Office 365 and its LibreOffice & G Suite alternatives put to the test
Every company, large or small, relies on 4 pillars to grow: communication, organisation, creation and collaboration.
These pillars can become real vectors of competitiveness by promoting productivity, innovation and cost reduction. Read all our tips on office suites.
Happy employees thanks to technology
Happy employees are productive employees. This point is a central argument in the choice of a collaborative working tool, because employees spend most of their time with it.
Messaging, diaries and documents are often open throughout the day at workstations.
Each micro-task or optimised action can therefore be transformed into thousands of euros in savings for a company over the course of a year.
The new generation of collaborative tools is an unprecedented opportunity to generate happiness at work and therefore productivity (file sharing, co-editing of documents, knowledge sharing, etc.).
Research also shows a correlation between employees' affinity with their tools and the amount of time they spend in their company. This is common sense, but it is also a revolution, because IT has not always been our friend: slow applications, loss of unsaved documents, viruses, and so on.
A study conducted by Deloitte and Ipsos MORI shows that employee happiness has a positive impact on companies on several levels:
- It makes employees 31% more productive;
- It generates 33% more support among employees;
- It leads to a 37% improvement in the sales performance of sales staff;
- It increases the loyalty of employees, who stay with the company longer;
- It reduces burnouts;
- It makes employees smile - for everyone's happiness!
Employee satisfaction is a delicate balance. The tools most commonly used, including office suites, must therefore be :
- adapted to their uses (ideal functional coverage)
- ergonomic and pleasant
- fast
- compatible
- flexible,
- trustworthy.
The last point is perhaps the most important: having confidence in your tool is like having confidence in your parachute when you jump out of a plane. Users need to know that their data is protected, backed up at all times and confidential.
There are currently three market leaders: Microsoft with its Office pack, Google with G Suite and LibreOffice, whose online version has just been released.
Microsoft Office 365 (formerly Office Pack)
At the end of 2016, Microsoft Office was used by 1.2 billion people in 140 countries and 107 languages, making it the most dominant player on the market. In addition, Outlook.com alone has more than 400 million active users.
Despite the fact that Microsoft held back for years to minimise its compatibility, things are different today. The Office package now has a version that can be installed on your computer, as well as a 'light' online version.
We say 'light' because Office online does not have all the functionality and power of the classic version. It is not possible, for example, to create Excel macros online.
In addition to its online version, which is compatible with Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, Office is compatible with Windows, MAC, Windows Phone, Android and , as of today, Chrome OS.
A small revolution when you consider that Google, the publisher of Chrome OS, is the most aggressive of its competitors.
In its 2016 version, Office has also improved and unified its design: Excel and Word have never been so fast, beautiful or ergonomic!
On the other hand, the continued presence of OneNote 2016, Outlook 2016, Publisher 2016 and Access 2016 is not essential today. In its Premium version, Office 365 gives you two applications that can really change the way you work:
- Skype Business, which lets you set up video conferences with up to 250 participants;
- Yammer, the successful professional social network. Yammer will make it easier for you to share information within your company. It will be a real lever for innovation.
G Suite (formerly Google Apps)
G Suite was launched by Google exactly 10 years ago under the name Google Apps. Between 2006 and 2016, 5 million businesses worldwide switched to Google, taking Micorsoft Office by surprise: at the time, Google was the only company to offer a 100% online collaborative platform.
Unlike Office, all G Suite functions are available online using a modern web browser. Only Google Hangout (the equivalent of Skype) and Google Drive require the installation of a small program to be used.
According to a recent study conducted jointly by Google and Forrester, the ROI (return on investment) recorded by companies using G Suite is 304%. This annual return on investment breaks down as follows:
- Collaboration: $801/year
- Mobility: $537/year
- Telephone: $320/year
- Computing: $50/year
All Google applications (Maps, Analytics, YouTube, etc.) can be added to your G Suite account, but only the following applications are officially part of the package:
- Gmail: email
- Google Calendar
- Google Contacts
- Google Groups: groups and mailing lists
- Google Site: create websites and intranets
- Google Drive: create and share documents
- Google Plus: your company's public social network added to the suite in 2016
G Suite is fast, ultra-compatible and highly collaborative. For example, a document can be edited by 20 people without any conflict.
We also appreciate Google's transparency about the application's availability rate: a dashboard shows the status of the service in real time. According to its own findings, Google saves 2 hours a week by working together: that's 13 full days a year!
Google has always wanted to use and test its products internally before offering them to others. It was on this basis that they were able to measure the indicators below (Global Assesment Trends Report, SHL):
- 53% of documents are edited by more than one person;
- Increase from 48% to 53% of documents shared with all Google employees.
LibreOffice with Open365
LibreOffice was launched in 2010 on the basis of the Open Office project. Just 2 years after its launch, it was being used by 75 million users worldwide. It is available in 110 languages.
What's great about LibreOffice is that it's free and open source. It has all the ergonomics of Microsoft Office, but without the design.
LibreOffice is relatively "raw", which some users do not like. LibreOffice comes with the following applications:
- Writer: word processing
- Calc: spreadsheets
- Impress: presentations
- Draw: drawing
- Math: create mathematical formulas
- Base: database manager
LibreOffice does not have an e-mail function. This space is filled by Thunderbird.
In 2016 LibreOffice arrived in the Cloud... at last!
Open365 is an Open Source online office suite based not only on LibreOffice but also on KDE, Seafile, Docker and Jitsi, offering an iso-functional alternative to G Suite and Office.
Alternatives to Office, G Suite and LibreOffice
If you can't find what you're looking for in the solutions described above, there are real alternatives such as YaZiba, a French solution that covers communication and collaboration functions. There's also NextCloud, the equivalent of Open 365 in terms of positioning. Finally, there's Zimbra, an Open Source suite that benefits from a very active community but suffers from a lack of ergonomics.
Traditional office suites have improved a great deal over the last 5 years. However, they are being challenged by newcomers who want to put an end to email, among other things. Slack, Jamespot, Tibbr and Jive are collaborative platforms that should also be considered before launching an office suite.
Article translated from French