Here’s a pattern we see constantly: a business pays for Microsoft 365 every month, uses it for email and Word documents, and then pays again for separate tools that do things their existing licences already include.
If you’re on Business Basic, Standard, or Premium, here’s what you’re likely already paying for.
File storage and sharing: OneDrive and SharePoint
Still emailing spreadsheets back and forth, or paying separately for Dropbox? Every Microsoft 365 business licence includes 1TB of OneDrive storage per person, plus SharePoint for shared company files. Files stay in one place, everyone works on the current version, and when a laptop dies the files don’t die with it.
A phone system, a booking page, and forms
Three tools businesses commonly buy separately:
- Microsoft Bookings: a booking page where clients pick a slot in your calendar. People pay for Calendly; Bookings is included in most business plans.
- Microsoft Forms: surveys, feedback forms, quizzes. People pay for SurveyMonkey or Typeform.
- Teams: most businesses use it for the odd video call and miss that it replaces internal email almost entirely, and can even act as a full phone system with the right add-on.
Automation: Power Automate
That thing where someone copies data from an email into a spreadsheet every morning? Or where invoices get saved to a folder, renamed, and forwarded to the accountant? Power Automate can usually do it automatically, and a basic version is included with your licence. We’ve seen single automations save businesses several hours a week, every week.
Security you already own (and should switch on today)
This is the important one. Included in every business plan, and switched off by default in far too many businesses:
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA): the single most effective thing you can do against account takeover. Free. Takes an afternoon to roll out properly.
- Conditional Access (Business Premium): block sign-ins from countries you don’t operate in, require compliant devices, and stop stolen passwords being enough on their own.
- Intune (Business Premium): if a laptop or phone goes missing, wipe company data remotely. Without it, a lost device is a data breach.
If you’re paying for Business Premium and not using Intune and Conditional Access, you’re buying a security system and leaving it in the box.
So what’s the catch?
Honestly? Setup. None of this works well out of the box. It works well when someone configures it deliberately, matches it to how your business actually operates, and switches off the noise. That’s a few days of work, not a project that eats a quarter.
A good place to start is knowing what your current licences include versus what you actually use. That gap analysis is part of what we look at in our free IT health check. It’s not unusual to find the savings cover the cost of fixing everything else.