Rent the Runway steps out with latest in office management technology

Designer fashions retailer Rent the Runway has carved a lucrative niche for itself by giving consumers an easy, no-hassle way to rent fancy designer dresses for special occasions—both online and, more recently, in its brick-and-mortar stores. The company is managing its fast-growing omnichannel business with the latest in office technology.



Rent the Runway, which currently uses Microsoft Office 365 technology suite, will be one of the new users taking advantage of the new Office 2016 release and new Office 365 features.

Rent the Runway has used Microsoft Office since its founding in 2009, and leverages Excel as a master database to store information on all pieces of inventory. The retailer runs a data-intensive operation where buyers rely on data, rather than intuition, in their decisions.



To this end, buyers use Office applications to determine what fashions have been successful in the past and make real-time decisions about what to buy. Rent the Warehouse also performs warehouse management using Office 365.



Now Microsoft is releasing Office 2016 for Windows and Mac, as well as several new and enhanced Office 365 services. Improvements in Office 2016 include an upgraded inbox with faster search, access to cloud-based OneDrive attachments and automatic removal of low-priority mail. A new “TellMe” service helps find Office features and commands, and Smart Lookup enables online search from documents.



In addition, Excel 2016 now includes integrated publishing to Power BI and new modern chart-types. And a cloud-powered “most recently used documents” list allows users to pick up where they left off, across devices whether working in Office Online, the mobile apps or in the 2016 client apps.



Office 2016 integrates seamlessly with Windows 10, offering features such as “Windows Hello,” which allows sign-in by touch or look. Office Mobile apps and Continuum on Windows phones allows a phone to act as a desktop. Office 365 customers will have features and capabilities delivered continuously in the Office desktop applications as part of their subscription.



At the enterprise level, Microsoft is providing built-in data loss prevention functionality that allows centralized IT administration, as well as multifactor user authentication. Later this year, Microsoft will enable enterprise data protection (EDP), which allows more secure corporate content sharing across corporate managed apps and network/cloud locations, preventing inadvertent content sharing outside corporate boundaries.