'MICROSOFT OFFICE 365 hasn't just revolutionised the business, it's revolutionised me," says Martin O'Gara, general manager of flowers.ie. "My diary is on my smartphone, it's on the desktop in the office and it's accessible to all the staff. It means I don't miss appointments any more and I was a terror for missing them. I don't miss emails either. I've always been an early adopter of technology but now everything works the way we always thought it should."
Flowers.ieis an online flower store which delivers throughout Ireland. Customers can order flowers from a large selection of arrangements and bouquets on a website which is easily navigated. The company uses SharePoint in Microsoft Office 365 to allow its 11 staff to collaborate with each other. "It's unbelievable the difference it has made to us and how easy it is to use," says O'Gara. "Everything is with everyone all the time. We can work from our desk, from home, or when we're out and about, on our smartphones. We can share things like pictures and orders and, if we want, we can actually see each other without having to be in the same building."
Microsoft Exchange Online is also proving invaluable to the company. “Email is the new text,” O’Gara notes. “So many people now have it on their phones and it’s free. You can be a bit more long-winded on an email, explaining what you want. And we can all pick up our emails anywhere. For example, our drivers do everything with Office 365 on their smartphones; they send and receive emails, use the online maps for route planning, use them for checking-off orders, and they can look at a picture of the bouquet to make sure they’re making the right delivery to the right person.”
The elimination of paper has been another major benefit. “We don’t even have our printer plugged in any more. You don’t need to print things out – you just need to put them where you can find them and we have everything out in the cloud, where it is safe and we can all get it. I’ve also started using the Nokia Lumia Windows Phone, as it connects to Office 365 directly and it enables me to create, edit and share documents easily. We use technology as a tool just like a scissors, and Office 365 works very well for us.”
l Wednesday, May 23rd, is Work Wherever Wednesday, when Microsoft is encouraging everyone to avail of the benefits of Office 365 by leaving their office and working wherever they want – at home, in the park, on a boat, in a lift, wherever!
For information on a free trial of Microsoft Office 365, and Work Wherever Wednesday, see Microsoft.ie/workwherever
