CoreView vs. The Native Microsoft 365 Admin Center

Microsoft Optimization and License Management

Features CoreView M365 Admin Center How CoreView Extends M365 Admin Center
User activity monitoring and license activation reporting Yes Yes Both solutions allow administrators to monitor and report on license status. CoreView takes license reporting to another level.
Account license changes Yes Yes Both solutions allow for license updates from their admin consoles. CoreView simplifies and automates the process.
License optimization Yes No Identify unused licenses, minimize waste, and ensure costs are allocated appropriately.
Assign license pools to specific business units Yes No Assign ownership of a set number of licenses to each department or business unit. Putting the central IT group in complete control over what licenses are distributed and who is paying for them.
License history Yes No Track license history changes over time.
Chargeback accounting and billing reports Yes No Provides the capability to perform chargeback reporting based
on business units, geographies, etc.
Manage users in M365 and on premises consistently Yes No You can connect CoreView to your on-premises Active Directory and manage both synchronized and cloud-only objects, taking the guesswork out of the transition from on-prem to Microsoft 365.

Why License Optimization?

License optimization is the process of ensuring that employees have the licenses they need to do their jobs effectively, without spending more than is necessary or having an excessive number of licenses sitting on the shelf unused.

Due to the complex nature of Microsoft 365 licenses, for some organizations license management is a full-time job in itself. Getting the right licenses requires balancing considerations that are constantly changing, such as:

  • Microsoft price changes
  • Employee growth
  • “Free trial” licenses that were previously complimentary but may convert to paid licenses
  • Strategic changes in desired license mix – such as upgrading all executives to E5 licenses for security reasons
  • Licenses currently unassigned – including those purchased in anticipation of future growth, unassigned due to normal employee turnover, and other needs
  • Licenses currently inactive – including those assigned to employees currently on leave or otherwise explained by normal business activities

In the absence of a dedicated person or team to focus on these issues, it’s all too common for the pile of unassigned and inactive licenses to grow over time, and include license waste in excess of the amounts needed due to normal business activities such as turnover and anticipated growth.

It’s worth noting that, for many organizations theirMicrosoft contract is a multi-year, complex agreement that cannot be easily modified during the term of the agreement, and that in many cases we identify opportunities to avoid future costs, or avoid purchasing additional licenses, as opposed to a direct reduction in current costs.

License Optimization Opportunities

On average, the companies we studied purchased 59,617 licenses – but only have 40,736 users. Now, some of this is totally normal, because a given user may have a primary Microsoft 365 license, as well as a separate Power BI license, for example.And even in that scenario, buying separate licenses may be less efficient and end up costing more than buying a single combination license, depending on the situation.

But upon further review, we see that:

  • The average company had 12,922 licenses unassigned (21.6%) and sitting on the shelf, and another 6,134 inactive licenses (10.2%), for a total savings opportunity of31.9% on average.
  • 17% had more than 10,000 unassigned licenses sitting on the shelf, while 10% had more than 10,000 inactive licenses

Read the full findings around license usage here: https://www.coreview.com/benchmark-microsoft365

Segregation of Duties

Features CoreView M365 Admin Center How CoreView Extends M365 Admin Center
RBAC assignments to delegate privileges for regional or departmental administrators Yes No Create unlimited custom roles, each with permission scopes tailored - and limited - to only what is required for specific tasks. Provide admin capabilities across multiple M365 workloads.
Partition tenants for delegated administration Yes No Organizations can segment users by Geography, Business Unit, Department, and more to assign management and administration rights.
Grant access to system
events and audit logs		 Yes No Provides sanctioned access to secure information for research and troubleshooting with an emphasis on user friendliness and granularity.

Usage Adoption and End User Training and Productivity

Features CoreView M365 Admin Center How CoreView Extends M365 Admin Center
User activity reporting by workload Yes Yes Both solutions enable administrators to monitor user activity by workload. The Microsoft 365 Adoption Content Pack utilizes PowerBI, which requires manually updating one user at a time or downloading a file to manage that list via PowerShell. But with CoreView’s action-enabled reporting, you are able to take immediate action based with a click of a button.
Tracking and reporting of adoption trends Yes Yes Both solutions provide reporting and analysis of adoption trends based on user activity changes. However, CoreView enriches the data with additional information not available in the M365 Admin Center, such as licenses, department, country, and other parameters.

Administration, Monitoring, and Reporting in User Interface

Features CoreView M365 Admin Center How CoreView Extends M365 Admin Center
Analyze various metrics with flexible scoping options Yes Yes Limit operators to only report on objects within their designated Virtual Tenant.
Schedule and distribute reports Yes Yes Both provide reports, but CoreView allows for the scheduling of reports that are automatically distributed via e-mail to preconfigured distribution lists.
Bulk-actions for account updates on selected users Yes Yes CoreView has no limit on the number of selected user accounts for which actions can be taken in bulk. The Admin Center only allows admins to select a few user accounts for updates.
Customizable reporting templates that are action enabled Yes No CoreView provides 240 user activity metrics for customizable, actionable reports. Versus Microsoft’s approximately 50 reports which are limited to blocks of 100 records.
Drill-down reporting at user level, with no limit on viewing or exporting Yes No Enables administrators to easily investigate activity trends on the user level, instead of company-wide metrics.
Review user activity for all workloads from a single screen (User Card) Yes No Allows administrators to view complete user activity and take action from a single user card.
Integrate PowerShell scripts for easy delegation Yes No CoreView allows the integration of custom PowerShell scripts as new actions available from the menus which can be delegated to operators.

Automated Workflows

Features CoreView M365 Admin Center How CoreView Extends M365 Admin Center
Customizable workflows Yes No CoreView provides workflows to help automate processes - like onboarding and offboarding – without any additional cost or significant learning curve.

CoreSuite offers one unified dashboard for all your management needs. Users seamlessly shift between tasks like calculating chargebacks and preempting data breaches, to onboarding new employees and tracking long-term product adoption. Here are 16 Microsoft 365 Tasks Easily Automated with Workflows.

Selected Action Options

Features CoreView M365 Admin Center How CoreView Extends M365 Admin Center
Tracking and reporting for admin activities Yes Yes Both solutions allow for tracking, searching, and reporting of admin activities. However, the Admin Center only stores background information for 90 days vs. CoreView’s 360 days.
Monitor mailbox delegations for security compliance Yes Yes Microsoft only provides visibility on who can access a specific mailbox but not what mailbox a user can access. Furthermore, Microsoft doesn’t provide reports to investigate delegation like CoreView.
Viewing all mailbox access rights for users and groups Yes No Enables administrators to view and manage security rights for different mailboxes from a single screen.
Simplified audit logs Yes No CoreView provides a simplified model to view, sort, and search all related Microsoft 365 audit logs to identify issues.
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