The Ultimate Guide to M365 Business Premium: A Must-Have for MSPs
In today's fast-paced digital landscape, businesses need more than just basic productivity tools to stay ahead. Enter M365 Business Premium, a powerhouse package in Microsoft's 365 for Business line-up.
This premium offering not only includes the renowned productivity apps that businesses rely on but also integrates advanced security features designed to protect growing enterprises from evolving cyber threats.
The benefits of M365 Business Premium extend far beyond security. In this blog you’ll discover how this package is a game-changer for MSPs and their clients, delivering a holistic, standardized experience that enhances customer satisfaction and retention.
What is Business Premium?
M365 Business Premium is one of the higher-tier packages in Microsoft’s 365 for Business line up, combining the renowned productivity apps of a typical M365 Business package with a range of security features designed to protect the growing enterprise. These include:
- Advanced Threat Protection – Thanks to the inclusion of Microsoft Defender XDR, M365 Business Premium protects a business’s users and data from evolving cyber threats and vulnerabilities, remotely wipes lost or stolen devices, and defends against malware, ransomware, and other zero-day threats. day threats.
- Access, Device, and Application management - With the included Entra ID, Business Premium users have a cloud-based identity and access management solution that safely connects them to their Microsoft 365 applications. Coupled with Intune, a solution for device and application management, this helps to create a holistic security setup for remote workers. , a solution for device and application management, this helps to create a holistic security setup for remote workers.
On the surface, these are relatively straightforward value adds; with so many customers already within your Microsoft environment, the Business Premium tier is a natural evolution for the growing business.
But we're merely scratching the surface here. For the modern MSP, the benefits of Business Premium go further than this simple security upsell, delivering what Gartner has called the Magic Quadrant Leader for Endpoint Protection Platforms.
Bringing M365 Business Premium to Customers
However much you leverage Business Premium within your business, its true value lies in what it helps your customers achieve. That means your first challenge is moving Standard customers over to their new Premium licenses.
For a growing MSP, the move to a Business Premium licensing model is less a case of ‘if’ than ‘when’. Its various security and wrap-around features provide that complete, standardized experience that customers expect as standard. Thankfully, the benefits of this shift are felt equally, by both the customer and the MSP.
So, how do you start making the most of Business Premium?
Begin by easing your upsell
When the need arises for a new business technology, customers don’t want to spend time researching their every possible option, nor do they want to feel pressured into buying one of hundreds of disparate technologies. Proposing a simple Microsoft tenant update is much more palatable, and aids your retention by providing users with the fastest possible value add.
Deliver complete, wrap-around services
With Business Premium, you’re able to deliver your customers’ security, productivity, and collaboration from a single license within Microsoft 365. Not only does this provide a simplified experience for the customer – who now has consistency across all their technologies – but for you, who relies on only a single vendor for your product delivery.
Start leveraging the full Microsoft environment
Business Premium’s extra features aren’t simple bolt-ons – they help to create more value from your customers’ existing Microsoft technologies. As we explained in our previous blog, What is Microsoft Secure Score and should MSPs be using it?, M365 Business Premium makes Secure Score an even more effective enabler of risk discovery, KPI measurements, and security posture.
However, that’s just one small example; Business Premium’s benefits also extend to Azure, Dynamics 365, and other Microsoft applications.
The MSP Benefits of Business Premium
Already, we see how much easier it is to endear customers to your Microsoft Business Premium services when you start to deliver the full wrap-around service. As time goes on, this broader adoption across you and your customers will create yet more opportunities to perfect your service delivery – and your bottom line.
A Workforce United
You don’t need to become a Microsoft specialist overnight to make the most of Business Premium, but the more you depend on Microsoft, the easier it is to source the technology experts you need.
With Microsoft’s solutions making up approximately 48% of the office app market share, you have a broad user base and, with that a broad knowledge base. You won’t need to rely on the unicorn hire that is the multi-disciplined tech wizard in order to deliver your solutions; just one collaborative workforce of Microsoft experts.
Productising Potential
When you have every available M365 Business policy to leverage, you have a huge opportunity for productization. Consider the wide range of needs across all your customer tenants; their user base, their industry, their regulatory requirements, and their security concerns.
With Business Premium, you have the flexibility to create tiered security and productivity packages that match all their needs and allow you to specialize your solutions. If you’re just getting started, inforcer is the ultimate enabler of your brand-new product offerings.
Vendor Consolidation
When you start exploring and embracing the full capabilities of M365 Business Premium, you find you’re much less dependent on multiple vendors without compromising your service capabilities.
Your customers are just as susceptible to vendor fatigue as you, and offering a holistic approach with M365 – as opposed to providing another third-party alternative – keeps their licensing simple while you provide a visible return on their investment.
Why Should MSPs Unlock the Value of Business Premium?
With Microsoft Partners now targeting wrap-around services, the line between Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Premium is no longer as blurred. For growing partners, and those serving medium-sized businesses, Business Premium is nothing less than essential for professional purposes.
Yet that investment alone is no guarantee of success; it’s all down to how much partners are willing to embrace its benefits.
The Microsoft Partners that standardize Business Premium across all tenants offers a more tightly-knit approach to security. They’ll start to demonstrate value clearly, with a fully-enabled Microsoft environment that shows true return on investment via Secure Score. They’ll learn to differentiate themselves from the competition, with extra policies and apps that provide a more flexible approach to product offerings.
Microsoft recognizes the shift in their Partner clients’ demands – and is pulling out all the stops to ensure those demands are being met.
Start Leveraging M365 Business Premium with inforcer
With inforcer, Microsoft MSPs speed up deployment, secure their tenant environments, and start turning policies into productized services.
If you’re exploring your Business Premium potential, or simply want faster, smarter security policy management, we’re happy to talk you through everything we offer.
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