Microsoft 365 sits at the heart of nearly every modern business, but most organisations have no idea what’s really happening inside their tenant. Licences stay active long after people have left, overlapping tools stack up unnoticed, and powerful features remain unused. The issue isn’t adoption; it’s waste. renewal season When the time to renew licenses rolls around, most businesses simply sign the next 12-month agreement without clearing out the clutter that’s quietly draining their budget.
As the Solution Lead for Modern Workplace at Babble, I’ve helped hundreds of organisations optimise and secure their Microsoft 365 environments. And I can say with confidence that almost every environment we assess reveals unnecessary costs or hidden risks that could have been avoided.
In this article, I’ll break down the five most common issues we uncover when we run a SmartCheck scan (a free, easily accessible scan) created to help highlight where waste hides, where risks creep in, and where value slips through the cracks. If you haven’t reviewed your environment recently, now is the perfect moment to step back, clean things up, and go into your next renewal with clarity rather than guesswork.
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What this blog covers:
Most Organisations Are Unaware That They Have Issues In Their Microsoft 365 Environment
How sure are you that you know what is happening inside your Microsoft Environment? The usual answer is: “We think we’re okay, but can you just take a look?” This is because most businesses don’t go looking for problems in Microsoft 365.
That was exactly the case for a 100-person professional services firm we recently worked with - their team used SharePoint, Teams, Outlook, OneDrive the whole Microsoft 365 stack. There were no outages, no incidents, no urgent complaints.
Our question sparked some curiosity, and so we ran a quick, non-intrusive SmartCheck scan of their Microsoft 365 environment. From that simple scan, they had a visual report showing what was really happening inside their tenant. What we found was eye-opening:
- Only 68% of users were active, meaning over 30% of licences were inactive, representing £343 in unused licence costs the business was still paying for.
- Only 28% of employees were using Microsoft Teams, despite the company paying for full access
- SharePoint had over 650,000 files across 76 sites, but just 37% of users had accessed it recently
- OneDrive stored 170,000+ files, yet half the user base wasn’t logging in
- A Microsoft Secure Score of just 39 out of 100, well below the recommended 75+ baseline, highlighted critical weaknesses in their Microsoft 365 security setup. The Secure Score acts as a benchmark for how well an organisation is protecting its environment.
When presented with this information, it was clear. Without realising it, the business was overspending on unused tools and sitting on unresolved security alerts that put them at risk.
This recent example is just one of many cases I see over and over again. So, if you don't know when you last audited your Microsoft 365 environment, read on. Let's unpack together the five most common problems you are most likely facing and how they impact you.
1. Wasted Licences Are Quietly Draining Your Budget
Industry data shows that up to 44% of Microsoft 365 licences are underutilised or oversized. Licences are often assigned and then forgotten. Staff leave, roles shift, projects end, but those licences stay active, silently adding to your monthly bill.
The waste hides in plain sight. And because Microsoft 365 doesn’t flag underused or inactive accounts. A scan of your Microsoft tenant can break this cycle. It shows who’s using what, how often, and where you’re overspending. Once you know, it’s straightforward to reassign or cancel underused licences, downgrade where it makes sense, and right-size your entire setup.
We always advise businesses to put these three practices in place:
- Run quarterly licence audits.
- Flag users inactive for 30+ days.
- Reassign or downgrade licences based on real usage.
Even small course corrections can unlock large savings.
Over to you: When was the last time you audited your licence usage? If it’s been more than 3–6 months, there’s a strong chance you’re already overspending.
2. Security Alerts Are Going Unnoticed (Until It’s Too Late)
Microsoft 365 is constantly monitoring your environment for suspicious activity, such as admin logins from unknown locations, newly created inbox forwarding rules, or users behaving outside their usual patterns.
These signals are vital. But in many organisations, no one is looking at them. Default alert settings go unchanged and high-risk activities sit unresolved sometimes for weeks. Not because teams don’t care, but because the visibility just isn’t there.
Scanning your Microsoft environment will surface every alert, including the ones hiding in the background and highlights those that matter most. From unreviewed login attempts to shadow forwarding rules, it pulls the critical issues into focus.
With alerts surfaced, your IT team can take immediate action, whether that’s disabling compromised accounts, adjusting permissions, or enabling policies to prevent recurrence.
Are you confident your team is reviewing Microsoft 365 security alerts regularly? If not, now might be the time to start.
3. A Low Secure Score Signals Hidden Vulnerabilities
If you’ve never heard of Secure Score, you’re not alone, but that doesn’t make it any less important. Secure Score is Microsoft’s internal measure of how well your environment aligns with security best practices. It looks at things like MFA, conditional access, outdated protocols, and privileged accounts.
It’s scored out of 100. Microsoft recommends businesses aim for 75 or higher. But most firms sit somewhere in the 30s to 50s, without knowing what’s dragging them down. A low score doesn’t just mean a missed checkbox. It means tangible weaknesses: inactive admin accounts, unprotected identities, and open access to sensitive data.
When we scan your Microsoft tenant, we also calculate your Secure Score rating. The report will benchmark your Secure Score, shows you how to improve it, and prioritises changes that make the biggest impact fast. Once you know the gaps, your team can take specific steps, enable MFA, restrict admin access, implement conditional access policies that directly raise your Secure Score and harden your environment.
Do you know your current Secure Score and what’s affecting it? If not, your environment could be more vulnerable than it looks.
4. SharePoint and OneDrive Are Becoming Digital Dumping Grounds
Microsoft 365’s collaboration tools, especially SharePoint and OneDrive, work brilliantly when they’re managed intentionally. But without oversight, they quickly become overgrown.
Over time, collaboration platforms grow cluttered. Files and sites pile up. Teams leave. Data stays. What once enabled productivity becomes a liability. Data sprawl leads to higher storage costs, poor collaboration, and increased exposure of sensitive or outdated information.
A simple scan of your Microsoft tenant will visualise your data footprint across SharePoint and OneDrive. It shows which sites are active, which users are engaging, and where cleanup is long overdue.
From here, your team can archive or clean up unused sites, reclaim storage, and put better governance in place. You end up with a leaner, faster, more secure workspace. It’s the first step toward a leaner, more secure collaboration environment one that doesn’t bury your business under its own information.
Do you know which data is still useful and which is just weighing your tenant down? If you’re not sure, you’re overdue for a review.
5. Product Adoption Gaps
Microsoft 365 isn’t just email and cloud storage. It’s a productivity suite packed with tools that can transform how teams communicate, plan, and collaborate.
But most businesses only use a fraction of what they pay for.
Powerful apps like Teams and Planner are often licensed across the company but used by just a few. Some tools never get rolled out. Others are forgotten after onboarding. The result is a growing mismatch between what’s bought and what’s used.
You're losing value. These tools were meant to drive collaboration, automation, and productivity but that value is lost when adoption stalls.
A report from scanning your tenant will show these adaptation gaps. It shows actual product usage per app and per user group, so you can see what’s being used and what’s not. With this insight, you can focus training where it matters, decommission tools that don’t fit, or adjust licensing to match real-world usage. This will allow you to maximise your ROI on the tool your teams use.
Are your teams making the most of what you’re already paying for? Is your team using the full Microsoft 365 suite or just a few basics? If adoption isn’t measured, value is left on the table and money with it.
Regain Control with a Clearer View of Microsoft 365
The five problems above aren’t rare. They’re routine and happening inside businesses every single day. But they’re also fixable. All it takes is visibility.
That’s why we built SmartCheck, a free and easily accessible tool created to help teams like yours get clarity and control over their Microsoft 365 setup. SmartCheck is a quick, secure, and non-intrusive scan of your Microsoft 365 environment that reveals:
- Where you’re overspending on licences
- What security risks are sitting unresolved?
- How your Secure Score compares to Microsoft’s benchmark
- What’s active or stale in SharePoint and OneDrive
- Which tools are driving value and which aren’t?
SmartCheck is built to give you the visibility you need before you commit to another 12-month agreement. In just 10–15 minutes, you get a clear view of what you’re paying for, what you’re wasting, and where hidden risks sit—without disruption and without accessing any of your content. Just a fast, secure scan that shows how your Microsoft 365 environment is really being used.
Your environment has more potential than you realise. We help uncover the waste, fix the gaps, and put you back in control long before renewal day arrives.
