Stories of business transformation: how six companies achieved it with Office 365

WelcomeIf you’re like most technology leaders, you spend a lot of time thinking about the future and trying to prepare for the challenges ahead.

According to Harvard Business Review, 84 per cent of today’s CEOs believe digital disruption is imminent, and almost half think their business model will be obsolete by 2020.

The real question is not whether you should work digital technology into your business processes. It’s how to adopt technology in a way that optimises your existing processes and transforms your organisation.

This e-book profiles six companies from different industries and regions. Each took advantage of Office 365 cloud-based services to drive business transformation, using the services in strategic ways. All six companies saw significant benefits, including rapid implementation, easy management and high adoption rates.

These stories introduce you to the types of business needs you

What you’ll learn Companies profiled

can address by rolling out various Office 365 services, and the impact you can make as a result. They also trigger helpful questions to ask yourself as you start your own digital transformation.

McCownGordon: Construction company improves collaboration and work-life balance

Hendrick Motorsports: NASCAR racing company boosts teamwork and productivity

Browning Law Group: Law firm enhances communications and collaboration – while protecting client data

Readify: Software solution provider inspires creativity and community among remote workforce

Helly Hansen: Outdoor gear manufacturer increases efficiency with streamlined operations and communication

Condé Nast Russia: Media publisher connects its people and systems to gain valuable time

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1Who: McCownGordon Construction

Type of business: Construction

Stats: In 1999, US construction firm McCownGordon started out as a small team of 15 people and $15 million in revenue. Today, it’s a 320-person firm with an $800 million backlog, and it’s 100 per cent employee-owned.

What it needed Collaboration, mobility, security

What makes the company tickWe build things differently.

Strengthening company culture with flexible technology

“I get feedback all the time about how impressed people are. Honestly, that’s the thing about technology: sometimes people try to overcomplicate solutions. But really, simple solutions are the best solutions.”

– Dustin Burns, IT Director, McCownGordon

Stories:McCownGordon

Hendrick Motorsports

Browning Law Group

Readify

Helly Hansen

Condé Nast Russia

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Business needEmployees at McCownGordon Construction do more than oversee the building of complex structures. They build relationships.

“Construction is probably one of the most collaborative industries in the market today,” explains Dustin Burns, IT Director at McCownGordon. “Especially in the kind of work that we do, 90 per cent of the work is done by other companies that don’t necessarily have a physical tie to our organisation.”

Yet outdated infrastructure and an ineffective cloud strategy hindered employee productivity, security and mobility. With on-premises, often confusing tools and data stored across multiple accounts, IT staff spent hours wrangling a steady stream of issues. And despite the firm’s core value to support work-life balance, McCownGordon lacked collaborative solutions and could not give its employees the flexible, mobile work styles they wanted.

The roll-outTo foster a more collaborative, accommodating culture and protect its people, data and devices better, McCownGordon adopted Office 365 – including SharePoint Online and OneNote – along with Enterprise Mobility + Security and the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

Employees have streamlined business practices by using OneNote to capture conversation histories, email threads, bidding records and information about trade partners. McCownGordon has also done away with paper meeting agendas. In fact, adopting OneNote has eliminated the firm’s need to keep binders full of paper documents.

“I get feedback all the time about how impressed people are,” says Burns. “Honestly, that’s the thing about technology: sometimes people try to overcomplicate solutions. But really, simple solutions are the best solutions.”

2017

$800M 320 people

1999

$15M 15 people

Realising rapid growth by giving employees and partners flexible ways to connect with information and each other from anywhere – from job sites to offices to home

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ImpactWith its cloud-based Microsoft technologies, McCownGordon has broken down the silos that hindered productivity. For example, employees use SharePoint Online and OneNote to easily access shared information that’s always up to date, whether they’re working from home or onsite with a customer. Now, project team members – from partners to field staff to employees in both the Kansas and Missouri offices – remain in the loop, and communication flows freely.

The construction firm relies on Enterprise Mobility + Security to manage its devices and promote freedom and productivity

– without sacrificing security. Employees can locate and wipe devices with no fear of exposing their personal information. As a result, they feel confident using mobile devices, knowing that their data is protected.

McCownGordon recognises the importance of giving employees access to the information they need, when they need it, and how they want to get it. “Today’s generation of workers have an expectation that they’ll have collaborative technology at their fingertips,” explains Burns. “Organisations have to provide a multitude of ways for people to get their work done. Those alternative workspaces have to have the connectivity they want and be conducive to all kinds of work.”

Final thought“Now everything is a technology decision,” says Burns. “Every business is becoming a technology business and those who don’t embrace that are going to fall behind or become obsolete.”

TakeawaysA growing number of workers are prioritising work-life balance, and organisations increasingly collaborate with workers and vendors across time zones. Does your current technology support your company’s culture and core values? If not, how might your culture be different (greater focus on relationships, innovation, work-life balance)?

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Who: Hendrick Motorsports

Type of business: Sports

Stats: Hendrick Motorsports is a leader on the NASCAR circuit, with a record 12 car owner championships.

Watch the video

Speeding past the competition with teamwork

2What makes the company tickWinning races takes an entire team, and at NASCAR every second counts.

What it neededSecurity, collaboration, productivity

“Adoption is high across the organisation because it’s so easy to use and customise.”

– Matthew Cochrane, Manager of Information Technologies, Hendrick Motorsports

Stories:McCownGordon

Hendrick Motorsports

Browning Law Group

Readify

Helly Hansen

Condé Nast Russia

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Business needTeamwork is the foundation of stock car racing success. That’s why Hendrick Motorsports, a leader on the NASCAR circuit, pushed to find tools to boost collaboration across its nine-building campus. The company wanted to use the same enterprise-grade security and communication tools for races to ensure each car’s peak performance on the track.

On campus, communication was “a shotgun blast of paperwork, emails and files all over the place,” says Tom Gray, Team Engineer at Hendrick Motorsports. It slowed productivity and decision making, and employees struggled to track critical issues.

During the race, things were worse, despite using Slack for some communications. “Slack did not provide the level of security we need for a sports organisation where

your competitors are right next to you on the track and everyone is talking on the radio,” explains Matthew Cochrane, Manager of Information Technologies at Hendrick Motorsports.

The roll-outWhen Hendrick Motorsports employees learned about Microsoft Teams, they were excited to try its chat-based workspaces. They already used the Office 365 cloud environment, so adding this component felt natural. The interoperability of the different components made it easy to adopt Microsoft Teams as a dedicated digital hub, where they could work together using data and features from across Office 365 services.

The company’s hub includes a built-in SharePoint Online team site along with OneNote notebook and Microsoft Planner and Power BI capabilities. It stores

information such as chat history, logistics related to each race venue, and engineering data. Hendrick Motorsports engineers conduct tests in different locations at the same time and now instantly share the results through Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Online. Other team members can immediately view that information, whether they are on campus or at a venue.

“We could test a car’s aerodynamics in the wind tunnel on Friday and find something that we would call a big gain. If the car is already at the racetrack, we can load the data into our Microsoft Teams workspace and chat with the crew chiefs and race engineers to help the teams implement what we discovered before the race, potentially giving us an advantage,” says L. Bryce Whitson, Jr., Aerodynamics Engineer at Hendrick Motorsports.

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ImpactProductivity has significantly improved since employees began using Microsoft Teams. “Adoption is high across the organisation because it’s so easy to use and customise,” says Cochrane.

Team members attend fewer meetings because they use the Microsoft Teams chat functionality to communicate in the moment, knowing their conversations will be saved for later reference. Leaders can create a collaboration hub for every project to fit their team’s work preferences and accelerate decision making.

“Each team has a different style of collaborating, depending on the project,”

says Megan Horn, Process Engineer at Hendrick Motorsports. “For one team, I tailor the workspace to use Power BI dashboards to communicate data visually. I designed a workspace for another team that relies almost exclusively on OneNote to share meeting notes and data. And some teams like to co-author Excel spreadsheets in real time, which Microsoft Teams can also accommodate.”

Now that Hendrick Motorsports uses Microsoft Teams, employees can share and discuss the massive amount of data they’ve gathered, both during the racing season and off season. And they can better prepare to win next year’s races. Because chasing a tenth of a second is a team sport.

Final thought“With Microsoft Teams, people can easily set up a collaboration workspace and accelerate decision making – without going to IT,” says Cochrane.

TakeawaysCompanies that empower employees and teams to make smart decisions based on real-time data can enhance productivity and innovation. Can your teams collaborate effectively? Do employees have access to the information they need, when and where they need it?

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Empowering employees while protecting client data

3Who: Browning Law Group

Type of business: Law firm

Stats: Browning Law Group provides legal services in six major practice areas, representing organisations and individuals throughout Orange County, California.

Watch the video

What makes the company tick “I’ve made a good career out of solving the problems that businesses face every day.”

What it neededSecurity, better communication internally and with clients

“Lawyers are obligated to maintain client confidentiality, and my technology has to account for that. I can’t allow the integrity of my firm to be compromised by technology that isn’t secure.”

– John Browning, Founder and Partner, Browning Law Group

Stories:McCownGordon

Hendrick Motorsports

Browning Law Group

Readify

Helly Hansen

Condé Nast Russia

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Business needPerhaps more than most small business owners, John Browning needs to trust his technology infrastructure. As founder and partner of the Browning Law Group, Browning’s livelihood and reputation depend on his ability to keep client information private.

“Lawyers are obligated to maintain client confidentiality, and my technology has to account for that,” Browning says. “I can’t allow the integrity of my firm to be compromised by technology that isn’t secure.”

But Browning also recognises that the firm’s lawyers need easy access to key systems and files, whether they’re taking a deposition,

meeting a client or working from home. And he wants to constantly improve his team’s ability to communicate effectively, both internally and with clients.

With these goals in mind, Browning started looking for a single software solution, one that he hoped would not require significant infrastructure investment. “I needed one integrated technology environment that would work for me, rather than make me feel like I worked for it,” says Browning.

The roll-outBrowning identified Office 365 as the perfect fit. It not only provided efficient ways for lawyers and staff to collaborate and communicate, it also delivered the security needed to safeguard client documents.

Through cloud-based services such as Exchange Online and Skype for Business Online, lawyers and paralegals communicate with each other and with clients in real time. They collaborate on documents using OneNote and SharePoint Online. And they access shared case files – including letters, transcripts, pleadings and other documents – via OneDrive for Business.

Browning uses Office 365 security features to control access to more than 30,000 documents in OneDrive for Business and on 15 separate SharePoint Online portals. He can set controls to grant clients or their authorised agents access to their files at any time on specific SharePoint Online portals, and he can give employees access to the information and documents they need. Password-protected access and two-step

verification help him keep administrative files private and safeguard his clients’ confidentiality.

SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and the Outlook app on lawyers’ smartphones are all synchronised with Outlook on their PCs. That means the lawyers stay connected with the office and their clients, wherever they go.

Browning uses Office 365 security features to control access to more than 30,000 documents in OneDrive for Business and on 15 separate SharePoint Online portals.

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ImpactBy adopting Office 365, the Browning Law Group can get more done in less time. In fact, Browning estimates that the firm will save up to 250 hours a year. Now instead of spending hours wrestling with IT issues for his company, Browning can devote that time to solving business problems for his clients.

And with Microsoft and Office 365 cloud services, Browning can support his practice through access to technology that was once only available to large law firms – at a fraction of the cost. As a result, his relatively small team has the tools to deliver a responsive, personalised service with the high level of security his business requires.

Final thought“It’s a competitive world, and I’m using Office 365 to even out the playing field with larger firms,” says Browning. “With first-class technology, I can provide first-class services for my clients.”

TakeawaysThe cloud allows even smaller businesses to take advantage of sophisticated document storage, collaboration and mobility features that were previously only viable at scale. How accessible are your company files and documents? Can the right people get to the right information at the right time? Can they do it securely? If not, what do you need to put safeguards in place?

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Embracing a culture of innovation

4Who: Readify

Type of business: Technology

Stats: A globally recognised provider of software solutions, Readify boasts a mostly remote workforce of more than 200 employees in disparate locations who work on a wide range of devices.

See the infographic

What makes the company tick Great ideas, brilliant people and innovative technology solutions

What it neededCollaboration, mobility, employee empowerment

“Collaborating through SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business has become so popular that attachments have become a dirty word.”

– Tatham Oddie, Managing Director, Readify

Stories:McCownGordon

Hendrick Motorsports

Browning Law Group

Readify

Helly Hansen

Condé Nast Russia

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Business needReadify lives and breathes technology. Most of its 200-plus employees work remotely using a variety of devices, which makes Readify the perfect test case of a virtual company. As such, it demonstrates to customers what’s possible through technology.

But to fully unite its mobile workforce, Readify knew it had to make communication as easy as talking to a colleague sitting a desk away. And it needed one safeguarded space online where it could store and manage all of its files and documents. Readify also wanted to create a greater sense of cohesion and social engagement across the company.

The roll-outReadify chose Office 365 for end-to-end collaboration, making it easy for its mobile

employees to connect with each other and with their customers in highly secure ways. For example, the company used SharePoint Online to build its own online space named “Readdit”, where people go to access and share documents. “It’s the home of everything Readify,” says Stephen Godbold, Chief Digital Officer at Readify.

Readdit provides a site for each customer and project, and one specifically for employees. On the customer sites, employees track proposals, contracts, projects, and other assets, storing their documents in OneDrive for Business. They can also invite other partners to join Readdit and collaborate with them on documents, typically using Skype for Business Online.

“Collaborating through SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business has become so popular that attachments have become a dirty word,” says Tatham Oddie, Managing Director at Readify. REMOTE WORKERS

200Inspiring teamwork, creativity and shared experiences among a mostly remote workforce

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ImpactReadify is now a truly mobile and modern company – and its employees and customers can see the difference.

Collaboration through SharePoint Online has made co-authoring documents so easy that it takes employees far less time to transform an idea into a publication.

Staff members use Yammer, the enterprise social network component of Office 365, to chat to each other, make announcements and organise social events like happy hour gatherings – bolstering the feeling of community. Even executives host regular “Ask Me Anything” sessions on Yammer

to build rapport and provide transparency between company leaders and staff. With an engagement rate of almost 100 per cent, Yammer is clearly appealing to its intended audience.

Readify turns to videos as a compelling way to share information and provide weekly snapshots of each team’s activities, evening events, training walk-throughs and product demos. Employees use Office 365 Video to upload and view videos. Administrators manage permissions so the right people can access the right videos and stay up to date.

With Office 365 and its cloud-sharing services, Readify is showing customers what a modern workplace looks like.

Final thought“We wanted to be good enough to be our own case study,” says Oddie.

TakeawaysCreating and maintaining a vibrant culture often depends on employees sharing experiences. Organisations with remote workers don’t need to miss out. How does your company reflect the modern workplace? Does your technology empower employees and promote innovation – and how could it do more?

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Who: Helly Hansen ASA

Type of business: Retail

Stats: Outdoor gear manufacturer Helly Hansen operates 39 retail outlets in Europe and North America, working with retailers and suppliers from around the world.

Watch the video

Gearing up with high-performing communication and business processes

5What makes the company tick“We have to have the best product and deliver on time.”

What it neededBetter communication, more efficient operations

Stories:McCownGordon

Hendrick Motorsports

Browning Law Group

Readify

Helly Hansen

Condé Nast Russia

“There is a lot of fantastic competition for the global accounts we serve, so we have to have the best product and deliver on time. To do that, we’ve got to communicate all the way through the supply chain.”

– Richard Collier, Vice President of Merchandising, Sourcing and Development, Helly Hansen

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Helly Hansen faced outdated systems, a fragmented email environment and an unreliable phone network that did not always allow its customers and vendors to connect.

Business needAs a global manufacturer of high-performance outdoor wear, Helly Hansen focuses on creating the best gear to ensure that customers perform at their peak level.

Growing enterprises need high-performance technology to help them reach their own goals. But Helly Hansen faced outdated systems, a fragmented email environment and an unreliable phone network that did not always allow its customers and vendors to connect.

“There is a lot of fantastic competition for the global accounts we serve, so we have to have the best product and deliver on time,” says Richard Collier, Vice President of Merchandising, Sourcing and Development at Helly Hansen. “To do that, we’ve got to communicate all the way through the supply chain.”

The roll-outHelly Hansen set out to create a more effective, connected environment. But with only five people on its IT staff, implementing a new company-wide solution all at once would be difficult. Helly Hansen decided to try giving 25 employees access to Office 365 cloud-based services as a pilot programme. With the transition programme Microsoft has in place for Office 365, a small pilot programme posed limited financial risk – Helly Hansen could move more of its workforce to Office 365 without paying any additional fees in the first year.

The easy implementation for IT staff and the enthusiastic response from the employees testing Office 365 convinced Helly Hansen after just one week that it had found the right solution for everyone.

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ImpactThe company tightened operational efficiency and communications with multiple Office 365 components, including SharePoint Online for document sharing and Exchange Online for effective email service. And employees adopted Skype for Business Online particularly quickly, using its instant messaging, video calling, desktop sharing and other capabilities to collaborate and streamline business processes.

“We ran a development project with contributors from Germany, Denmark, Sweden, the United States and Norway entirely on Skype for Business,” explains Sandy Abrahams, former IT Director at Helly Hansen. “The only time they came to Oslo was for final acceptance testing.”

Because employees now conduct such effective online meetings using Skype for Business Online, Helly Hansen reduced travel costs across the company by 10 to 15 per cent, and shrank its mobile phone budget by 10 per cent. The company finally retired its outdated hardware systems and now enjoys reliable communications between its remote teams, suppliers, vendors and customers.

Final thought“For the IT team, which is spread over five countries, being able to have all of our meetings via Skype for Business has been an amazing transformation,” says Abrahams.

TakeawaysA primary outcome of transformation is efficiency. With easy video calls and document sharing, travel expenses can be spared and employees can spend more of their time on work that adds value. Have you taken a full inventory of your business processes and operations? Are they working well? What would you need to optimise them?

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6Connecting people and systems to gain insights, time and a competitive edge

Who: Condé Nast Russia

Type of business: Mass media

Stats: Publisher Condé Nast Russia offers seven websites and digital applications, attracting more than 5 million unique visitors per month, and eight magazines with a total of more than 3 million readers.

See the infographic

What makes the company tickProducing the highest quality content for the world’s most influential audiences

What it needed Collaboration, productivity and mobility

“Employees can simply log in to our company portal from whatever device they are using, any time, and they have access to the Office applications that they count on to get their work done.”

– Dmitry Klichugin, IT Director, Condé Nast

Stories:McCownGordon

Hendrick Motorsports

Browning Law Group

Readify

Helly Hansen

Condé Nast Russia

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Business needProductive employees, streamlined processes and quicker decision making – not necessarily what comes to mind when thinking of glossy publications like Vogue, GQ, Glamour or Condé Nast Traveler. But Condé Naste Russia, an affiliate of the global media company, sought these critical business advantages to better compete in today’s fast-moving world of digital content.

The roll-outCondé Nast determined that Office 365 provided just what it needed, for both the publishing and IT sides of the house. The company adopted cloud-based services such as Yammer, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Power BI for Office 365 to make it easy for employees to work with its global offices and with each other. And because these services felt so familiar, the workforce quickly adopted them.

“Employees can simply log in to our company portal from whatever device they are using, any time, and they have access to the Office applications that they count on to get their work done,” says Dmitry Klichugin, IT Director at Condé Nast.

By using the Yammer enterprise social network to quickly tap in to company-wide expertise, employees have sped up decision making, an important benefit in a deadline-driven industry such as publishing.

“When we migrated most of our work-related and informal communications to Yammer, we started getting things done faster,” says Natalia Nikitenko, Sales Director at Vogue. “When questions or problems arise, people weigh in right away.”

It’s also quicker for Condé Nast salespeople to get actionable insights from company information. They used to rely on the marketing analytics team to gather data

and prepare reports, but often that involved bottlenecks and delays. Now they use the self-service capabilities in Power BI for Office 365 to analyse and visualise data themselves.

Employees also take advantage of Office 365 ProPlus, installing the latest version of Office on up to 10 of their devices. That means they can switch between different devices easily, matching their work style to their setting, whether it’s the office, airport or living room.

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ImpactSince adopting Office 365, Condé Nast Russia has seen gains in productivity and efficiencies across the company. For example, because employees use Yammer to collaborate and make decisions quickly, the company has reduced approval times by a week.

The sales team is also making more effective use of its time. “By using Power BI for Office 365 to quickly pull together information for routine reports, I’d estimate that 30 to 40 per cent of the sales team’s reporting workload has been removed,” says Mikhail Stepanov, Information Systems Director at Condé Nast. “That frees them up for meaningful work, including spending more time with clients.”

And IT staff members appreciate that they can now devote more time to value-added activities like strategic planning, rather than maintaining on-premises mail services and storage solutions, thanks to the new cloud-based environment.

“With Office 365, we don’t need to create regular backups of servers or control the accessibility and availability of space on the storage system,” says Klichugin. “And because Microsoft hosts and supports Office 365, it is a more reliable service than what we could provide.”

Final thought“The fact that Microsoft delivers all that functionality as a ready-made service

that users can access easily on their own terms is great for companies like ours that have limitations with their on-premises infrastructure,” says Klichugin.

TakeawaysTime is a critical commodity, especially for organisations in competitive, deadline-driven fields. Are your employees able to spend most of their time working on high-value, revenue-generating activities for the company? If not, how can you help them to optimise their time?

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ConclusionYou’ve seen how organisations in a wide range of industries have adopted digital technology and transformed their business. Now it’s time to take the next step.

Start your own digital transformation todayTransformations can be big, but they can also start small. Begin by focusing on how employees collaborate, how you interact with customers or how your company delivers products. Look at optimising key business operations and processes.

Here are a few more ideas to get you started:

• Can online meetings help save travel expenses and time?

• Can your teams collaborate with centrally managed documents?

• Do employees have the flexibility they need to access files and connect with each other?

• What communication, process and other silos can you break down?

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To learn more about Office 365 and how it can help you transform your business, go to office.com/business.

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