Meta Description: Teams need training to utilize and manage a tool. Here’s a step-by-step guide for utilizing Microsoft 365 Business Essentials training for SMBs.
Everyone knows that businesses need tools to thrive. Even the simplest tasks such as scheduling a meeting have shifted to the virtual world, and people now use online tools to coordinate and communicate with their fellow co-workers.
Microsoft 365 Business Essentials is one of those powerful tools. As a Managed Service Provider, your client can be of any scale and belong to any niche, and Microsoft 365 Business Essentials will have a solution for them.
That being said, having access to the tools isn’t enough. Your client needs to provide comprehensive training to their employees so as to manage and utilize the tool to its full potential.
This is especially true if your clients are small and medium businesses (SMBs). It’s often difficult enough for the SMBs to get their hands on a cost-effective tool, let alone spend a fortune on training their employees.
So, if you are an MSP, do not worry, ClipTraining is here to help. This blog will provide a step-by-step guide on how you can introduce Microsoft 365 Business Essentials training to your SMB clients, and lead them to the right platform.
Let’s get going!
Microsoft 365 Business Essentials for Beginners:
For those unfamiliar with Microsoft 365 Business Essentials, it is a cloud-based subscription suite that offers everything a business could ask for. It differs from Microsoft 365 Business Standard, which offers desktop versions of Office apps.
Here’s what Microsoft 365 Business Essentials offers:
- Business-class email and calendaring via Outlook
- Cloud storage and file sharing with OneDrive and SharePoint
- Meeting and collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams
- Enterprise-grade security features
According to the latest reports, there were approximately 345 Million Microsoft 365 Suite users globally in 2023. With a number that huge, it is surprising to see most teams struggling to utilize its full potential because their employees aren’t fully trained on its features.
ClipTraining’s Microsoft 365 Business Essentials training helps your clients get over this challenge. Our training modules are easy-to-follow, self-paced, and made for the employee. Microsoft 365 holds a market share of 47.9% in the office suite market.
Do Your Clients Really Need Microsoft 365 Business Essentials Training?
There must be countless SMBs you serve who are aware of the struggles of introducing a new tool to their teams, especially when those teams have no idea how to use it. Therefore, this question is important to ask, and even more important to know the answer.
Microsoft 365 Business Essentials provides powerful tools, but employees often underutilize them due to lack of training and exposure to the tool. With ClipTraining, you can help your clients:
1. Improve Productivity
Many employees don’t know how to fully utilize Outlook, Teams, or SharePoint, which eventually leads to inefficiency and slow work progress. ClipTraining’s Microsoft 365 Essentials training course teaches users how to improve productivity by managing emails, collaborations, and workflows.
2. Reduce IT Support Costs
Without proper training, employees rely on IT support for even the most basic tasks, which not only wastes time but also increases operational costs. ClipTraining’s self-paced learning module encourages your clients’ employees to solve problems independently instead of raising IT tickets at every minor inconvenience.
3. Strengthen Security Awareness
A single cybersecurity breach can cost an SME thousands of dollars, this is no secret. SMBs, due to their limited scalability, often lack resources and technical assistance to counter a cyber attack, losing roughly from $25,000 to $3 million in a single breach.
ClipTraining offers Microsoft security awareness training, which helps your clients identify phishing and spam emails, use multi-factor authentication (MFA) for doubled security, and secure sensitive business data in SharePoint and OneDrive.
Step-by-Step Training Guide for Microsoft 365 Business Essentials
Now that you know the importance of training, let’s have a look at some measures your SMB clients will have to take in order to learn Microsoft 365 Business Essentials via ClipTraining:
Step 1: Understand the Core Applications
Before diving into advanced features, employees need to understand what Business Essentials hold as the fundamental tools:
- Outlook: Email and calendar management
- Teams: Virtual meetings and collaboration
- OneDrive & SharePoint: Cloud storage and file sharing
- Excel, Word, PowerPoint: Creating and editing documents
Having a basic know-how of these tools will also help your client train their teams more efficiently. They can also allow teams to directly access video tutorials offered by ClipTraining. This will not only give employees the freedom to learn and adopt in their own time but also remove the need for live IT training.
Step 2: Set Up User Accounts and Permissions
Before the tool is handed over to the employees, make sure your client’s IT teams have properly configured user accounts. This will ensure the employees have the right level of access to company data and sensitive information is restricted to only those who need it.
Another helpful recommendation from you to your clients would be to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for the first time login, so the users have to verify their identity through multiple authentication methods. This will significantly reduce the chances of unauthorized access.
To be on the safe side, they should also enable Microsoft Defender, which provides real-time threat protection against malware, phishing attempts, and other cyber risks.
However, human error always finds a way to sneak in, even with all these security measures in place. This is where ClipTraining’s Security Awareness Training can help. It ensures on behalf of your clients that employees understand best practices for handling sensitive data, recognizing cyber threats, and following company security policies.
Step 3: Train Employees on Important Features
Now that everything is in place, it’s time for your clients to train employees about the important features of the tools. A good start will be to build upon the common challenges employees face in their day-to-day work.
For example, an overload inbox or a misplaced file in a sea of other files can be a common challenge. With ClipTraining’s video course, clients can brief the employees on how to collaborate using Microsoft Teams and effectively manage emails in Outlook, or the right way to store and share files in OneDrive or SharePoint.
The faster they learn, the quicker the adaptation of the tool at the workplace will be!
Step 4: Implement Security Best Practices
As mentioned earlier, human error has its way. Employees often (although unknowingly) compromise business security by falling for a phishing email. ClipTraining’s cybersecurity courses help employees learn how to recognize and avoid phishing attacks, manage password security and use Microsoft Defender properly for threat detection.
However, since this training isn’t directly related to Microsoft 365, there’s a fair chance that employees will skip it. A good way your client can deal with it is by making security training mandatory with ClipTraining’s compliance tracking feature.
This feature allows the organizations to monitor and manage all compliance-related activities, such as training and policy compliance. Once made mandatory, employees will more likely avail the training and keep their data secure.
Common Challenges in Microsoft 365 Adoption (And How to Overcome Them)
You’d think that a powerful tool like Microsoft 365 will only have its pluses; however, it comes with a different set of challenges. Sometimes, your clients will have to deal with the employees who are resistant to change and do not want to switch to a tool they’re not familiar with.
The good thing is, ClipTraining’s approach is easy-to-follow, which allows the employees to take bite-sized lessons each day instead of absorbing bulks of information at once. This way, their familiarity with the tool is increased and they’re more likely to enjoy using it.
Then, there are employees who are not tech-savvy and can find any tool hard to navigate. Here, ClipTraining also comes to the rescue as it offers self-paced training. Such training is great for the teams who aren’t tech-friendly and like to learn at their own pace.
How to Get Started with ClipTraining
Getting started with ClipTraining is easy! Simply visit our website and explore the solutions provided by our expert team for MSPs like you. Our core offerings include cybersecurity training, employee training enablement (ETE), Phishing Training and Testing, and of course, Microsoft 360 User Training. You can choose any training as an add-on and provide top-tier services and training solutions to your clients.
If you’re not sure which training can best align with your client’s needs, you can simply book a demo. Our expert will be there to answer any questions you might have regarding the courses and let you observe firsthand how these courses can make a change!
To sum it all up, you can find countless tools out there who will claim to get the job done. The key is to offer your clients the right training so they can utilize the tool to its full potential. Microsoft 365 Business Essentials Suite is perfect for your SMB clients who are looking for a cost-effective all-in-one solution, and ClipTraining’s handy courses make it easier to adapt these powerful tools.
Book a demo today, ClipTraining would love to be a part of your business’s growth!