Welcome to Microsoft 365 for Construction. Where We Are Going, There Are No Roads

Microsoft 365's strength (and weakness) is its ability to be configured and customized. There are over 200M users of Microsoft 365 across every industry and in every part of the world. Microsoft does not focus on specific industries or verticals. They design their Microsoft 365 products to be generic enough to have cross-industry appeal, and it's up to IT specialists to tailor them to their specific organization. So, there is no "standard" Microsoft 365 path to follow for setting up your construction projects.

Your ideal Microsoft 365 construction solution depends on many different variables such as:

• Size of your company
• Your organization's IT experience and support
• Maturity of your PMO/processes
• Level of technology adoption (including Microsoft 365)
• Other systems you may be using
• Need for mobility (e.g., offline access to data)
• Preferred Microsoft 365 applications
• Amount of change your organization can embrace
• Resource levels to support a solution
• IT budget

For example, one of our clients with a limited budget wanted a daily report solution with a template that they could easily share with team members. Their Microsoft 365 application of choice was Excel, so we developed a solution where they could quickly get the latest daily report spreadsheet template from a centralized SharePoint site shared with the rest of the team. It was simple but effective.

Another example is a client who wanted to use Microsoft Project Online and SharePoint to manage all their projects. We developed standard Microsoft Project and SharePoint site templates that were easy to replicate and utilized Power BI for roll-up reporting.

So, while there is no "standard" Microsoft 365 approach to use for your construction project, all hope is not lost. The key is finding the right IT solutions partner with deep construction and Microsoft 365 platform experience to guide you in the right direction.