How Embee is helping small businesses grow by leveraging Microsoft’s Modern Workplace for remote working solutions with VirtuaPlace

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a game-changer for many small and medium-sized businesses as it pushed them to embrace digitisation while working in remote or hybrid settings. The wave of digital transformation enabled these businesses to add on new capabilities and fast-track their growth journey even amidst a challenging business landscape. According to a McKinsey Global Survey of executives, companies have accelerated the digitisation of their customer and supply-chain interactions by three to four years.

For many of these businesses, Microsoft 365 has been an integral part of their remote workplace toolkit as it helped them collaborate seamlessly despite not working together in an office. Sporting popular apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 offers budding enterprises cutting-edge productivity tools with features like cloud services, advanced security and device management that help them run their business more professionally.

What stands out about these collaboration and productivity solutions is that they come with enterprise grade security, so that businesses could be run securely even remotely. These tools are compatible with both Android and iOS devices. The apps that come with Microsoft 365 Business Basic toolkit are Word, Excel, Outlook, OneDrive for Business, PowerPoint, Yammer, OneNote, Office 365 Admin, Outlook Groups, SharePoint, Office Delve for Office 365, Microsoft Teams.

To that end, Embee Software has been helping small businesses get Microsoft 365 licenses easily and at competitive prices through its e-commerce portal- VirtuaPlace.

VirtuaPlacemight have born out of necessity in the wake of the pandemic, but is a one-stop solution for ventures who’re looking to modernise their organisational culture with Microsoft products.

A one-stop-shop for affordable remote workplace solutions

Embee’s technology e-commerce portal offers licenses for four kinds of plans — M365 Business Basic, M365 Business Standard, M365 Business Premium and M365 Apps for Business — at prices that are very affordable. For instance, the most basic of plans — M365 Business Basic — costs as low as Rs 100/ per user each month.

At a regular store, a business might find it difficult to get these licenses at prices as affordable as the ones offered by Embee. Moreover, as opposed to a regular store where one would initially get just an estimate of the cost, Embee’s new portal also has an integrated payment gateway that enables businesses to buy the licenses instantly. Embee’s decision to offer Microsoft solutions at affordable prices was driven by the challenges that SMBs often face in their growth journeys.

Embee’s new service is not just cost-effective but time-saving too when compared to the usual options available to businesses. Under regular circumstances, a business would first scout for reliable licence providers, compare quotes, assess which plan suits their needs best and then finally make a purchase.

“Usually, this process takes almost a month’s time to complete. With VirtuaPlace, the purchase can happen within minutes in just 4 simple steps. We also have a dedicated team of Microsoft experts ready to support a client at every stage of their journey,” says Shivani Sharma, AVP-Marketing, Embee Software.

Once an enterprise has selected and bought a plan, the Embee team assists them in setting up and configuring Microsoft 365 solutions, according to the client’s requirements and budget. The Microsoft experts working with the company can also help out businesses in case they’re not sure which plan would suit their requirements.

Helping small businesses move towards greater efficiency

At the same time, Embee has a dedicated team that enables businesses to migrate to Microsoft 365 solutions from their legacy systems for greater efficiency and productivity while working remotely. The company’s support team ensures that the migration process is seamless and goes on without any glitches. Even after the suite is activated, Embee’s team of Microsoft experts offers 24x7 support to its clients.

With the pandemic making virtual meetings a norm, Embee enables budding businesses and their employees to adapt to Microsoft Teams easily with its low-cost training programmes that guarantee minimum 40 percent adoption.

Since its launch in late 2020, VirtuaPlace has catered to more than 300 SMBs and has onboarded over 80+ customers empowering them to address their remote workplace needs ranging from M365, Octane HRMS, ERP, Azure Cloud solution and more. .

Buoyed by the phenomenal success of VirtuaPlace, Embee has more plans for the future. “We are working on modernising and expanding the platform. We are working towards reducing the time taken to procure Microsoft 365 licenses and bring down the time taken to just two minutes,” explains Shivani.

The company also provides businesses Microsoft Azure cloud services online on its e-commerce platform that can help boost productivity, add security and optimise costs with cloud migration, among other benefits. Its cloud solutions on Microsoft Azure cater to SMBs’ needs within specific timelines and costs and lead them to unlock their full potential.

Embee’s success in helping SMBs scale ahead amidst the pandemic with Microsoft 365 solutions is backed by the trust its clients have in it. An industry leader with over three decades of experience, Embee has also won the Microsoft India Area Award 2021 – Cloud Innovation Partner of the Year, for Azure and MWS. These annual awards recognise Microsoft partners demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of the proper customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.