14 DAY TRIAL // While Microsoft is making really big efforts to bring more Office versions to the market and conquer the mobile markets as well, it appears that the majority of company employees aren't actually using the productivity suite as they should and many launch it just to view documents.
A research conducted by SoftWatch and published by UberGizmo reveals that many companies are actually wasting money on Office because their employees aren't really using the powerful productivity tools included in the application.
Instead, seven out of ten workers said they were using Office to view documents or to make some simple modifications to their files. Outlook is the most popular app included in Office, with 68 percent of the respondents saying they're using it to send and receive emails, while 17 percent of them claimed that Excel is their tool of choice from the entire productivity suite.
The study involved 148,500 employees and 51 companies and was conducted over the course of three different months.
Microsoft recently launched Office for iPad, while also confirming that new versions are on their way, including a touch-optimized build for Windows 8 and an Android port.
Office 365 also remains a key product for the company, as it continues the transition to a devices and services approach that's expected to help it reach a wider array of customers.
“When it comes to Office 365, the vision is pretty straightforward. It is to make sure that the 1 billion Office users and growing can have access to the high-fidelity Office experience on every device they love to use,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said last month when he announced the new Office for iPad.
“Our commitment going forward is to make sure that we drive Office 365 everywhere. So that means across the Web, across all phones, across all tablets, across PCs, that's our real commitment to Office 365 everywhere,” he continued.
Office 365 is also the service that can add more features to the new Office for iPad tool, as consumers need a subscription to this service in order to get full editing support and work with their documents just like they do it on a traditional PC. The cheapest subscription plan is called Office 365 Personal and is available for $6.99 (€5.05) per month or $69.99 (€50.5) per year and provides support for one PC or Mac and one tablet to be connected at the same time.