Perspectives from our consultants.

Microsoft refreshed its Microsoft 365 line-up through 2026. Most changes add capability to existing plans rather than creating new add-ons, and list prices rose on several plans from July 1, 2026. Renewals since July 1, 2026 use the new prices, so it is a good moment to check that every user is on the right plan.

What changed in the business plans

Business Basic, Business Standard and Business Premium all gained enhanced Copilot Chat with admin controls and usage analytics, plus more mailbox storage. Business Premium remains the strongest value for organizations under 300 users because it adds Intune device management, Entra ID P1 and Defender for Business to the Office apps.

What changed in the enterprise plans

Microsoft 365 E3 now includes Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 and additional Intune capabilities. Microsoft 365 E5 now includes Security Copilot capabilities and more endpoint management tools. Microsoft 365 E7, generally available since May 2026, builds on E5 by adding Microsoft 365 Copilot, Agent 365 and the Entra Suite in one subscription.

How to choose

Start from the work, not the price list. Group your users, for example office staff, frontline workers, executives and power users, then match each group to a plan. Most organizations end up with two or three plans rather than one, and that mix is where the savings are.

Our licensing team can review your current subscriptions against how your people actually work and give you a costed recommendation before your next renewal.

Many Copilot pilots stall for the same reason: nobody agreed what success looked like before the licences were assigned. Teams try it, find a few clever uses, and three months later finance asks what the company got for the spend.

Start with three tasks, not three hundred users

Pick one team and three repeatable tasks that eat real time: summarizing customer emails, drafting proposals from past work, or preparing the Monday operations report. Time each task before the pilot so you have a baseline.

Then fix the data before you switch anything on. Copilot works with whatever a user can already access, so overshared SharePoint sites and stale files become very visible very quickly. A short Purview review and a clean-up of permissions protect you and make answers better.

Measure weekly, decide at day 30

Track minutes saved per task, quality of output as judged by the team lead, and adoption. If the three tasks save meaningful time and quality holds, extend to the next team with the same method. If not, you have learned cheaply.

Our Copilot Readiness Assessment and Microsoft 365 Copilot Pilot packages follow this structure, and the pilot ends with a value report your finance team can use.

Dynamics 365 resumes all look alike. Every candidate lists Finance, Supply Chain, Power Platform and a long list of modules. The difference between a strong and a weak hire only shows up months into the project.

Ask about one real go-live

Ask the candidate to walk you through a single go-live they owned: what broke in the first week, how they fixed it, and what they would do differently. People who have done the work answer with specifics.

Test the functional and technical boundary. A strong functional consultant knows when to configure and when to ask for development. A strong developer knows the standard features well enough not to rebuild them.

Have a practitioner in the interview

Recruiters can screen for availability and fit. Only someone who has delivered Dynamics 365 can judge depth. That is why every UniNorth candidate is interviewed by one of our certified consultants before you see them.

Tell us about the role and we will share a shortlist of people who have done it before.