Microsoft 365 is the backbone of productivity for many modern businesses. The suite offers essential tools for communication, collaboration, and security. However, many businesses don’t realize that they can unlock even greater value from their investment by leveraging powerful Microsoft add-ons. These add-ons help organizations maximize ROI, streamline workflows, and enhance compliance. Let’s explore some of the top Microsoft 365 add-ons.
The Importance and Benefits of Microsoft Add-Ons
Before we jump into the add-ons, it is important to understand their purpose. Add-ons empower businesses to tailor Microsoft 365 to their unique needs. Whether improving compliance, boosting security, or unlocking new collaboration features, they provide targeted enhancements that drive efficiency and cost savings.
There are two types of add-ons:
- Traditional add-ons are tied to a specific subscription. Cancel the subscription, and the add-on cancels with it.
- Standalone add-ons are managed as separate subscriptions, with their own expiration dates and management options.
This flexibility allows organizations to scale strategically, investing only in the functionality that delivers the highest business impact.
Best Microsoft 365 Add-Ons
The following add-ons add value to your business:
Access & Security
Microsoft Purview Customer Key
Microsoft Purview Customer Key gives organizations control over their own encryption keys. This helps meet regulatory and compliance requirements for data protection. Built on top of Microsoft’s service encryption, it enables you to provide and manage root encryption keys for your Microsoft 365 data at rest. This added layer of control strengthens compliance with standards that require key ownership. It also ensures sensitive data is encrypted under keys you manage without disrupting essential Microsoft services like eDiscovery, anti-malware, and search indexing.
Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management
Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management helps organizations detect and act on risky activities, like data exfiltration, policy violations, or misuse of sensitive information, before they escalate. With built-in privacy controls, customizable machine learning templates, and contextual insights, it enables you to identify hidden risks without deploying endpoint agents. Integrated workflows support collaboration between security, HR, and legal teams. Meanwhile, case management tools streamline investigations and resolution. The result is proactive protection against insider threats with minimal disruption to productivity.
Microsoft Purview Message Encryption
Microsoft Purview Message Encryption protects sensitive information shared via email, whether inside or outside your organization. It does this by ensuring only intended recipients can view message content. It combines encryption, identity, and authorization policies to secure communications across Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, and other services. Administrators can define rules to automatically encrypt emails based on recipients or keywords, while users can easily apply protection with built-in options like “Do Not Forward.” The result is seamless, secure communication that reduces the risk of data leakage.
Microsoft Purview Information Barriers
Microsoft Purview Information Barriers (IB) helps organizations in regulated industries prevent conflicts of interest by restricting communication and collaboration between defined groups of users. With IB policies in Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive, you can block unauthorized chats, file sharing, meetings, and site access to safeguard sensitive information. By enforcing separation between departments, Information Barriers ensure compliance, protect trade secrets, and reduce the risk of insider exposure.
Microsoft Purview Customer Lockbox
Microsoft Purview Customer Lockbox ensures you maintain control over your data by requiring explicit approval before Microsoft engineers can access your content during service operations. While most issues are resolved with telemetry and diagnostic tools, in rare cases where access is needed, Customer Lockbox puts you directly in the approval workflow. This gives your organization the authority to approve or deny requests, adding a critical layer of transparency and control to protect sensitive information.
Microsoft Purview Privileged Access Management
Microsoft Purview Privileged Access Management (PAM) strengthens security by enforcing just-in-time access to sensitive admin tasks in Exchange Online. Instead of granting standing privileges, PAM ensures elevated permissions are only available when needed, reducing the risk of compromised accounts or insider misuse. By operating with zero standing privileges, organizations gain a stronger defense against breaches. Furthermore, they align with compliance best practices for controlling privileged access.
Compliance
Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance
Strengthen your compliance posture with advanced risk management and data governance tools in E5 Compliance. This add-on enables you to:
- Safeguard sensitive data across clouds, apps, and endpoints.
- Identify and remediate critical risks.
- Investigate and respond to legal or regulatory requirements with confidence.
Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager
Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager simplifies regulatory complexity with pre-built and custom assessments, actionable guidance, and workflow automation. It provides a risk-based compliance score to track progress and highlight key improvement actions. This gives your team real-time visibility into your compliance posture. By centralizing assessments and reporting in one tool, Compliance Manager helps reduce risk, accelerate audit readiness, and keep pace with evolving regulations across your multicloud environment.
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery streamlines internal and external investigations with powerful search, legal hold, and export capabilities across Microsoft 365 apps. With tiered solutions, organizations can scale from simple keyword searches to advanced workflows:
- Content Search for quick queries and exports.
- eDiscovery (Standard) for case management, role-based access, and legal holds.
- eDiscovery (Premium) for end-to-end investigation workflows with custodian tracking, advanced filtering, analytics, and machine learning-powered predictive coding.
These options allow legal and compliance teams to preserve, collect, analyze, and export content efficiently, while focusing only on the most relevant data.
Microsoft Purview Audit
Microsoft Purview Audit provides the visibility and insights needed to support compliance and forensic investigations. With customized audit log retention policies, organizations can tailor retention by service, activity type, or user, retaining records for up to 10 years with an add-on license. Audit (Premium) extends visibility with detailed event insights. For example, insights may include when mail items were accessed, forwarded, or when users searched for content in Exchange or SharePoint.
Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance
Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance reduces communication risks by detecting and remediating inappropriate messages across Microsoft Teams, Exchange Online, and even non-Microsoft sources. Customizable machine learning playbooks help identify policy violations while preserving user privacy. Flexible workflows allow teams to investigate issues and take quick action, such as removing risky messages. This ensures safer collaboration and maintains compliance in regulated environments.
Data Management
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management helps organizations govern information at scale with automated classification, retention, and deletion policies. Using intelligent machine learning, it can apply labels based on file properties or sensitive data, ensuring content is kept only as long as it’s needed. Features like records management, defensible disposal, and detailed audit trails reduce risk while meeting regulatory obligations. With built-in proof of compliance and policy insights, Data Lifecycle Management enables organizations to balance data governance, efficiency, and compliance seamlessly.
Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention
Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) helps protect personal, financial, and confidential data across Microsoft 365, Copilot, and beyond. With cloud-native management, it discovers and secures sensitive information wherever it lives or travels. Adaptive, machine learning-driven policies balance security with productivity, while real-time insights give IT teams visibility and control. Integrated with Microsoft’s broader security ecosystem, Purview DLP delivers consistent protection against leaks and insider threats.
Power Pivot
Power Pivot is a powerful data modeling technology built into Excel that enables users to create sophisticated data models. It also establishes relationships between diverse data sources and performs both simple and complex calculations. It’s designed to handle large datasets efficiently, allowing you to work in a high-performance environment without leaving the familiar Excel interface. With Power Pivot, you can transform raw data into meaningful insights, streamline reporting, and unlock advanced analytics capabilities all within a tool your team already knows.
These add-ons, and others within the Microsoft Purview suite, help businesses achieve regulatory compliance, reduce risk, and maintain data integrity at scale.
How Add-Ons Maximize ROI
The right Microsoft 365 add-ons go beyond compliance and security by creating measurable business value. These tools allow you to:
- Reduce risk exposure: Protect against data breaches and regulatory fines.
- Increase efficiency: Automate compliance tasks and streamline audits, reducing manual effort.
- Improve collaboration: Enable secure, compliant information sharing across teams and with external partners.
- Increase Scalability: Choose standalone or traditional add-ons based on your growth trajectory, paying only for what you need.
By aligning add-on investments with business objectives, companies can extract more value from Microsoft 365 while lowering long-term IT and compliance costs.
Ready to Purchase Your Microsoft 365 Add-Ons?
Microsoft 365 add-ons give businesses the power to customize Microsoft 365 to their exact needs. At SPK and Associates, we specialize in helping organizations optimize their Microsoft licensing and identify the right add-ons to maximize their investment. Whether you’re looking to strengthen compliance, scale collaboration, or unlock new efficiencies, our team can guide you through the process to ensure you get the best return on your Microsoft 365 environment.
Ready to maximize your Microsoft 365 ROI? Contact SPK and Associates today to learn how the right add-ons can transform your business.
