8 Signs of an Under-Governed Office 365 Tenant

Post Date: 12/16/2019
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Staying on top of everything in your Office 365 environment can be a struggle. In fact, you might not even notice that parts of your environment aren’t being managed properly if you don’t know what to look for.

Under-governed tenants are often full of pain points and opportunities for operationalization, and it’s best to address those as soon as possible. To help, here are eight telltale signs your collaboration system may be under-governed.

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1. Users have trouble finding information.

If the data in your Office 365 tenant isn’t properly organized, chances are users will struggle to find the information they need as they’re forced to sort through the confusion of randomly and similarly-named content and collaboration spaces.

2. IT tickets, emails to stakeholders and questions slow production

People naturally tend to look for the proper applications and collaboration spaces to complete their tasks and will often attempt to find workarounds if the process is too slow. Thus, more out-of-policy content will be created.

3. Business processes vary from department to department 

If there’s no consistency across the organization, this will cause IT security teams and users to spend time explaining processes and content every time any audits or risk reduction activities take place.

4. Inconsistent Training.

IT cannot create uniform trainings for your organization because of a wide variety of business practices.

5. Shadow IT Emerges

The security or legal teams could start to realize that the tools at their disposal designed to mitigate risk have been neither sufficient nor properly implemented, causing the organization to go through an in-depth security audit and content restructuring project that becomes a major burden on the entire organization.

6. Ad-Hoc and Informal Processes

Users and stakeholders will do their best to come up with ways to work, but their processes may be inefficient and not adhere to business policies.

7. Fire-Fighting by the IT Team

An under-governed Office 365 tenant can cause corrective actions, lots of communication and troubleshooting and many user requests to burden the IT team on a constant basis.

8. Slow Adoption

Lastly, the slow adoption of Office 365 could be the result of your team being unsure of where and how users are finding value in your systems. Because they’re unaware of how to collaborate more efficiently, users might not feel like their lives are much easier or that they’re able to get more done with the new software.

Looking for more in-depth advice on evaluating your Office 365 governance level? Check out the full ebook “The Value of Automated Office 365 & Microsoft Teams Governance!” 


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As the former Content Marketing Specialist for AvePoint, Brent led the strategy and direction of all AvePoint's blog properties.

View all posts by Brent Middleton
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