Tag Archives: Office365ProPlus

Choosing Office 365 to Reduce the Stress of Starting a New Practice

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This article excerpt, by Dr. Vikram Gandhi, originally appeared here: http://bit.ly/11yXkhp
When I finished my three-year residency in Periodontics at Texas A&M Baylor College of Dentistry, I didn’t think I would purchase a dental practice and remodel a new office that same year. But that’s what happened. When I bought Firewheel Dental Implants and Periodontics in August 2013, it was in an older building and staff used snail mail to communicate with referring dental practices.
I wanted to modernize the practice and work in a paperless office, so when the opportunity came along, I took it. Making decisions about permits and dental equipment took a lot of my time, so I wasn’t thinking much about business technology. I used Gmail and that was about it. I was living at my brother’s house, and one day he heard me complaining about how difficult it was to find a contractor’s email. Then, when I told him how expensive it was to hire someone to build a website, he told me about Office 365.
I’m not really a technology person. I like working with my hands and meeting people. That’s why I chose dentistry. So for me, Office 365 is perfect. I have everything I need at my fingertips: email and the Office applications for collaboration as well as web design and development tools. Everything is easy to use and familiar, and it’s cloud-based so I don’t have to worry about servers in the office. I have a professional-looking email address that includes our company name. And compared to Gmail, it’s so much easier to organize my business correspondence using folders that I assign to different topics and vendors. I’m saving a lot of time not searching through my emails. Office 365 is HIPAA-compliant and has email encryption capabilities, so I can send emails that contain patient data to referring dentists without worrying about breaching confidentiality regulations.
But the biggest surprise for me was how easy it was to build my own website using SharePoint Online. I saved approximately $5,000 USD in web development fees. In basically one weekend, I built a website (www.dentalimplantsandperio.com) that matched my expectations. There’s lots of educational content, with videos that walk patients through the procedures and pre- and post-op instructions. I don’t want people to leave my website to learn what a periodontist does or what a gum graft looks like because if they go back to search the Internet, my competition could pop up. Now I’m busier with my practice, but it doesn’t take long to add a new page or a new tab. Right now, I’m looking into creating a page where patients can provide reviews of their experience at Firewheel.
I have five computers and laptops with the latest version of Office applications on all of them, thanks to Office 365 ProPlus. This comes in handy when I teach at the dental school every Wednesday afternoon. I can store all my PowerPoint presentations and lecture notes online in OneDrive for Business, and if I tweak my notes or make a change to the presentation during class, they are saved the next time I upload the files. Now I never have to figure out which device has the latest version of a document.
This is especially true with OneNote. No matter what device I pick up, it has all my notebooks up to date. One of the ways I use OneNote is for employee reviews. We go over the review together, they sign it at the end, and I email them the OneNote page. It’s as easy as that. There are so many ways that Office 365 has simplified the first year of my practice, but the most important thing is that I’ve been able to devote more time to building the business instead of worrying about technology. I can’t see running my practice without it.

Choosing Office 365 to Reduce the Stress of Starting a New Practice

Posted on


This article excerpt, by Dr. Vikram Gandhi, originally appeared here: http://bit.ly/11yXkhp
When I finished my three-year residency in Periodontics at Texas A&M Baylor College of Dentistry, I didn’t think I would purchase a dental practice and remodel a new office that same year. But that’s what happened. When I bought Firewheel Dental Implants and Periodontics in August 2013, it was in an older building and staff used snail mail to communicate with referring dental practices.
I wanted to modernize the practice and work in a paperless office, so when the opportunity came along, I took it. Making decisions about permits and dental equipment took a lot of my time, so I wasn’t thinking much about business technology. I used Gmail and that was about it. I was living at my brother’s house, and one day he heard me complaining about how difficult it was to find a contractor’s email. Then, when I told him how expensive it was to hire someone to build a website, he told me about Office 365.
I’m not really a technology person. I like working with my hands and meeting people. That’s why I chose dentistry. So for me, Office 365 is perfect. I have everything I need at my fingertips: email and the Office applications for collaboration as well as web design and development tools. Everything is easy to use and familiar, and it’s cloud-based so I don’t have to worry about servers in the office. I have a professional-looking email address that includes our company name. And compared to Gmail, it’s so much easier to organize my business correspondence using folders that I assign to different topics and vendors. I’m saving a lot of time not searching through my emails. Office 365 is HIPAA-compliant and has email encryption capabilities, so I can send emails that contain patient data to referring dentists without worrying about breaching confidentiality regulations.
But the biggest surprise for me was how easy it was to build my own website using SharePoint Online. I saved approximately $5,000 USD in web development fees. In basically one weekend, I built a website (www.dentalimplantsandperio.com) that matched my expectations. There’s lots of educational content, with videos that walk patients through the procedures and pre- and post-op instructions. I don’t want people to leave my website to learn what a periodontist does or what a gum graft looks like because if they go back to search the Internet, my competition could pop up. Now I’m busier with my practice, but it doesn’t take long to add a new page or a new tab. Right now, I’m looking into creating a page where patients can provide reviews of their experience at Firewheel.
I have five computers and laptops with the latest version of Office applications on all of them, thanks to Office 365 ProPlus. This comes in handy when I teach at the dental school every Wednesday afternoon. I can store all my PowerPoint presentations and lecture notes online in OneDrive for Business, and if I tweak my notes or make a change to the presentation during class, they are saved the next time I upload the files. Now I never have to figure out which device has the latest version of a document.
This is especially true with OneNote. No matter what device I pick up, it has all my notebooks up to date. One of the ways I use OneNote is for employee reviews. We go over the review together, they sign it at the end, and I email them the OneNote page. It’s as easy as that. There are so many ways that Office 365 has simplified the first year of my practice, but the most important thing is that I’ve been able to devote more time to building the business instead of worrying about technology. I can’t see running my practice without it.

Behind the Scenes on Goodyear’s Drive to the Cloud (Part 2)

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This article excerpt, by Jim McKinnon, originally appeared here: http://bit.ly/1D9RbbN
Jim McKinnon joined Goodyear as an IT intern for the company’s England subsidiary and spent the next four decades working his way up to vice president and CIO. McKinnon, who retires this month, isn’t ending his 40-year career on cruise control—instead he’s been in a pedal-to-the-metal drive to change IT at Goodyear.
The transition to Office 365 coincided with our move to a new world headquarters and an increasingly more collaborative company culture. We wanted IT to help enable that culture change. But updating the toolset doesn’t drive behavior modification. If you want projects to succeed, change management is very important.
At Goodyear, we have a mature, externally recognized project management process that delivers results. That process includes change management.
Our Office 365 change process began with executive sponsorship: essential support from the top to ensure proper governance. We established a steering committee of leaders from all business units, representing the key functions of human resources, communications, legal, project management, research and development, and engineering. We laid out the road map for detailed implementation. Very early, we had nearly 2,000 people involved—early adopters and change agents.
We also created a support network of approximately 100 IT professionals who provided online support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. From anywhere in the world, our employees could ask a question via live chat and someone would pop up and answer it.
There were a few bumps, but Microsoft was a good partner and helped us along the way.
So far, the new tools are already making a big difference. Some of them are simple changes: working in the same document instead of passing files around, accessing documents from the web, a significant increase in instant messaging instead of emailing, more sophisticated calendaring and booking of conference rooms. We are using Lync Online for video chat, and soon we will ramp up with Skype for Business. We are also developing plans for how to leverage Yammer more to support our collaboration agenda.
Change is not just about data, processes, and systems—it’s also about people. I take great pleasure in developing teams and individuals, and since I joined Goodyear, we’ve started an IT development program to focus on emerging talent, leadership, and employees with a high level of potential. I wanted to build a great global team top to bottom: a group that works as a team, partners well with the business, and has the respect of the business. I think we’ve done that.
We’ve supported a number of business objectives during my time here, but employees are saying the move to Office 365 is one of the most visible changes for IT and the business. It’s truly a global project—it touched all our office workers, and it’s foundational for the future. 

Behind the Scenes on Goodyear’s Drive to the Cloud (Part 1)

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This article excerpt, by Jim McKinnon, originally appeared here: http://bit.ly/1D9RbbN
Jim McKinnon joined Goodyear as an IT intern for the company’s England subsidiary and spent the next four decades working his way up to vice president and CIO. McKinnon, who retires this month, isn’t ending his 40-year career on cruise control—instead he’s been in a pedal-to-the-metal drive to change IT at Goodyear.
I grew up a working-class boy.
My father was a tire builder at Goodyear. There was no work after the war in Dundee, Scotland, so he went south to England. He married a local girl, raised a family, and instilled strong values and principles in his children. I started as an intern at Goodyear in the IT department, as an analyst/programmer. It was a great job. It’s still a great job. I’m really proud that I’ve gone from IT intern to chief information officer of the company.
I like driving change. That’s where my passion is.
I’ve been driving change my whole career—especially the last five years. Within our global IT organization, we’ve improved communications and project management and deployed new tools to support the business. Technology is fast, and you need to stay current.
When I started as CIO five years ago, we needed more tools for mobility, productivity, and collaboration. Our legacy tools—Lotus Notes, WebEx, and Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007—no longer met our needs. We were frustrated with the old capital model where you purchase a toolset, then upgrade and make another big purchase two or three years later. Office 365 gave us the ability to track our licenses along the way—it’s more transparent and much easier to control.
We have approximately 67,000 employees globally, and we manufacture in 50 facilities spanning 22 countries. Across this geography, we have about 30,000 Office 365 users, and more than 13,000 are using Office 365 ProPlus. It’s a very diverse workforce representing many languages and cultures. Our Office 365 users are located at manufacturing facilities, offices, warehouses, and retail stores; they may be mobile or working from home.
Integration, communication and collaboration were some of the big reasons we made the move to Office 365. Microsoft cybersecurity capabilities gave our team peace of mind about the decision to shift to the cloud.
Watch for Part 2 next week