In the past two years I have focused a lot on Startups Consulting, Strategy planning, Implementation: everything from A to Z, from bottom to top. And one of the things I noticed among young newborn companies is this lack of trust in using Microsoft products. Yes, as a startup you might be tempted to use all the free products and tools out there, there’s no argue about that.
Still, I want to ask you how far are you willing to invest in your company in order to make it successful? How far are you willing to go, to what extremes?
This article will not target the free tools and products out there. I’m not here to make you feel bad about wanting to save up money. I’m here to open your eyes: in business, not taking risks and not investing in your idea is the worst thing you can ever do to yourself and to your Startup. And this is why your business might still be better off using Microsoft products in 2014.
Microsoft Products in 2014 – an Expert Overview
“The King is not dead. Long live the King” (traditional French saying)
Some of Microsoft’s products have been there since forever, we could say. I’ve followed a series of topics on Quora related to products that have made it big, products that have failed miserably and products that are still in high demand even after 30 years.
The Evergreen Microsoft Product: Office Suite
Why is Microsoft Office an evergreen product of the company? For starters, I will point out these classic tools we all used at some point in our lives: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, MS Project.
A Word on Microsoft Office Word
Perhaps the most used Microsoft product of all time, Microsoft Word has never failed to let its users down. Despite the emergence of newer and more compact word processing software and applications, Microsoft Word continues to dominate the scenario. In a world where intelligence business solutions are emerging every day, Microsoft Word provides its users with an easy interface, organized application tabs and revolutionary desktop publishing capabilities.
The software is more of a ‘habit’ for existing, new and emerging businesses.
The Wonders of Microsoft Excel
With the power to effectively conduct financial management analyses, administrative task-segregation and data analyses, Microsoft Excel is not just your ordinary data base software. Modern businesses looking forward to determining intelligent business solutions for their start-ups can count on this simple-yet-analytical software for the finance side of things. Tools of project management, data mining and portfolio administration make this software even more powerful.
The user-friendly interface not only gets the simpler calculations done but invites logical inference from business owners to initiate a series of financial processes by inputting mathematical, accounting and financial formulas.
Presenting Microsoft PowerPoint
We all love the zooming capabilities of presentation-centric software like Prezi, but this product of Microsoft Office has never failed to impress business owners in its capabilities to produce worthy presentations. I believe that start-ups can specifically benefit from using Microsoft PowerPoint as their primary presentation making software because at the initial stages of any business, intelligent entrepreneurs pitch their ideas and strategies to potential partners and customers.
Making that ‘pitch’ worth every dime is what Microsoft PowerPoint can help you with. By incorporating numerous presentation styles, layouts, pointer options and animations, Microsoft PowerPoint still dominates a sizable area of this industry.
Proficient Projects with MS Project
Planning entire projects requires a great deal of insight – a vision that most project managers need to have in order for their projects to be successes. One of the products of Microsoft that, in my opinion, has managed to correctly define the tools required to devise great projects is MS Project. I know that the classic pen-and-paper brainstorming sessions and plan evaluations have worked for various businesses in the past.
However, when we talk of organized thought processes and intelligence business solutions for modern day businesses, trusted software like the MS Project are extremely beneficial. Whether it’s resource allocation, estimating project timelines or evaluating What-If scenarios; this Microsoft product has taken project planning, execution and implementation to the next level.
UXC Eclipse, just like many software providers for enterprises, has recently integrated a series of Microsoft products in order to produce effective projects. One of them is MS Project. The idea is to organize work patterns with the use of hierarchies and levels. All for the sake of efficient scheduling add-ones, budgeting systems and MS Project client integration for customer-based data analysis.
Successful Microsoft Products Over Time
A number of Microsoft products have made it big over time; I have already mentioned a few from the ‘Evergreen’ ones. Others like the FoxPro and Encarta were discontinued despite having gained enormous successes. Following the discussion topics on Quora, I came across an interesting thread of responses that mentioned a few such products.
The Visual Basic series has been deemed top of this list. Before .NET was released at the start of this millennium, versions of the Visual Basic series were quite popular amongst Windows developers. Others on this list include older versions of Microsoft Windows like Windows XP and Windows 98.
In Conclusion…
Either way you take it, Microsoft products are an important part of a business. Some of their features offer more stable versions of data storage in comparison to Cloud solutions. Not to mention, the very basic options have been implemented even by Google in their Google Drive. So let’s not turn a blind eye on the efficiency these products have shown over time.
