Business Informational Systems – ISYS2109 Assignment 2 – Business Research Report Evaluation of Microsoft 365’s impacts on businesses and recommendations on its downsides

The package includes a diversity of products including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online for cooperation and communication, and Office Professional Plus which covers Word,

Business Informational Systems – ISYS2109 Assignment 2 – Business Research Report

HAND IN DATE: 3 May, 2020rd

Word Count: 1648 words (references excluded)

Submitted to

Kevin Nguyen Lecturer on Business Informational Systems

Submitted by

Phu Dung Kim Huynh

S3697376 Tuesday 3:00 PM Class

Evaluation of Microsoft 365’s impacts on businesses and

recommendations on its downsides

A Introduction

Due to the dynamic competition in today’s business world, it is required that corporates should take responsibility for various tasks in order to thrive Fortunately, this has been eased

by the development of the Internet, specifically the cloud-based software tools Standing out among these tools is Microsoft Office 365 (MS 365), which takes up more than halve of the usage of 81% total global corporates who have made a switch to cloud services in 2018 (Bitglass, 2018) Thus, it is undoubtedly that MS 365 is winning the Cloud ‘war’ and considered the most opportune cloud-based software tools for the educational and business processes To provide a deeper analysis, this report will evaluate the impact of MS 365 on businesses by firstly explaining the concept of cloud-computing and MS 365; secondly discussing and linking theories regarding the benefits of MS 365 to real-world examples, and thirdly self-reflecting the influence of MS 365 on the writer’s study journey and giving recommendations on MS 365 shortcomings

B The concept of cloud-computing and Microsoft Office 365

To begin with, cloud-computing is defined by the U.S National Institute of Standards and Technology as the ability to rapidly access files and applications online via various devices such as computer, browser, or phone with minimal attempt of management or interaction of the service providers (Mell & Grance, 2011)

Microsoft Office 365 is a set of services that solves the dilemma referred to internal communication and document sharing without the establishment of complicated infrastructures (Skendzic & Kovačić, 2012) The package includes a diversity of products including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online for cooperation and communication, and Office Professional Plus which covers Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and OneNote (Microsoft, 2020)

C Microsoft Office 365 and its benefits to businesses

1) Benefits to businesses

i Convenient platform for teacher-student interaction

Although the concept of virtual lessons has emerged and become popular for a long period of time, recently, the pandemic Covid-19 in 2019 has led to a dramatic increase in the demand of online education (Allo & Markus, 2020) Because of this, universities that chose Microsoft Office 365 can benefit from one of its applications called SharePoint This is a server-based database application that includes two channel called SharePoint Workspace and SharePoint Online While the former allows users to professionally manage, share and find important documents which is protected with document-level permission, the latter offers real-time communication between teachers and students, thus, forming a virtual classroom that can solve the problem related to the shutdown of physical campuses What differs SharePoint from Google Drive is that it allows users to create pages and publish them as a website that contains announcements as a form of blog and a list of team members demonstrated by Excel for a specific department team, or

in this case a group of students There have been 70 universities that built their website based on SharePoint including top universities such as University of New South Wales, Ngee Ann Polytechnic or UCLA This helps simplify the management process for teachers and enhances the effectiveness in catching up with what the courses require for the students

ii Cost-effective investment

According to ADG Business RMIT (2016), one of businesses’ common technology problems is cost management for adopting new systems, which in specific is the cost and time invested in adding usable interfaces to old system This is well-associated with one

of the common people problems that is called training for new adopted technology Thus, the usability of the newly-adopted technology, which is believed to be able to minimize the employees’ training cost and time (Balan & Punithavalli, 2010), must be paid attention to An Illinois-based healthcare system has switched from Google Apps to Office 365 due to its learnability and memorability, which they believe can reduce the

employee’s training cost (Endler, 2013) More detailed, with Google tools, requisition of additional server and licenses must occur when a site is added or there is an inflow of a great number of new users However, with Microsoft, users solely need to pay for the subscription fee, which is extremely simple It is also claimed that the model enables the company to prevent adding additional staff and technology (Balan & Punithavalli, 2010)

In another case, with Office 365, the non-profit organization FHI 360 based in Durham, N.C expects to save an approximate amount of US$20,000 as they can perform the task

more rapidly by using the Instant Messaging (Businesses choose Microsoft Office 365 over Google Apps, 2013), which can be viewed as an efficiency of use in the usability

iii Robust and reliable system

Another advantage of adopting Office 365 is that users are guaranteed with a better level

of data security Vice president of IT and chief information officer of Duke University – Tracy Futhey assumed that Microsoft ensures the university’s data privacy through which the data will be kept within the U.S To explain, Office 365 offers the most powerful package of standards and certifications of every major cloud-based service This is the first and unique major cloud productivity service that meet the rigors of the federal

government's HIPAA requirements (Top Universities Choose Office 365 for Education for Enhanced Security and Privacy, 2012)

2) Commonly used applications

According to MessageOps’s Survey (2016), the top three most popular applications of Microsoft 365 are OneDrive for Business, Skype for Business and SharePoint with the usage of 69.19%, 67.77% and 62.09%, respectively However, with the growth of other messaging and video-calling applications like Zoom, Skype had been taken off its spotlight (Warren, 2020) Instead, Office Professional Plus is believed to replace Skype’s position More detailed, beside SharePoint that has been earlier described in the first benefit of Microsoft 365, OneDrive for Business is an online storage that allows sharing and collaborating work documents between co-workers; and Office Professional Plus is

an integrated set of applications including Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and OneNote

D Self-reflection and recommendations

Word, Excel and Outlook, which belong to Office Professional Plus – one of Microsoft 365’s three most-used applications are the tools that I frequently utilize throughout my student life at RMIT Vietnam

To begin with, personally thinking, Word wins the first place as the most helpful tool for writing essays and reports I found working with Word more comfortable than Google doc due to the reasonable display of functions and the ease of layout formatting As a person who is passionate about the visual appeal, the function ‘design’ which allows chart and table color and style editing is ideal and preferable The only issue with Word when it comes to group work is the slow update of the other members’ editing With Google Doc,

it is easier for the members to catch up with what the others are working on In this case,

it is recommended that Office 365 improves the satisfaction aspect of the usability of Word by focusing on increasing users’ editing work speed, as a result can satisfy their customers

Secondly, as a student majoring in economics, I find Excel helpful in analyzing and visualizing data with a variety of chart types, from basic ones namely column, line, pie to professionals like box & whisker, while Google Sheets offers only seven types of chart

In addition, with various design tools, creating a chart with visual appeals in Excel is more achievable However, the application again is believed to go along with shortcomings when it comes to real-time collaboration, which prevent me from effectively working with the team Excel does not allow users to quickly update with other members’ editing and commenting on spreadsheets To improve this disadvantage,

it is recommended that Excel should be baked directly into Word, together with improvements regarding real-time collaboration for Word itself as stated above

Thirdly, Outlook is frequently used for communicating with teachers and teammates and making appointments The outstanding characteristic of Outlook which makes it outpace Gmail is the direct adoption of calendar and contact into Outlook itself By doing this,

making appointment or creating a to-do list are more convenient Outlook also stands out due to its Focused Inbox which displays the most important emails on top and its Clean

Up feature that effectively simplifies long email threads in order to make it easier to follow However, because of a diversity of functions, it is inevitable for the occurrence of cluttered interface, specifically icons that cause misunderstanding for new users As can

be seen from figure 1, the icon at the top right corner depicts new message creation while the one at the bottom left illustrates email account, shared mailbox addition and new account creation These identical looks cause me to continuously mistaken between the two icons

Figure 1 Illustration of Outlook confusing icons According to heuristic evaluations by Nielson (1994), Outlook faces the aesthetic and minimalism problem, which can cause users to have a dissatisfactory experience when using Besides, the application does not meet the third interface design heuristics guidelines which is giving user control and freedom To explain, Outlook does not provide ‘unsend’ feature for emails that are sent to the wrong receivers like Gmail, which can make the application less favorable To solve the issue, it is recommended that Microsoft focus on creating a simple design for Outlook and adopt the ‘unsend’ feature in order to enhance users’ satisfaction

E Conclusion

To conclude, Microsoft Office 365 is a lucrative investment for businesses because of the three main benefits: convenient platform for teacher-student interaction if it is an educational business; cost-effectiveness; and robust security systems and standard However, some applications still experience some shortcomings which causes inconvenience for users After the problems of Word, Excel and Outlook have been identified based on the heuristic evaluations by Nielson (1994), recommendations have been given to improve the applications Particularly, Microsoft is suggested to improve real-time collaboration for Word and Excel while advance interface aesthetic & minimalism design and adopt ‘unsend’ feature for Outlook

F References

1 ADG Business RMIT 2016, Business Computing 1 - Business Context: OER 8.1, video recording, Youtube, viewed on 30 April 2020, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?th v=eg1V-hlzA8Q&feature=youtu.be>

2 Allo, G & Markus, D 2020, ‘Is the online learning good in the midst of Covid-19 Pandemic?’, The case of EFL learners, 10, 1-9

3 Balan, R.V.S & Punithavalli, M 2010, "Software Architecture, Scenario and Patterns", International Journal of Computer Science Issues (IJCSI), vol 7, no 5, pp 418-423

4 Bitglass 2018, ‘Bitglass 2018 Report: Cloud Security Adoption Trails Cloud Usage, Leaving Two Thirds Of Organizations Vulnerable’, viewed on 2 May 2020,nd

<https://www.bitglass.com/press-releases/bitglass-2018-report-cloud-security-adoption-trails-usage>

5 Endler, M 2013, "Microsoft Office 365: How One Company Saves Big", Informationweek - Online,

6 Mel, P & Grance, T 2011, ‘The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing’ , National Institute of Standards and Technology, Viewed on 1 st May 2020,

7 MessageOps Team 2016, ‘The most popular Office 365 apps in use today’, MessageOps Survey, viewed on 3 May 2020, <rd https://messageops.com/how-companies-are-using-office-365-apps-a-messageops-survey/>

8 Microsoft 2020, ‘What Is Microsoft 365 For Business’, Faqs, viewed on 1 May 2020,st

<https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/microsoft-365-frequently-asked-questions>

9 Nielsen, J 1994, ‘Heuristic evaluation’, In Nielsen, J., and Mack, R.L (Eds.), Usability

10 PRESS RELEASE: Businesses choose Microsoft Office 365 over Google Apps 2013,

New York, viewed on 1 st May 2020, <

11 PRESS RELEASE: Top Universities Choose Office 365 for Education for Enhanced Security and Privacy 2012, New York, viewed on 1 May 2020, <st

https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/docview/2110882586/6DD0F046230C4E35PQ/10?

12 Skendzic, A & Kovačić, B 2012 ‘Microsoft Office 365 - cloud in business environment’, 1434-1439

13 Warren, T 2020, ‘Microsoft’s Skype struggles have created a Zoom Moment’, The Verge, viewed on 3 May 2020, <rd https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/31/21200844/microsoft-skype-zoom-houseparty-coronavirus-pandemic-usage-growth-competition>