Business Customers of Microsoft 365 Now Have Visio. What It Is & How to Use It
Business Customers of Microsoft 365 Now Have Visio. What It Is & How to Use It

Signing up for a Microsoft 365 Business account gives you more than just access to the Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) and cloud storage. Your subscription comes with many other tools (like Visio) and extras that you may not even know about.

This includes cloud survey tools like Microsoft Forms, free stock photos and videos and much more. One of the newest freebies to be added to existing business subscriptions is a lightweight version of Visio.

Visio is a popular diagram-making tool that allows you to make flow charts, process charts and organizational diagrams in just minutes. This is a stand-alone software that companies previously could only get through an additional purchase.

A version of Visio is now available in M365 business plans. This means that you no longer need to pay extra to get the benefits of this time-saving productivity tool.

Visio Diagram Maker Overview

Diagrams are used in multiple ways in business. There are pyramid diagrams to show sales funnels, process stage diagrams that help map out a workflow and Venn diagrams used to show relationships between different subjects.

Visio allows you to click on a diagram type and use a template to quickly create a chart that would normally take someone hours to complete. That is a real time saver for your business.

Visio image is from Microsoft

Benefits of Visio include:

  • Collaborate on Diagrams: Visio is cloud-based so you can open a diagram and share it with others to brainstorm and collaborate in real time.
  • Extend Chart Capabilities in Excel: Visio integrates with all of the Microsoft Office applications in M365. This means that you can use it inside Excel. It allows you to extend capabilities for charts and diagrams beyond what is available in the application.
  • Several Templates You Can Use: Looking through Visio’s templates can give you some great ideas for how to display your data to gain better business insights. You will find several template categories including flow charts, block diagrams, business matrix templates, cycle templates, Venn diagrams and more.
  • Export to JPG or PNG: Once you have finished your diagram in Visio, you can export it to an image and use it anywhere you like (presentations, webpages, FAQs, etc.).

Great Ways to Leverage Visio Diagrams for Your Company

Highlight Your Product/Service Features

Use a Visio diagram to create a chart of your product or service features and how they benefit customers. People only remember about 20% of a message they read. However, they remember 80% when they see it in a graphic format.

You can use a diagram to make your product marketing more engaging and to prompt potential customers to remember your benefits over a competitor’s.

Create Project Roadmaps

Project roadmaps help people visualize a project and the related tasks and timeline. This type of chart can take hours or days to create by hand in Word or Excel. If you use a Visio template, it can take just a fraction of that time.

Roadmap diagrams make it easier to stay on top of project tasks and can be used to provide visual updates on project progress.

Identify Workflow Bottlenecks

It can be difficult to try to identify what is keeping a process from being as optimized as it could be if you don’t have a centralized way to “see” the entire workflow from start to finish.

A diagram allows you to map out a visual representation of something (such as what happens to an order from the time it is received to the time it is delivered). Seeing each part of the process “on paper” can make it take much less time to spot bottlenecks and problem areas that need to be addressed.

Make Your Own Organizational Chart

Organizational charts are one of the common diagrams used in many companies around the world. This is another asset that can take longer than it should to create and update if it is being done with shapes and text boxes in a word processing program.

Visio’s templates allow you to put together an organizational chart in just minutes and updating it takes even less time.

Teach Staff Complicated Processes More Easily

Diagrams are great ways to train people on complicated processes. If you need to teach employees things like how data is to be protected wherever it is in your digital environment or what the process flow is for a customer support ticket, having a diagram can help. It provides a reference that they can view and refer to regularly to assist with training and proficiency.

Are You Getting Full Value From Your Cloud Applications?

Microsoft 365 and similar platforms offer several tools wrapped into one subscription. However, many companies are only using half of what they have. Sound Computers can help your Connecticut business with the optimization of your cloud platforms to ensure that you are getting their full value.

Contact us today to schedule a free consultation. Call 860-577-8060 or reach us online.

November 16, 2021
Sound Computers Admin