According to a new research report, an average of 56% of a business’s Microsoft Office 365 licenses are inactive, underutilized, oversized or unassigned. The finding comes from the Global Office 365 Report: License Optimization released by CoreView, the only intelligent SaaS Management Platform (SMP). The Company analyzed 5 million enterprise workers from businesses that are either actively using its SMP, have received a complimentary CoreView Office 365 Health Check analysis, or are using the free CoreDiscoverysolution that discovers opportunities to drive adoption, license optimization and savings opportunities, finds vulnerabilities, and lets IT understand what operators and end users are doing with Office 365.
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Businesses often reduce the value of their cloud and SaaS investments because of unexpected – and avoidable – charges. Businesses with lax license management often pay for too many licenses, struggle with app adoption due to a misalignment between employee needs and the purchased licenses, and fail to reassign licenses after an employee has left the company or changed roles. CoreView’s research shows that IT leaders must be more proactive in optimizing their license usage or risk wasting a large percentage of their cloud budget.
“With a newly transitioned remote workforce and a pandemic creating uncertain economic conditions, it’s more important than ever for businesses to strategically manage their Office 365 licenses, help their employees get the full value of the purchased licenses to maximize productivity, and spend their cloud budget effectively,” said Michael A. Morrison, chief executive officer at CoreView. “Our data shows that there’s room for improvement when it comes to Office 365 license management, with many organizations purchasing more licenses than necessary, failing to align licenses with actual employee app usage, or not using licenses they’ve already purchased. Organizations with an actionable view into their SaaS environment are able to target specific groups of users to drive adoption of Office 365 as well as to transform a seemingly mundane task of license management into significant cost savings and productivity boost.”
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Key themes and select results from the survey include:
– Enterprises Can’t Turn a Blind Eye to Office 365 License Management – The data shows that most businesses’ poor license management policies lead to more than half (56%) of them being inactive, underutilized, oversized or unassigned.
– Better Managing Inactive Licenses Would Reduce Total Office 365 Costs by 14% – The data shows that most businesses aren’t dedicating adequate attention to license management and are paying for it on their balance sheet. CoreView found that the average business could reduce their total Office 365 costs by 14% if they discovered and better managed inactive licenses by eliminating or reassigning them.
– Business Users Struggle with App Adoption – IT Managers often buy Office 365 licenses in batches rather than making customer purchases catered to employee workflows. This is the reason why CoreView found that 44% of licenses were underutilized by employees. Businesses can promote adoption of Office 365 by targeting their people who are not taking advantage of all of the services of Office 365 with just-in-time learning assets to increase employee productivity and maximize the return on the businesses’ Office 365 investments.
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