Cleaning up a Microsoft 365 environment is easy for anyone with an army of dedicated IT managers. If you have a ton of people that can write complex PowerShell scripts all day, it’s a piece of cake. But for most companies don’t. And if they’re working with an MSP or Microsoft Partner, it’s work that screams “hand it over to them.”
That’s good for you, right? The problem is, most companies don’t even have the time needed to just analyze their M365 usage—to say nothing of actually formulating next steps. Enter Beacon by Orchestry. This tool automatically analyzes your clients’ M365 environments and gives them insights and recommendations that can easily be added to your backlog. So if you have a client base that’s hesitant to give you more work, Beacon can be the fix you need.
You’d be excused if the words “data analysis” bring to mind images of massive data dumps of information devoid of any context or meaning. Too often, we’ve seen tools that simply output “reports” that are enormous CSV files filled with action categories, usernames, and timestamps. To make matters worse, it might also entail scrambling across portals within M365 gathering multiple reports. This leaves admins holding the bag, trying to figure out how to mold that data into something useful. And though there is Power BI, it’s not called Easy BI for a reason.
So when we began building Beacon, we wanted to remove that complexity. And that’s what we’ve delivered: a lightweight dashboard that does the heavy lifting. It begins with our Health Checks feature.
Health checks are snapshots of your clients’ M365 usage. But they’re not just providing basic stats for stats’ sake. They dig deep on workspace usage, benchmarks, sharing, storage, Teams engagement, and leaderboards.
Learn how to build an ongoing services practice with Beacon. Get started by downloading our Beacon features sheet
So for instance, clients can see how many workspaces are active, and how that’s trended over time. They’ll also get a breakdown of how those workspaces are distributed across Teams, SharePoint, and other Microsoft products. The other stats have plenty of info to offer as well, each with its own historical trends:
All of this information sits in an automatically updated dashboard. It’s plug and play at its finest. No writing—or running—PowerShell scripts, no combing through data tables, just the information they want to see in simple visualizations.
All of the information Health Checks provide can be incredibly illuminating. Still, it’s only so useful if you know what to do with this information. And unless your clients know every nook and cranny of M365, they might not realize that, say, soaring storage costs are often something you can fix for them. That’s why Beacon uses health check information to provide personalized recommendations for their environment.
Recommendations are targeted suggestions to help clients optimize their M365 environments. They cover the gamut: cutting storage costs, tightening security, reducing sprawl, preparing for Copilot, increasing adoption, maintaining governance, managing guests, and more ways to streamline tenants.
To give you a better idea of how they work, say a health check uncovers a spike in storage usage over the past three months. The Recommendations feature may suggest changing your client’s versioning policy to cut down on the number of unnecessary extra copies of files. Or if file versions aren’t the problem, Beacon may recommend automatic archival, which can slash costs by 75% by moving data to cold storage. And not to worry—every recommendation features a “Why Should I Care?” section explaining Beacon’s rationale.
Not only are Beacon’s recommendations geared towards fixing existing problems, they also include preventative measures. For instance, a health check might notice the number of publicly accessible shared links trending upward. Beacon will recommend establishing a policy that limits shared link access to your client’s users only by default. That way, if an email containing a shared link gets forwarded to someone outside the company, the file will still stay inside the company.
And whether they’re proactive or reactive, recommendations provide the low-hanging fruit you can always use. Beacon does the work of finding issues and reporting them to your clients. Implementing those changes? That’s right up your alley. It’s not only good for pitching new work—it’s also good for strengthening your reputation with clients as a dependable partner.
As your clients’ MSP, few will be better attuned to their needs than you, so you may want to make a suggestion here and there. So we’ve made it easy to add your own custom recommendations, right from Beacon’s Health Checks and Recommendations pages.
With just a few clicks, you can create a custom recommendation, and add properties like priority level, category, and product name to keep it organized. These custom recommendations can be snoozed, edited, deleted, and marked resolved by Beacon admins. Your client will see your recommendations right alongside Beacon’s—a continuous reminder of the value you bring and an opportunity to sell them more services.
Though limited in scope compared to our full Orchestry product, Beacon offers an inexpensive gateway that can drive more business for you. Even if nothing else, recommendations bring to light maintenance your clients might not be aware you could be doing for them.
But that's just the start. Beacon gives your clients a taste of the power and simplicity of Orchestry. Just a little time spent with Beacon can give you the leverage to upsell clients into the full version of Orchestry. They’ll even see a section at the bottom of their health checks showing what they’d be saving with Orchestry—blurred out to entice them even more. And given the provisioning, archiving, and guest management tools they’ll get from an upgrade, Orchestry might just sell itself. Bonus for you: The full version of Orchestry lets you take action directly from recommendations, streamlining the work of maintaining their tenant.
To get started, download our Beacon features sheet. You’ll learn how to build an ongoing services practice with Beacon, one that keeps your clients happy and your backlog filled with revenue-generating work.