Home Based Business: The Importance of MS Office Skills

MS Office is a suite of interconnected desktop programs, applications, and services for computer operating systems. It is especially suitable for online home businesses. It was introduced about two decades ago for the Windows and Mac OS operating systems. MS Office is a powerful tool that is extremely important in your home based business.

It contains multiple office applications such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint that will help business enterprises on a day-to-day basis.

Other applications have grown considerably with tools such as spell check, data integration forms, publishing features, and document formats for small and large business installations.

Statistics indicate that about eight percent of business houses have the latest MS office facilities. MS Office skills can help a home-based business owner deal effectively with business data management requirements with spreadsheet, document and word processing software tools.

Microsoft Office applications:

– Microsoft Word is a word processor program that can be widely used for business applications. It has features such as fonts, insert tables, page breaks, charts, clipart and photo insert, word art, and many shaping options.

– Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program with tools like custom functions, chart functions and V lookups. The above mentioned tools are very vital for home based business owners for business development.

Business Presentation Tools:

– Microsoft PowerPoint application can be used by business company owners to create innovative product or service presentations for clients. For example: it can be used to offer an attractive online marketing plan.

– PowerPoint as a presentation program and provides facilities for incorporating images, text and graphics into slide shows. These slideshows can be displayed on screen by the presenter for working demonstrations. As a home business owner, you may need to make presentations about your products or services to your clients.

– Business owners mainly use PowerPoint to exceed customer expectations and requirements in order to get product orders. The slides can also be used for webcasts to reach a broader audience of your target customer base.

– Home-based business owners can use PowerPoint to save presentations in multiple file formats.

Reduction of Operational Tasks:

– The desktop publishing application known as Microsoft Publisher offers great ease of use with page layouts and layout for business themes.

– It is seen to have high-end capabilities like color output, shading, and transparency features that can greatly benefit home-based businesses who cannot afford to hire professional designers for marketing document preparation.

– Microsoft Office accounting software can be used for household units and small businesses that employ a limited number of employees.

– The free version of the software mentioned above is available for home-based business ventures.

– The latest version of the above accounting software provides advanced features such as tax preparation tools, foreign language packs, and available report building instruments.

To simplify communication:

– Microsoft Outlook can be used as personal data manager and communication software. The available functions are calendar, task manager, email and address book.

– Microsoft Office Communicator can be used to integrate meetings and conferences with clients in real time.

– Host applications such as Live Small Business, Live Workspace, and Live Meeting can greatly benefit home-based online business owners to provide virtual services.