work environment.

Examples: 

• Document Sharing and Permissions: Automate the sharing of documents with specific team members and manage permissions to ensure that the right people have access to the right information at the right time, reducing bottlenecks in collaboration.
• Integrated Workflows: Automate workflows that require input from multiple departments, such as approval processes, ensuring that tasks move smoothly from one department to the next without delays.
• Metadata Insights for Improved Search: By analyzing metadata usage, automation can optimize search functionality within SharePoint, making it easier for users to find relevant documents quickly.

3. Improved Employee Satisfaction

For staff members, the most significant benefit of M365 automation is the liberation from repetitive, time-consuming tasks. By automating these mundane processes, employees are free to fully utilize their unique skills and engage in more productive and fulfilling work. With routine activities handled by automation, employees have the ability to focus on strategic, value-added tasks can provide employees with a greater sense of purpose and accomplishment, driving innovation and career growth.

Examples: 

• Automated Workflows: Automate routine processes such as workspace creation, reporting, and document approvals. This reduces the time employees spend on mundane tasks, allowing them to focus on more strategic and engaging activities.
• Templates: Automatically create Teams or SharePoint workspaces and sites to standardize onboarding, offboarding, interdepartmental collaboration, project management, and more.

4. Better Efficiency

As mentioned above, delegating repetitive and time-consuming tasks to automated processes frees up valuable time for employees. This newfound time can be dedicated to core business activities, leading to significant improvements in workflow and overall efficiency. Consequently, organizations benefit from a more productive and efficient workforce.

Examples:

• Team Workspaces: Automatically create Microsoft Teams channels for new projects, complete with preloaded documents and necessary apps.
• Data Collection and Reporting: Streamline data collection and report generation processes to provide timely insights without manual effort.

5. Elevated Security

Automated processes with M365 extend beyond daily business operations. It streamlines compliance with security policies and regulations through automated monitoring and reporting, ensuring that all security protocols are consistently followed. Additionally, M365 automation integrates advanced threat detection and response capabilities, identifying and mitigating security threats in real-time, thus providing a robust defense against cyber attacks.

Examples:

• Team Workspaces: Automatically create Microsoft Teams channels for new projects, complete with preloaded documents and necessary apps.
• Policy Enforcement: Automation tools can automatically enforce security policies across all M365 services, ensuring that security settings are applied consistently and immediately.
• Automated User Provisioning and Deprovisioning: Automating the onboarding and offboarding process ensures that users receive the appropriate access rights promptly and that former employees’ access is revoked immediately, reducing the risk of unauthorized access.

6. Reliability

Automation boosts reliability by making systems more robust and dependable. It ensures that security and compliance policies are consistently applied, reducing human errors and keeping everything running smoothly. Proactive monitoring and automated alerts help catch potential issues before they become problems, minimizing downtime and keeping everything on track. By reducing the need for manual intervention, M365 automation makes operations more predictable and stable.

Examples:

• Compliance Monitoring: Automation can continuously monitor compliance with security standards and regulations, automatically flagging any deviations and generating reports for auditing purposes.
• Conditional Access Policies: Automation can enforce conditional access policies based on user location, device compliance, and risk factors, automatically adjusting access rights as needed.

7. Customer Satisfaction

One of the best ways to keep customers happy and retain your clientele is through quick and efficient customer service. Clients dislike waiting long for assistance, and traditional manual processes can overwhelm your support staff, leading to delays and dissatisfaction.

Microsoft 365 automation revolutionizes customer relationships and satisfaction by making every interaction faster and more efficient. Automated processes ensure that every client request is ticketed and tracked efficiently, allowing your support team to manage and prioritize requests effectively for prompt and thorough responses.

Examples:

• Automated Ticketing Systems: Automation in IT support can prioritize and route support tickets based on urgency and type, ensuring that issues are resolved quickly and efficiently. This reduces wait times for users and enhances their satisfaction with IT services.
• Proactive Issue Resolution: Monitor systems for potential issues and automatically initiate corrective actions before users even notice a problem. This proactive approach minimizes disruptions and keeps users happy with uninterrupted service.

8. Data-Driven Insights

Data-driven insights through M365 automation revolutionize decision-making by providing real-time, customized reporting. Imagine having instant access to up-to-date information tailored to your business needs, all without lifting a finger. Imagine transforming complex data sets into easy-to-understand charts, graphs, and dashboards that provide clear insights at a glance.

Examples:

• Centralized Data Aggregation: Automation can collect and aggregate data from various M365 applications, such as SharePoint, Outlook, and Teams, into a centralized repository. This eliminates the need for manual data collection and ensures that data is always up-to-date and ready for analysis.
• Dynamic Dashboards and Reports: Automatically create and update dashboards and reports in real-time, providing stakeholders with immediate insights into key metrics and performance indicators. 

9. Empowered Decision Making

Enhanced decision-making becomes a breeze with automated tools. M365 automation transforms decision-making into a dynamic, real-time experience. Imagine having instant access to the latest data and continuous monitoring at your fingertips. This empowers decision-makers to respond swiftly to changes and seize opportunities as they arise.

Examples:

• Channel Usage Analysis: Automation can analyze which Teams channels are most active and which are underutilized, offering insights into collaboration patterns. This helps in identifying communication bottlenecks and fostering better collaboration strategies.
• Version Control and Changes Analysis: By automating version tracking, SharePoint can provide insights into how documents evolve over time and who contributes to changes, helping teams understand document history and underutilized or popular resources.

10. Scalability

Scalability comes easy, especially for IT directors and administrators managing dynamic and growing organizations. M365 automation allows your IT infrastructure to expand effortlessly to meet increasing workloads without escalating costs or complexity. Deploying and managing new resources becomes seamless, enabling your team to handle peak demands and focus on strategic initiatives rather than routine tasks. In essence, M365 automation turns your IT infrastructure into a catalyst for growth and success.

Examples:

• Efficient Onboarding: Automation streamlines the process of creating and managing user accounts as the organization grows. For instance, when a new employee joins, M365 automation can automatically set up their email, grant access to relevant SharePoint sites, and add them to the necessary Microsoft Teams channels. This ensures that new hires can start contributing immediately without IT having to manually configure each account.
• Scalable Teams Management: As more teams are created within an organization, automation can manage the lifecycle of Microsoft Teams channels, including creating, archiving, or deleting teams based on predefined criteria. This keeps the collaboration environment organized and scalable.
• Scalable Security Policies: Automation ensures that security policies are consistently applied across an expanding user base, devices, and applications. As new users are added, automated policies ensure they meet compliance standards without manual intervention.

Conclusion

Microsoft 365's automation capabilities offer a transformative boost to productivity, collaboration, and efficiency. By automating repetitive tasks, M365 cuts costs and enhances employee satisfaction while ensuring top-notch security and reliability.

Orchestry elevates M365 automation, while providing data-driven insights to empower informed decision-making. With Orchestry, you can streamline and optimize your M365 environment, ensuring seamless growth without added complexity. Embracing M365 automation with Orchestry significantly enhances operational efficiency, boosts employee morale, and improves customer satisfaction, propelling your business to greater success. Explore Orchestry's features and discover how to supercharge your Teams and Sharepoint automation.