Maximize your Office 365 ROI with online training

It’s undeniable that organizations get a competitive edge using Microsoft Office 365. However, it is also undeniable that some individuals in those organizations view Office as a complex suite of multiple apps—some of which they don’t even use. In 2016 alone, Microsoft added 60 new features to Office 365, including new products such as Groups, Planner, and Teams.

Although there are many advantages to cloud-powered Office apps such as work-from-anywhere convenience and free upgrades to the latest and greatest features, some individuals can feel they have to be “always on” with their work and overwhelmed by new app features. If not addressed, these issues can make organizations feel like their individual workers are not getting the most out of their Office 365 investment. Companies want to see a return on investment in terms of increased productivity with Office 365 but that can’t happen if their workers aren’t using the apps to their full potential. That’s why most CIOs recognize the solution for maximizing corporate ROI and productivity with Office 365 is training.

Training is tricky for any organization

While every company offers some level of new hire training about corporate IT tools and processes, your employees need to constantly update their skills. The new hire training your employees received on how your company uses Office 365 to communicate and collaborate with their team only goes so far; mainly because new features are being added to Office 365 via the cloud on a regular basis. For example, those new cloud-delivered features in Microsoft Excel can help your accounting team to be more productive, but only if they are trained on how to use them. There’s also the issue of how new hires get trained on the latest features in Office 365, but those employees who received their Office 365 new hire a year ago are sometimes unaware of the cool new feature that could save them tons of time every day. The solution is employee training.

However, offering your employees mandatory training usually elicits one of two responses:

1. “That’s great because I didn’t have anything else better to do today,” says just about every employee who’s ever been forced to stop what they’re doing for a day of mandatory instructor-led training or…
2. “I don’t respond well to [insert any training method here] because I learn best when I [insert the exact opposite of whatever training your company is offering].”

While there is no training method that pleases everyone, there are statistics that show what type of training is the most effective overall. Joan Burge, CEO of Las Vegas-based corporate skills training firm, studied the five most commonly-used corporate training methods to determine which one delivered the best retention of skills learned. On average, people retain new information best from:

• A lecture = 5%
• By reading = 10%
• A demonstration = 30%
• An interactive group session = 50%
• Individualized online training = 75%

The numbers don’t lie

By now it should be obvious that online training for Office 365 is the best way to ensure your employees not only receive but also retain the skills they need to excel. Amaxra offers an online training solution for Office 365 called QuickHelp. It’s a unique online training platform for any company that has Office 365 whether you purchase your Office 365 subscription from Amaxra or not. Amaxra Office 365 QuickHelp has the advantage of being self-paced, always available, and constantly updated. This enables us to address the challenge of keeping your employees up to date on the latest changes in Office 365 features and capabilities. Because it is a combination of short, professionally-shot videos from Microsoft-certified experts in Office 365 along with animated product demos and scored quizzes, our QuickHelp platform accommodates people in your organization with varied learning styles.

QuickHelp, like Office 365, is a cloud-powered solution that is easy to set up and use. With QuickHelp, each employee at your company gets a personalized learning path based on your company goals, the employee job title, their work habits, and existing skill level. All of these learning paths are curated based on simple setup surveys that your IT department and employees fill out once to level set on their training needs. For example, if your company has a Surface Hub in every conference room then your Microsoft Teams training module in QuickHelp would include training about how to maximize the use of that specific hardware.