Managing Microsoft 365 (M365) licences effectively is crucial for organisations to optimise costs, ensure compliance, and enhance productivity. Here’s a quick  guide on how to monitor your M365 licences and ensure you have the right types for your needs.

Understanding Your M365 Licences

M365 offers a variety of licence types tailored to different organisational needs. These include:

  • Microsoft 365 Business: Ideal for small to medium-sized businesses, offering essential Office apps, email, and cloud services.
  • Microsoft 365 Enterprise: Designed for larger organisations, providing advanced security, compliance, and analytics features.
  • Microsoft 365 Education: Tailored for educational institutions, offering tools for collaboration and learning.
  • Microsoft 365 Frontline: For frontline workers, providing essential tools for communication and task management.

Each licence type comes with different features and pricing, so it’s important to choose the one that aligns with your organisational requirements.

Monitoring Your M365 Licences

  1. Use the M365 Admin Centre: The M365 Admin Centre is your primary tool for managing licences. It provides a comprehensive overview of all assigned and unassigned licences, allowing you to monitor usage and identify any discrepancies.
  2. Leverage PowerShell: For more advanced monitoring, PowerShell scripts can be used to automate licence management tasks. Scripts can help you generate reports on licence usage, identify inactive licences, and reassign licences as needed.
  3. Utilise Clobba Flex: Tools like Clobba can provide detailed insights into your M365 licence consumption. These tools can help you identify unused or underutilised licences, highlight potential cost savings, and ensure compliance with your licensing agreements

Ensuring You Have the Right Types

  1. Conduct Regular Audits: Regularly auditing your M365 licences helps ensure that you are not overpaying for unused or underutilised licences. Audits can also help you identify users who may need additional features or who can be downgraded to a more cost-effective licence.
  2. Align Licences with User Needs: Not all users require the same level of access. For example, frontline workers may only need basic communication tools, while IT staff may require advanced security features. Aligning licences with user needs helps optimise costs and improve productivity.
  3. Stay Informed About Licence Changes: Microsoft frequently updates its licensing options. Staying informed about these changes can help you take advantage of new features and pricing models. For instance, recent updates have introduced standalone Microsoft Teams licences, providing more flexibility for organisations
  4. Use Group-Based Licensing: Entra ID allows for group-based licensing, which simplifies the process of assigning and managing licences. This approach ensures that users automatically receive the appropriate licences based on their role within the organisation

Becketts LA: A Comprehensive Licence Management Tool

LA (License Adoption) is a powerful tool designed to help organisations manage their Microsoft 365 licences more effectively. Here are some:

  • Comprehensive Dashboard: Clobba LA provides a suite of customisable dashboards and analytics tools to manage Microsoft licensing utilisation and investments. It offers at-a-glance views of all paid or free licences within the business, with the option to drill down to individual user licence usage
  • Licence Reassignment: The tool captures and reassigns unused or dormant Microsoft 365 licences, helping organisations optimise their licence usage and reduce costs
  • Usage Trends: Clobba LA tracks usage trends over time, allowing organisations to identify inactive users, underutilised licences, duplicate licences, and disabled users with a licence
  • Configurable Rules: Organisations can select and apply licence-based rules to suit their users, change and amend licence plans based on usage, and select exclusion groups

By using Clobba LA, you can ensure you are using your Microsoft 365 licences efficiently, maximising investment, and driving user adoption of underutilised licence features.

Effective M365 licence management is essential for optimising costs, ensuring compliance, and enhancing productivity. By using the M365 Admin Centre, PowerShell, and Clobba LA, you can monitor your licences effectively.

To find out more and have a free trial of our LA tools, please give us a call on 0118 940 9004 or fill in the form below