“How’s work?” I asked a friend recently.

Somewhat surprisingly, no grumbles about bosses or co-workers but instead how hard it was to “get work done”.

Her frustration centered around how huge chunks of time were swallowed up, by what we refer to in the industry as repetitive, manual processes. She explained, that despite being in the same office, everyone seemed to be “doing their own thing”, not collaborating the way they needed to. And that there wasn’t the right set-up or culture to work flexibly.

But her story is not unusual. According to Avanade-sponsored research, employees at only 28% of companies can access software and applications seamlessly outside of a physical office location today.

For organizations, the problem goes beyond frustrated employees. Limited collaboration means limited productivity. And legacy technology, doesn’t allow them to be responsive nor does it give adequate protection from security threats.

Through a modernized workplace platform, technology can be a catalyst to address these challenges and lay the foundation to a great workplace experience. But for IT leaders, the decision around how to modernize the platform is not always an easy one.

Microsoft 365 is widely seen as one of the best answers to this problem. It brings together a trio of Office 365, Windows 10 and Enterprise Mobility + Security.

Here’s our view on the top 3 benefits it delivers for organizations:

1. A responsive environment
A modernized workplace platform gives organizations a more responsive environment through the adoption of cloud-native, evergreen software.

It eliminates the need for big, disruptive IT upgrades that happen every few years. Resulting in a sustainable platform that is less susceptible to outages and stays modern due to evergreen services. This allows IT leaders to spend more time driving innovation.

Organizations can also be more responsive in meeting employee expectations by giving users a seamless experience and secure, real-time access to information.

Employees benefit from new features and functionality more frequently and can work in innovative new ways using Office 365 and collaboration tools such as Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive. This gives them freedom to work how they want, resulting in higher productivity.

2. Security
Security is a top concern for most organizations. Microsoft is spending over a billion dollars a year on security and by taking advantage of the platform, organizations can take advantage of this investment.

Security is “baked-in” to all elements of Microsoft 365 and potential threats to organizations are identified through advanced threat analytics. Data that would normally be scattered, is stored in Office 365, which means for organizations, it can be a great way to secure most of their information and collaboration platforms within the environment.

Because Microsoft bake in security as part of the solution, the user experience is also not impeded. Employees get a much better experience because the security is friction-free, allowing them to access documents and applications without unnecessary prompts and authentications.

3. Cost-efficiency
A modernized platform allows organizations to benefit from cost take-out. It takes away the headache of on-premise, aging hardware and software maintenance. It also allows the simplification of tool, infrastructure and support complexity. For example, with the latest tools in Microsoft 365, organizations benefit from much lower support costs, including application maintenance and overall patch management.

Cost-efficiency is a theme evidenced in a December 2016 research study by Forrester. They found that for a composite organization, the quantified benefits of modernizing the platform through the implementation of Windows 10 were significant and included:

• Benefits of more than $14 million versus the costs of $4.4 million
• ROI of 233%
• Payback period of 14 months
• 20% improvement in management time for IT administrators
• 25% of time previously unavailable for work, could now be taken advantage of by mobile employees

The benefits of a modernized workplace platform are significant and lay the foundation to a great workplace experience. But to truly transform, Avanade’s view is that organizations need a holistic approach to people, process and technology.