IT leaders are under pressure to do more with less, boosting productivity while driving cost savings. A modern Microsoft 365 digital workplace offers a strategic route to achieve this. By consolidating tools, streamlining governance and ensuring solid data hygiene for AI agents, IT teams can unlock significant return on investment (ROI) from the Microsoft 365 platform they already own.

Consolidate to Cut Costs

Investing in many different tools that have the same capabilities is a silent drain on budgets. Many organisations pay for third-party apps that duplicate Microsoft 365 capabilities. Why pay for Zoom, Slack or Dropbox when Teams, Viva, and OneDrive are already included in your E3 or E5 licence?

Consolidating onto Microsoft 365 eliminates redundant subscriptions and simplifies the tech stack. Fewer systems mean less integration overhead and fewer support tickets. IT can focus on strategic initiatives rather than managing a patchwork of applications. From an employee perspective, it is more convenient to learn how one platform operates than 6 or more different ones.

Case study example:

Robert Walters, a global recruitment firm, exemplifies this. With over 3,000 SharePoint sites and 350 business applications, their digital ecosystem had become fragmented. In just 12 weeks, they launched a unified Microsoft 365-powered platform for 3,300 employees – replacing complexity with clarity and delivering a unified digital employee experience that serves as a single source of truth.

Drive Productivity Through Integration

Maximising ROI isn’t just about cutting costs; it’s about enabling people to work intuitively.

A Microsoft 365 digital workplace reduces friction by bringing everything into one place.Conversations, documents, meetings, and tasks are all connected between Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive,while Viva Engage supports community and culture.

A well-designed digital workplace makes key content easy to surface – so employees can find what they need at the click of a button, without breaking focus or context. Microsoft Search enables global discovery across apps, reducing the friction of switching between apps to find information. At scale, this translates into meaningful productivity gains across the organisation.

Integrated workflows also reduce manual effort. For example, a Teams chat can link directly to a SharePoint policy. This seamless experience keeps employees focused and reduces context-switching.

Strengthen Governance and Security

Every new app introduced is a potential risk. Consolidating on Microsoft 365 strengthens your security posture and simplifies governance.

Microsoft 365 offers enterprise-grade security out of the box. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and identity is managed through Entra. With everything under one roof, IT can enforce policies consistently – whether it’s retention, access control, or data classification.

For example, Microsoft Purview can apply compliance policies across Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive. When an employee leaves, disabling their account revokes access to all services instantly. This reduces the risk of orphaned accounts and ensures compliance with regulations like GDPR.

A unified platform also makes audit readiness easier. Targeted communications, read receipts, and usage analytics provide clear evidence of compliance, without the need to stitch together data from multiple systems.

Prepare for AI-Driven Innovation

Microsoft 365 is now an AI-powered platform, and a unified digital workplace is essential to maximising business benefits.

Microsoft 365 Copilot and its growing ecosystem of AI agents rely on access to your organisation’s data—emails, documents, chats, and more. If your content is scattered across third-party tools, Copilot can’t access it without expensive integration. .If your data lives within Microsoft 365, Copilot can assist your employees without the need for any further IT work on platform integration.

Ready to Achieve Maximum ROI from Your Microsoft 365 Digital Workplace?

Our team of Microsoft MVPs work directly with SharePoint, Teams, Viva and Copilot product groups, keeping us ahead of the curve – so we can advise IT teams on how to get the most value from their M365 investment.

Book a short call with one of our Microsoft 365 experts to understand where your digital workplace can be simplified, optimised and better aligned to deliver measurable ROI.