More than half of Office 365 licenses are are not being fully exploited

An average of 56 percent of business Microsoft Office 365 licenses are inactive, underutilized, oversized or unassigned, according to a new report.

The Global Office 365 Report: License Optimization, released today by CoreView, is based on analysis of five million enterprise workers from businesses that are either actively using its software management platform, have received a complimentary CoreView Office 365 Health Check analysis, or are using the free CoreDiscovery solution.

"With a newly transitioned remote workforce and a pandemic creating uncertain economic conditions, it's more important than ever for businesses to strategically manage their Office 365 licenses, help their employees get the full value of the purchased licenses to maximize productivity, and spend their cloud budget effectively," says Michael A Morrison, chief executive officer at CoreView. "Our data shows that there's room for improvement when it comes to Office 365 license management, with many organizations purchasing more licenses than necessary, failing to align licenses with actual employee app usage, or not using licenses they’ve already purchased. Organizations with an actionable view into their SaaS environment are able to target specific groups of users to drive adoption of Office 365 as well as to transform a seemingly mundane task of license management into significant cost savings and productivity boost."

The data shows that most businesses aren't dedicating adequate attention to license management and are paying for it on their balance sheets. CoreView found that the average business could reduce its total Office 365 costs by 14 percent if it discovered and better managed inactive licenses by eliminating or reassigning them.

IT Managers often buy Office 365 licenses in batches rather than making customer purchases based on employee workflows. As a result CoreView found that 44 percent of licenses are underutilized by employees.

Businesses can make better use of their licenses by targeting people who are not taking advantage of all of the services of Office 365 with just-in-time learning assets to increase employee productivity and maximize the return on their investment.

You can get the full report from the CoreView site.

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