HCL Connections vs Office 365 comparison

Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)

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Helped 853,868 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

HCL Connections

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) (6th), Enterprise Social Software (11th)

Office 365

Average Rating

8.6

Number of Reviews

143

Ranking in other categories

Content Collaboration Platforms (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. HCL Connections is designed for Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) and holds a mindshare of 3.6%, up 2.9% compared to last year.
Office 365, on the other hand, focuses on Content Collaboration Platforms, holds 6.8% mindshare, up 6.3% since last year.

Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)

Content Collaboration Platforms

Featured Reviews

Hasnain Zahid

Talent acquisition & development specialist at Software Productivity Strategists, Inc. (SPS)

A stable tool useful to manage marketing-related activities

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. Sometimes, the portal hangs because I find that if I am on a web page, I have to log out, and then I have to log in to the portal again. Since I see that the portal hangs at times, I have to move from one side of the portal to the next, making me feel that some things are scattered in the product. I attended a meeting with IBM recently, and they are improving a few of the things, in my opinion. The concerns that I have related to the product are being improved since I think many other users have reported issues similar to the ones I faced.

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Gary Cook

Executive at Empowered Analytics

Access to advanced features boosts productivity despite pricing concerns in developing regions

I need to do maintenance for Office 365 very seldom, once a year. In the maintenance process for Office 365, we have about 12 people involved. For the maintenance side of Office 365, only one person is involved. Looking at Office 365's pricing, I would give it a 4 on a scale from 1 to 10. My overall rating for Office 365 is an 8 out of 10, but for the product itself, I would give it a 10. I would definitely recommend Office 365 to other businesses, probably a 9 out of 10 for recommendation. This is only because of its price and the fact that they do not take into account developing countries such as South Africa, where they should give us more favorable prices or local prices. We do not have a partnership with Microsoft, which is a sore point for us. We have reached out to Microsoft South Africa, and they are very hard to contact and largely uncooperative. We are a B-Level 2 and a B-Level 1, which are local affirmative action ratings that companies get. Level 1 is the highest, and Level 8 is the lowest. We hold amongst the highest BEE ratings, but we have not found Microsoft South Africa to be forthcoming or very open. We should have a partnership with them, and we run Power BI as we are a Power BI shop now. I strongly would want to see a box within Office 365 for our team to have ChatGPT through OpenAI as well. We use Excel as a data source for many tasks and find that it integrates really well with Python. We write a lot of Python code and use Excel as a data sheet many times, and we operate through SQL and other zero elements as well. From an Office 365 viewpoint, we find that with Copilot and Python and Excel's provision for Python, it is very useful.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."

"The most valuable feature is the Activity flow that is used to catch new activities."

"Many of the features in Office 365 are good, but I think Excel is a very good tool."

"We use it for documentation management, to collaborate with Microsoft Teams, web calls, web conference calls, chats, and as a documentation repository mainly. We have an Office pack suite to be able to write documentation, make spreadsheets, and create PowerPoints."

"The solution is quite intuitive and easy to use."

"The product helps us be more efficient. It helps us to have a standardized way of doing things."

"The most valuable feature is the integration between net and mobile devices."

"The most valuable feature is Microsoft Exchange."

"The most valuable features of Office 365 are Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Teams. Teams helped us to collaborate more through its call and document sharing features."

"It has more features than somebody would expect, and it is worth taking a deeper look into the features available."

More Office 365 pros

Cons

"The inclusion of a file plugin for Windows Explorer would make it easier to use."

"The support is an area where the product can improve...If you are having an issue on a Monday, the support personnel will contact you next Monday."

"Their support is so terrible and unusable except during dire emergencies."

"We have found that, with Teams, if you are including one more person who is not in the company ecosystem, supposedly I'm inviting them as a guest in the chat. However, when I do that, I can't share files."

"I'm not sure if there are areas of improvement. For us, it's working quite well."

"Office 365 could allow for smoother collaboration with other companies, which is the main reason we use it. The B2B connection is something we need, like global adverse lists between two tenants or multiple users. That's what we're missing at the moment."

"Integration with other platforms can be improved."

"They should do more testing before product releases."

"Performance-wise, Office 365 needs a lot of bandwidth. The problem is, the solution requires very high bandwidth and internet usage. Meaning, the desktop application consumes a lot of internet data. Sometimes, when the connection is slow, it won't work and it won't load. This is an area for improvement for Office 365."

"Sometimes the configurations of the error troubleshooting are pretty problematic and there are a lot of issues that happen even if you follow the step-by-step guides. They can work on fixing this issue. If there are a lot of issues in your Windows or your Office or anything, you restart your PC and it works. They need to get rid of this need."

More Office 365 cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The pricing/licensing is easy to manage."

"Good reporting and good value subscriptions for international calls."

"Licensing, billing, and accounting are available from the management interface."

"The pricing is high and has actually caused us to limit the number of licenses we purchase due to budgeting."

"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis, or we prepay them."

"I would rate the solution 3 out of 5 for the price. I think Microsoft presents a good solution concerning the price."

"Most of the time, we purchase Microsoft Exchange licenses, which are less expensive and provide only an email platform and 50 gigabytes of email storage for free."

"For the moment, we are paying on a monthly basis because we are still adapting the support and how we want to proceed. I think we will move to paying for the annual license."

More Office 365 pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

24%

Financial Services Firm

20%

Media Company

Real Estate/Law Firm

Educational Organization

71%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about HCL Connections?

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

What needs improvement with HCL Connections?

The support is an area where the product can improve. My company faces some support-related issues because whenever we create or generate a ticket, it takes two days for the product's support team ...

What is your primary use case for HCL Connections?

I use HCL Connections for marketing purposes. The IBM product in our company already provides us with direct links to the marketing and HR sides.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Office 365?

Office 365 is reasonably priced. For personal use, it's €10 per month for up to five users and devices, which is acceptable. For enterprise use, the costs can increase, especially with additional t...

What needs improvement with Office 365?

Office 365 should improve data synchronization, especially when data is accessed through the web interface and SharePoint ( /products/sharepoint-reviews ) portal. Sometimes there is a discrepancy b...

What is your primary use case for Office 365?

I work on a project connected to Ministry of Mining and Energetics in Serbia, primarily using Excel and Teams. I use Excel to prepare documents for data input from our associates in the field. This...

SharePoint vs HCL Connections

Comparisons

Compared 100% of the time

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Product Reports

HCL Connections

Download HCL Connections product report

Office 365

Download Office 365 product report

Also Known As

IBM Connections, Lotus Connections

Microsoft Office 365, Office 365 Enterprise, Office 365 Enterprise E1, Office 365 Enterprise E3, Office 365 Enterprise E5, Office 365 ProPlus, Office 365 Business, Office 365 Business Essentials, Office 365 Business Premium, Office 365 F1

Overview

IBM Connections™ is a leading unified collaboration and social networking solution that helps you filter out the noise to get work done. Connections empowers your teams and organization to engage with the right experts, accelerate innovation, and deliver results. All the collaboration tools you need to be productive are united under a single sign-on so you can reduce time spent switching between disparate tools and focus on the people and work that matters most. Experience a security-rich and business-compliant environment sanctioned by IT. Confidently share knowledge within your teams and your organization, and extend collaboration beyond traditional boundaries. Connections can enable you to improve decision-making, increase productivity, and accelerate time-to-market. Shift from being merely productive, to truly effective with Connections today.

IBM Connections can help you: Engage experts. People-centric platform enables you to easily locate the expertise you need, right now. Accelerate innovation. Illuminate and promote new ideas within a thriving social network of teams and communities. Empower teams. Get work done together and take action; anywhere—from any device. Deliver results. Leverage cognitive insights to prioritize results and arrive at better outcomes. Extend collaboration. Safely collaborate with customers and partners, bringing them into the conversation.

HCLSoftware

Office 365 is more than just Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. It provides powerful services like business-class email, online storage, and teamwork solutions that you can access from anywhere. Bring teams and resources together with solutions like Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business that make working together more productive and enjoyable regardless of where participants are located. Easily implement security and privacy controls to help protect business data and devices against malicious threats and help you meet your compliance obligations. Automatic updates ensure your employees will always have the latest features and security updates.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Yamato Financial Co. Ltd., University of Zurich, Gwinnett County Public Schools, Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., Telus, Rabobank, Christian Brothers Services, Grupo Financiero Banorte, The Loft Group, Dow Water & Process Solutions, JGC Corporation, College of Medicine, Swansea University, solvito GmbH, Loft Group, Hamm-Reno Group GmbH, Geno SA

Me & the Bees Lemonade

Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)