Microsoft Office 365Customer Solution Case Study

Consultancy Streamlines Collaboration, Cuts IT Costs with Cloud-Based File Sharing

OverviewCountry or Region: The NetherlandsIndustry: Professional Services

Customer ProfileDouma de Wit & Partners consults with local and regional governments, helping customers transition to what they call the “New World of Work”―the digital information-sharing environment.

Business SituationDDW&P was experiencing project delays due to document version conflicts. The company had been using Dropbox as its primary document sharing service, but found it to be a less than ideal solution.

SolutionDDW&P began using Microsoft Office 365 primarily for document sharing and review, ensuring that all parties could access the most current file version. Consultants can now leverage Microsoft cloud-based document synchronization within the already-familiar Office Suite.

Benefits

· 20 % increase in project efficiency

· 90 % reduction of IT expenses

· 90 % reduction of travel expenses

“Office 365 facilitates more results-oriented team collaborations by changing behaviors and breaking down cultural norms in communication styles.” Richard de Wit, Director, Douma de Wit & Partners

Douma de Wit & Partners (DDW&P) provides local and regional governments with project management and advisory services. After experiencing communication bottlenecks in project workflow, the company chose to implement a single cloud-based platform with Microsoft Office 365. As a result, DDW&P has cut travel and IT expenses and decreased project completion time by 20 percent.

SituationDouma de Wit & Partners (DDW&P) was experiencing project delays due to document version conflicts. The company had been using Dropbox as its primary document sharing service, but found it to be a less than ideal solution. “Often, up to 20 percent of a given project’s budgeted time was lost ensuring that everyone was viewing the most up-to-date version of a document,” says Richard de Wit, Director of DDW&P. With multiple consultants reviewing and editing documents from various locations, the current Dropbox file was not always the most recent version. DDW&P needed a solution that would give all reviewers access to the most current version of a document reflecting all changes.

As a result of these issues, DDW&P was losing money on IT support, and sacrificing productivity. According to de Wit, “Each month we spent the equivalent of a full day working with our IT support personnel troubleshooting technical problems.” Because the company used multiple disparate on-site solutions to meet its needs the IT department was

The challenges were heightened by frequent work-related travel, which often hampered the productivity and collaboration of independent consultants and caused heavy expenditure of money and time. “Each of our consultants travel between 5,000 and 10,000 km per year, and spend between 50 and 100 hours on the road,” notes De Wit. Consultants had no easy way to communicate effectively with one another, or with clients. To reduce these costs, DDW&P needed a communications tool that would allow videoconferencing along with document and media sharing capabilities.

On top of this, many of the company’s clients were facing very similar challenges. DDW&P desired a solution that would help them achieve its own business goals, while also passing along the same benefits to its clients.

Solution DDW&P began using Microsoft Office 365 primarily for document sharing and review, ensuring that all parties could access the most current file version. Consultants can now leverage Microsoft cloud-based document synchronization within the already-familiar Office Suite. This functionality has eliminated the company’s primary workflow bottleneck and accelerated project speed by 20 percent.

DDW&P has transitioned from using a mix of on-site applications and cloud-based systems to using Office 365 as a comprehensive tool for managing the entire project workflow. de Wit describes Office 365 as an “end-to-end” solution: Because the applications work seamlessly together without extensive setup, the need for technical support has been almost completely eliminated. Not only is the consultancy’s IT load much lower, but with

Office 365, IT expenses are much more fixed and predictable.

Instead of using conference calls and physical meetings, DDW&P now collaborates through Microsoft SharePoint Online and Lync Online. de Wit praises Office 365 for allowing the consultants to collaborate from anywhere, on almost any device. He says, “We often make big decisions as a group at odd hours, simply because everyone is online collaborating together.”

Through these systems, consultants can now tele- or videoconference with each other and their clients while simultaneously reviewing documents or presenting media materials. Coupled with cloud-based document sharing, these features have permanently changed the way Douma de Wit does business by greatly reducing travel and IT expenses while increasing efficiency. The company’s customers have also experienced many of these same benefits, as DDW&P now recommends the Office 365 suite to client companies. de Wit sums it up: “Office 365 facilitates more results-oriented team collaborations by changing behaviors and breaking down cultural norms in communication styles.”

BenefitsBy migrating all of its document management and communications platforms to a fully integrated Microsoft solution, DDW&P streamlined workflow and achieved cost savings―for its own company and for clients. The new solution has eliminated redundancy in document management, and has enabled a more efficient means of communication.

20 Percent Increase in Project Timeline Efficiency

23

“Office 365 facilitates more results-oriented

team collaborations by changing behaviors and breaking down cultural

norms in communication styles.”

Richard de Wit, Director, Douma de Wit & Partners

Prior Office 365, approximately 20 percent of DDW&P’s time on any given project was wasted due to version-control issues. With Microsoft Word auto-synchronization in Office 365, the consultancy now completes projects ahead of schedule, allowing it to take on more clients and improve top-line performance. Productivity has also been increased for the company’s many independent consultants who travel frequently.

90 Percent Reduction of IT Expenditure “IT support has been minimized to almost nothing now that we’re no longer using on-site tools,” says de Wit. The company’s resources can now be allocated to value-add advisory services rather than spent dealing with technical issues. Furthermore, IT expenditure is now fixed at €9 per user, per month, allowing the consultancy to more accurately forecast expenses.

90 Percent Reduction of Travel Expenses DDW&P has experienced travel reductions of up to 120,000 km per year due to cloud-based collaboration and client interaction, and has reclaimed up to 1,200 annual commuting hours across all twelve consultants. This has almost completely eliminated travel expenses, as the firm can now conduct all collaboration and client communications via the cloud. Because DDW&P’s primary offering is project management, it is crucial that the company uses the most advanced technology available. In fact, de Wit claims, “Our customers are so impressed by our solution that we’ve begun advising them to adopt it themselves.” By implementing this single, cloud-based tool, DDW&P has cut

travel and IT expenses, improved project completion time by 20 percent, and truly revolutionized collaboration.

Microsoft Office 365Microsoft Office 365 brings together cloud versions of our most trusted communications and collaboration products—Microsoft SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online—with the latest version of our Office desktop suite and companion web applications for businesses of all sizes.

Office 365 helps save time and money, and it frees up valued resources. Simple to use and easy to administer, it is financially backed by a service level agreement that guarantee 99 percent reliability. Office 365 features robust security, IT-level phone support, geo-redundancy, disaster recovery, and the business-class privacy controls and standards that you expect from a world-class service provider.

For more information about Microsoft Office 365, go to:www.office365.com

33

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published June 2011

Software and Services

Microsoft Office 365• Microsoft Exchange Online• Microsoft Lync Online• Microsoft Office Web Apps

For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Douma de Wit products and services, visit the website at: www. douma-dewit.nl .

For more information about Wortell products and services, visit the website at: www.wortell.nl .