Microsoft 365 License Optimization through Effective User Profile Management

Anglepoint:

Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for this webinar. We’re really excited to have you here and to present to you today. We see many people have joined, so to get things started, feel free to let us know where you’re joining from in the chat. We always love to see where everyone is from!

We’re excited to get started, and I’m thrilled to introduce our presenters. We’re very grateful to both of them for taking the time to do this for us. Today, we have Mandi Sue Bleau, or MSB, who is the Global Practice Lead for our Microsoft practice here at Anglepoint, and Myles Adley, a Senior Consultant on our Microsoft team.

I’m going to hand it over to them now. MSB, would you like to take it from here?

Mandi Sue Bleau:

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Braden. And thank you, everyone, for joining. I know I did a huge push last week. Braden, I think we had maybe 38 people signed up, which was a pretty low number.

I set a goal to reach 100 by the end of the week, and we hit 93. Now, we’re at 168, so I’m really excited to have you all here. I’ve been at Anglepoint for three years, and many of you know me—I recognize a lot of names, which is great! I’ve been working in Microsoft licensing for about 21 years now, from general sales to tools, and here at Anglepoint as the Global Practice Lead.

Today, my sidekick is Myles, so I’ll hand it over to him.

Myles Adley:

Great, thanks, MSB. My name is Myles Adley, and I’ve been with Anglepoint for just over six months now. Before joining Anglepoint, I spent about eight years in software license compliance, working in both the audit and consulting fields.

I’ve witnessed many changes over the years, especially as we move more into 365, Azure, and the cloud. These are exciting times with lots of new information to digest, for sure, but I’m excited to be speaking with you all today.

Mandi Sue Bleau:

Thanks, Myles. We’re going to move on to our next slide. Apologies, I’m just trying to find my mouse.

So, today’s agenda includes a few polling questions. Often, these polling questions help kick off the conversation. As Braden mentioned, there will be a Q&A session as well. So, if you have any questions or want more information, don’t hesitate to ask. If we can’t get to them during the session, we will follow up afterward. You can always reach out to us for further discussions. I know some of our clients are here today, so it looks like we’ll be having some follow-up conversations with you if we haven’t already.

Next, we’ll go through a high-level overview of Microsoft 365. Then, Myles will dive into user profiling and explain why it’s important—after all, that’s why we’re all here, right? We’ll also save some time for Q&A at the end.

So, let’s start with our first polling question: How often do you check your 365 portal? There are no wrong answers here. You can choose from monthly, about once per quarter, only at True-Up, or just at Renewal. Go ahead and cast your vote.

Great! Awesome. Most of you seem to check your portal monthly, which is where we want you to be. Of course, you can check less frequently depending on the size of your company and the policies and processes you have in place. About 50% of you check monthly, 26% quarterly, 16% only at True-Up, and 8% just at Renewal. If you’re not checking your 365 portal regularly, someone else is likely monitoring it for you, and we’ll discuss why that’s important.

Now, for our second polling question: When was the last time you conducted an internal profile review? Was it at Renewal, True-Up, signing, or within the past 90 days? Let’s see what responses come in.

Alright, here’s the breakdown: 17% at Renewal, 26% at True-Up, 10% at signing, and 48% within the past 90 days. That’s a good mix. I like seeing that 48% have done it within the last 90 days. Many people tend to review profiles at Renewal, as they plan for the end of the year, or during True-Up and the initial signing. We’ll explain why it’s so important to regularly review your internal profiles.

So, let’s talk about Microsoft 365 and how it breaks down. Microsoft 365 was introduced gradually. We used to have perpetual licenses where you’d decide, “These are my licenses, and I’m not moving from Standard to Pro because I don’t need it.” You would really break it down that way. Then, we were pushed to the 365 subscriptions, and updates have been continuously rolling out since the beta release in January 2017.

If you’re not aware, this year alone, there are 601 pieces in development, 158 updates rolling out, and 968 changes already made to 365. If you follow my LinkedIn posts, you’ll start seeing some of these changes, like new SharePoint lists and Copilot releases. These updates can impact the licenses you’re using, so it’s important to stay informed. With frequent changes in product names and rules, it can get confusing. I’m sure many of you are nodding your heads in agreement right now. Microsoft is always changing—ABC, “Always Be Changing.”

These constant updates add complexity and confusion, so our goal is to help simplify the process and make it easier for you to understand. With that, I’ll hand it over to Myles to walk you through user profiling.

Myles Adley:

Great. Thanks, MSB. So, what is user profiling? When it comes to M365, user profiling involves identifying and grouping employees or users based on their feature needs and the products they actually use in the environment. Typically, this is done through roles, functions, departments, locations, etc. It really depends on how your organization manages its environment.

Now, why does this matter? Why should we care? What do you need to consider? As MSB mentioned, Microsoft does a great job of adding new products and features, making them available to you. I’m sure you’ve all heard about Copilot almost daily by now. While it’s great to have all these options, most organizations either aren’t ready or don’t want to take advantage of every single feature and benefit at this time.

So, the real focus should be on right-sizing your applications. This means matching your feature and product needs to your user population or profiles with the appropriate subscription level. This helps from a financial perspective, ensuring you’re not overspending on features you don’t use, and it also ensures users have what they need to do their jobs effectively.

It seems like many of you on this call are doing a good job managing your internal profiles regularly, which is awesome! But we know that’s not always the case. When managing profiles, it’s important to consider two things: first, are we managing it well and know who’s in each profile? And second, are we reassessing the needs and products relevant to each profile? Sometimes these needs change, and knowing what they are is critical when making decisions about the best subscription level for each profile.

I’m sure many of you have spoken with Microsoft, and they’ve likely encouraged you to get the latest and greatest Microsoft 365 E5, which comes with a slew of products and features. But it’s important to remember that this may not be necessary for every single user in your environment. Understanding your different types of users is crucial. Having conversations internally with various stakeholders within your organization is a big part of this process.

Microsoft offers different subscription plans for different types of workers, like knowledge workers and frontline workers, and these can offer pricing advantages depending on the user. As I mentioned earlier, it’s also important to involve your security team before making any decisions. Make sure they sign off on certain features and products—this is something we’ve dealt with quite a bit in the past.

Alright, so that was a rundown on user profiles and why they matter. But you’re probably wondering, what are the features and products we’re talking about? Microsoft provides a lot of information, which is great, but it can sometimes be complex or tedious to track down exactly what features and products are included in each subscription level. From a cost perspective, it’s important to take your time and do this appropriately.

I strongly recommend that when talking with internal stakeholders and performing your due diligence, you start by looking at the products and features that all users need. Is there a baseline set of features that everyone in the environment requires, whether it’s Teams, Exchange, Azure AD, BitLocker, etc.? Identifying this base set of features helps determine the minimum subscription level for all users. From there, you can look at different user profiles and start adding on the additional features or products that specific users might need, such as Bookings or Live Events.

Mandi Sue Bleau:

Myles, I’m going to pause you there. I have a quick question for everyone. You can just click the “raise hand” button at the bottom. Have you used the profile feature, and do you find it complex to figure out, “Oh, wait a minute, I need this one from E1, but then I need this from F3 or E3 and F5”? Does anyone have that challenge? If so, could you raise your hand? Just curious.

Myles Adley:

Yeah, I think everyone has probably encountered this document or a variation of it. It can be pretty lengthy. Alright, perfect. We did get at least one hand raised.

Mandi Sue Bleau:

Thank you. I wasn’t sure if I could see it from my side—maybe Braden is the only one who gets to see that part. Thanks!

Myles Adley:

Yeah, perfect. So this document includes a list of the features and products available with each subscription level. Once you understand what your user profiles are, and what features and products each profile needs to run their business or what they might use in the next year, the next step is to align those needs with the appropriate subscription level.

You can manually go through this, but it can be tedious. Automating the process makes life a lot simpler. One tool we built is the 365 Selector, which provides a dynamic interface. You can go through user profiles, identify the feature needs, and select the appropriate ones for each profile. As you make selections, a table at the top populates, showing which subscription levels meet all the requirements.

For example, if both E3 and E5 meet the needs, you’ll see that E5 is more costly. So, E3 might be the suggested option since it meets all the requirements and is more cost-effective. This helps you make informed decisions more quickly than manually navigating each subscription level.

Mandi Sue Bleau:

Excellent. Thanks, Myles, for going through that. We’ve been doing a lot of user profiling since January or February, and it’s been such a hot topic. We’ve added some additional deliverables and reporting as well. Let’s pause here and see if there are any questions coming through on the Q&A.

Thanks, everyone. You can post your questions there. One of the biggest questions I get is, “How long does it take?” Typically, it’s 30 to 90 days before your true-up or renewal. That gives you enough time internally to look at who needs to be included. Myles specifically mentioned security—sometimes, during user profiling, security will flag something and say, “Whoa, we need this, but only for specific profiles.” That was a huge cost savings for one of our clients. So, 30 to 90 days is a good rule of thumb.

One of the questions we have is: What are the key indicators that a user can step down from M365 E5 to E3? Myles, do you want to take that one? It often involves looking at the specific subscriptions or applications being used. I think BitLocker was one of those trigger points.

Myles Adley:

Yeah, I know a couple offhand. Obviously, we can always go through the full list, but I know Power BI Pro is one that comes with E5 and not E3. Azure AD Plan 2 and some of the Defender products as well—those are all E5. If they’re not being used, there is an opportunity to move to E3.

We can also look into some of the other products or the full list of other products where that would be relevant. I know that in this particular case, we can’t actually click on the tabs in the selector here, but in the feature comparison, you can see at the bottom left, to the right of that form tab, there is actually a breakdown that you can search and filter. That way, we can get the full list. That’s something we can definitely go into in more detail if needed. But yeah, there are typically at least a handful of products you could go through and check on.

Mandi Sue Bleau:

Excellent. And then, one of the other questions that we got submitted earlier was about cost savings. How much do you save? Where can you save? And that is always dependent upon how much you’re spending. Everybody says no, it can’t be, but it is generally anywhere between 10 and 20%. If you’re going through these user profiles, you should be able to see a 10 to 20% reduction in pricing.

So, we have two more questions. What kind of operational overhead should be considered when trying to make changes to user profiles in larger organizations? Great question. A lot of that comes from how willing your people are to make those changes. Is there any specific training that needs to go into it? Is it a huge process overhaul, especially for large organizations?

What we like to do when we work with large organizations—one of them has about 250,000 seats—is take it in tidbits and sections. It’s not just the SAM team working on this; you have to include other teams. They have to be aware of the changes, but we’re taking them in bite-sized sections. So, instead of tackling the entire company at once, we’re actually taking it in bite-sized sections to get them where they want to be.

The good news for this corporation is that the renewal is not until 2025, so we’ve had a lot of time and runway to do that. Hopefully, that answers your question.

The next question is, our current E5 subscription includes MS Teams, and I see on a few slides that Teams is not included. After the EU lawsuit, Microsoft started offering M365 subscriptions without MS Teams. We were told by our reseller that we are grandfathered in and can add more licenses in the future under the same SKU that includes MS Teams. Is that valid, or do we have to purchase an MS Teams license separately?

Ooh, that’s a great question. First, get it documented. If your reseller is saying this, make sure that you also get it documented directly from Microsoft. Get it in writing—don’t have just a verbal conversation about it. We have seen quite a few companies that have been grandfathered into what they have done in the past for a certain period of time. That’s it, though.

We have a client that just got out of a five-year agreement. They’re not going back into a five-year—they’re going into a three-year. They’re grandfathered into a specific SKU for a price lock uptick. They had an amendment for it, but it’s only going to get them through the next three years, and then they have to figure it out. Hopefully, that answers your question, but make sure you get that in writing from Microsoft and also put a timeline on it.

The next question: What kind of products that are tenant-based should we be looking for that could influence these profile decisions? Do you mean within the specific 365 tenants if you have multiple tenants? Or, Myles, I don’t know if you…

Myles Adley:

Yeah, I think I may have a little bit of background on this one. I know that there are some 365 subscriptions that are, we’ll say, tenant-wide. So when you deploy them, they’re available tenant-wide, but technically only certain subscription levels have the rights to them. And so there is that inherent risk. I know Microsoft has noted that they’re aware of the situation, but there’s no current workaround from them at this time. They’re trying to get more insight into how they can change that going forward. Right now, it’s one of those inherent risks, and to your point, it does definitely affect the overall profile of a user. Definitely something to keep an eye on. If Microsoft provides you anything in writing noting, “Hey, we’re aware of it,” or from a compliance perspective, they may still circle back and check if you’re using beyond what you have. I would just try to pay as close attention as possible to that and get whatever you can in writing from them.

Mandi Sue Bleau:

Great. Thanks, Myles. Mike actually has a question or a statement in the chat. “Your Excel assumes that you know what the end users need.” Yes, that’s 100% correct. Within a large organization, how do you go about assessing users’ license requirements based on daily roles and how they currently work?

Yes, we actually look at the 365 portal. We take a look at what’s actually being accessed and how much time is spent using it. For example, just like our 365 ELP that we run against the 365 portal, we do it in Power BI. We can also do it in Excel. What it does is it says, “Hey, you have an assigned user who has been given this product, but they’re not using it.” They’re not using these specific features, so we’re able to say, “Here are your 2,500 users that have logged in, been assigned this, but have never used it.” So they’re in 365 but not using those products.

That’s where we say you need that internal breakdown. You need that internal user profiling before you go to Microsoft and say, “Hey, I need X amount of E3s or X amount of E5s.” And as Myles said, they’re going to be pushing the E5s. If you don’t have the ability to do that, you can work with somebody like Anglepoint to get you that type of information and breakdown. That’s why we need the 30 to 90 days, depending on the size of the organization, because then we’re going to start working with those teams to see who’s actually using the products. Are they really utilizing them, or are they just clicking on them?

Hopefully, Mike, that answered your question as well.

Lots of great questions and conversations going on here, and we can always continue them afterward if you’d like. Does anybody else have any questions or comments?

That’s excellent. This has been a great and fun way for us to start our Wednesday. We love sharing this information with you, and if you do need anything, here is our contact information. Thanks again. Bye. Feel free to reach out to us. We appreciate all of your time today, and thanks for spending half an hour with us to talk about 365.