Wednesday, April 17, 2013

My dream business


I am not a business person by nature. Coming from a long line of service class people, the entrepreneurial gene has been long suppressed. But the power of imagination can take us anywhere.
My dream business is one where I work for myself and for others in such a way that I am doing good for others as well as feeling fulfilled as a person.
Money has never been much of a criteria. I look forward to the challenges and the pleasure of a job well done. That is what motivates me.
We learnt about the Microsoft Office 365 ( http://www.office365.in )  in the Indiblogger meet in Delhi the other day. The online resources at Lync Online and Sharepoint Online filled in the gaps in my knowledge.
My understanding of the product has made me realize that this would be a great asset in my work.
We are used to the normal MS Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Outlook etc. All of these are there in Office 365 in an improved version along with a host of new features like Cloud, Sharepoint, Video conferencing facility and other value added options.
We can do many new things with the improved Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook applications.
The new features in Word make it fun and easy to use. The fonts, colors and other text styles can be chosen from a dial type menu. One can insert pictures and graphics directly from the world wide web using the Online pics button. Thus making the Word document/blog attractive, effective and easy to work with. There is a Read mode which allows us to make changes like increasing the size of a graphic or change the background light and shade as per our reading preference.
Cloud ensures that I can begin writing my blog on my laptop at home and continue the work wherever I go. It could be on my tablet in the public transport and even on my phone.
The best part is that every time I can begin right where I left off as all the changes that I made in the earlier session of work would be carried out and ready for me in the Cloud where the data is stored.
The Cloud allows the data/document to be ready to use and secure at the same time. At home, in a train, on a plane or sitting on a garden bench.
It is like carrying your office with you whenever you go. As long as there is connectivity it will work.
I am not sure that is such a good thing though specially because it will stop us from switching off work ever.
The temptation to do a little more and refine our work will always be there with the means to do it at our finger tips.
It will definitely save time, effort, and money and open up opportunities to do more.

 It's like a  little magic going on there.

 Microsoft Office 365 is a good fit for a baby-steps business like mine. Here is why I say this:
The upfront cost is reasonable. The same licence can be used to load the software into five devices of the same user. How they propose to ensure that one person uses all five of these devices is not clear to me though.
There is a provision to store the data in the Cloud and to allow access  to it from anywhere in the world using the user ID and password. It is a secure system. This will help multiple users to access and work with the data.
An interesting point is that users can work on the documents stored in the Cloud serially or  at the same time without interfering with each others' work.
A document can be checked out by a user. Till he completes his part and checks it back into the Cloud, it shows as having been locked by this particular user for changes (I think).
It will help with the version control of documents.
Another attractive but extraneous feature is that Airtel proposes to bundle its internet service with Microsoft Office 365 http://www.office365.in
The bundle of Microsoft Offfice 365 and good quality internet service would help my small businesses to stay online and do my work without paying through the nose.

Who knows my dream business may soon be a reality with this new Microsoft Office 365 product.
Imagine.

3 comments:

Here's your chance to talk! I would love to know what you think.