GTconsult - Blog #Licence OptimisationGTconsult - Blog #Licence Optimisationhttps://www.gtconsult.com/blogs/tag/licence-optimisationTue, 31 Mar 2026 12:18:18 -0700http://zoho.com/sites/<![CDATA[Why Most Teams Aren't Actually Maximising Their Microsoft 365 Licence]]>https://www.gtconsult.com/blogs/post/why-most-teams-aren-t-actually-maximising-their-microsoft-365-licenceYour team has Microsoft 365 — but are they using more than Outlook and Teams? Most organisations pay for the full suite and barely scratch the surface. Here's why the gap between your licence and your team's knowledge is costing you more than you think, and what you can do about it.]]>

You're paying for Microsoft 365. Every month. For every user.


But here's the thing — do you actually know what you're paying for? And more importantly, is your team using even half of it?


If your honest answer is "I'm not sure," you're not alone. And that's exactly the problem.

The licence you're paying for vs. the licence you're using

Let's talk about what's actually happening in most organisations.


Your team opens Outlook. They jump into a Teams meeting. Maybe someone opens a Word doc or an Excel spreadsheet. And that's... pretty much it.

But your Microsoft 365 licence — whether it's Business Standard, E3, or E5 — includes a lot more than email, meetings, and documents. We're talking SharePoint for document management and intranets, OneDrive for personal cloud storage (up to 1TB per user), Power Automate for workflow automation, Microsoft Forms for surveys and data collection, Planner and To Do for task management, Lists for structured data tracking — and depending on your plan, even more.


Most of these tools are sitting there, fully licenced, fully available, and completely untouched.

It's not a technology problem — it's a knowledge problem

Here's where it gets frustrating. Organisations will pay for a Microsoft 365 E3 licence and then also pay separately for Dropbox, Trello, SurveyMonkey, or Zoom — tools that do what their existing licence already covers.


Not because Microsoft 365 can't do it. But because nobody on the team knows it can.

Think about that for a second. You're essentially paying twice for the same capability — once through your M365 licence and again through a third-party subscription — just because your people haven't been shown what's already available.


And it's not their fault. Nobody sat them down and said, "Hey, you know that thing you're using Dropbox for? OneDrive does that. And it's already included in what we're paying for." Or, "That approval process you're running over email? Power Automate can handle that automatically."

The real cost of underutilisation

This isn't just about wasting a few rand or dollars on duplicate subscriptions, although that adds up faster than you'd think.


According to industry research, 20–30% of IT budgets are lost to unused SaaS features. That's not a small leak — that's a significant chunk of your technology spend going nowhere.

But the bigger cost is the one you can't see on a spreadsheet: lost productivity.

Microsoft's own Work Trend Index found that users spend 60% of their time in Microsoft 365 apps on emails, chats, and meetings — and only 40% on actual creation work in apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. That's according to data from their 2024 annual report, covering trillions of productivity signals across their platform.


Now imagine if your team knew how to use SharePoint properly instead of emailing files back and forth. Or if they could set up a simple Power Automate flow to handle that weekly status report nobody enjoys putting together. That 60/40 split starts to shift. People spend less time in communication loops and more time getting actual work done.

The features hiding in plain sight

Let me give you a few examples of what most teams are missing, even on a standard Business Standard or E3 licence:

Version history in SharePoint and OneDrive.

Your team is probably still saving files as "Report_v2_FINAL_actuallyFINAL.docx." Meanwhile, SharePoint and OneDrive automatically track every version of every document. You can roll back changes, see who edited what, and recover deleted files — all built in, no extra cost.

Shared libraries in SharePoint.
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Instead of dumping everything in a shared drive or emailing attachments, your team could be working from a single source of truth with proper permissions, metadata, and search. But most teams never get past using SharePoint as a glorified file dump.

Power Automate for approvals.
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That thing where someone emails a document to their manager, who forwards it to finance, who then emails it back? That entire chain can be automated with a simple approval flow. It's included in your licence. It takes about 15 minutes to set up. But if nobody knows it exists, nobody uses it.

Microsoft Forms for data collection.

Still sending around Excel spreadsheets for people to fill in and email back? Forms handles this natively and feeds the data straight into Excel or SharePoint — no manual consolidation needed.

OneDrive sync and Files On-Demand.

Your team has up to 1TB of personal cloud storage per user. They can sync files across devices and choose which files to keep offline. It's essentially Dropbox, built into Windows, at no extra charge. But I'd bet most of your users either don't have it set up or don't know it's there.

"But we've done training"

Maybe you have. A lot of organisations run training when they first roll out Microsoft 365. A half-day session, maybe a full day if they're thorough. Someone walks through the apps, everyone nods, and then they go back to working exactly the way they did before.


Here's the problem with once-off training: Microsoft 365 isn't static. Microsoft ships updates and new features constantly — their 2025 roadmap alone lists over 500 planned updates across commercial and education plans. What you trained on two years ago isn't the same platform your team is using today.


And let's be honest — how much of a full-day training session does anyone actually retain? If the training isn't practical, scenario-based, and reinforced over time, it fades within a week. People fall back on old habits because those habits are comfortable, even when they're inefficient.

So what does maximising your licence actually look like?

It's not about becoming a power user overnight. It's about making sure your people understand the basics properly and then building from there.


It starts with the fundamentals: knowing where to save files (OneDrive for personal, SharePoint for team), understanding how Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive work together, and being able to share files with a link instead of an attachment.


Then you layer on productivity skills: co-authoring documents in real time, using Planner for project tracking, setting up basic automations, organising SharePoint sites so people can actually find things.


And for the people who want to go further — your site owners, your digital champions, your IT-adjacent team members — there's governance, security settings, and advanced automation with Power Automate and eventually Copilot.


The point is, it's a journey. Not a single event.

What you can do right now

Before you do anything else, run a quick mental audit. Ask yourself:


Are we paying for any third-party tools that duplicate what Microsoft 365 already offers? When was the last time our team received structured M365 training? Can our people confidently explain the difference between OneDrive and SharePoint? Does anyone on the team know how to set up a basic Power Automate flow? Are we using SharePoint for document management, or is it just a dumping ground?


If most of those answers make you uncomfortable, that's your sign.

The good news is you don't need a massive overhaul. You just need to start closing the gap between what you're paying for and what your people actually know how to use.

And that's exactly what we built our Microsoft 365 training for. Self-paced, practical, video-based modules covering everything from M365 navigation basics through to Power Automate and Copilot — across four learning tracks designed for different roles in your organisation. And because we're based in South Africa and believe people learn best in their own language, every module is available in English, Afrikaans, and isiZulu.


Because your licence isn't the problem. The gap between the licence and your team's knowledge is.

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