July 12, 2021
It’s the era of the cloud. In fact, one study predicts that the cloud computing market will be worth $832.1 billion by the end of 2025. Many developers have turned to the cloud to speed up lengthy development processes, keep up with rapid industry changes, reduce costs, and decrease developers’ maintenance burden.
With tools like ERP systems, APIs, groupware, and email platforms being moved to the cloud, developers and IT administrators have faster access to the essential tools they need. Plus, because cloud providers handle the maintenance of these platforms, developers’ workload is significantly reduced. This allows them to focus on more important tasks instead of managing company-wide IT resources, something especially important for small to mid-sized companies with a limited budget or resources.
One of the most popular cloud services is Software as a Service (SaaS) which includes solutions such as Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and ERP, Google Apps for Business, Adobe Marketing Cloud, and more. While each of these tools allows you to focus on important business tasks, few other tools provide powerful results like Microsoft 365. Below, we’ll discuss how seven different company’s IT teams utilized the solution within their environment to boost productivity and improve customer service.
1. Mid-Sized Manufacturer Boosts Customer Satisfaction
The time had come for a mid-sized manufacturer to reorganize its 15-year-old groupware. One representative stated: “We needed new groupware that allowed us to work regardless of time and place and actively communicate with our partners and customers not only in-house but around the world.” Specifically, the company wanted a solution that could create and share documents among 500 people in both headquarters as well as domestic and foreign businesses.
When they introduced Office 365, their specific business needs were met and they were able to implement mobile offices. The implementation was carried out even though there were no professionals involved with the groupware development.
2. Clothing Company Reduces User Complaints Around Email System
A small-sized clothing manufacturer was suffering from a number of disruptions in its email services that were interrupting production and delivery processes. Additionally, there were a number of times the email system was inaccessible overseas in areas such as the United States and Hong Kong.
When they replaced their current email system with Office 365, they were able to provide the same quality of email service to both headquarters and overseas locations. Additionally, they expanded their email ability from only 200MB to 50GB to help ease the convenience of corporate members.
3. Shipping Manufacturer Improves Groupware Function
A nautical manufacturer received numerous employee complaints about the function of their groupware as well as continuous text breaks when exchanging emails with overseas buyers. To resolve these issues, the company introduced Office 365.
Using Office 365 features, they created a system that shared Excel documents with sales, materials, and workforce management teams that could then be edited and shared throughout the company. This enabled the company to supply real-time visibility into incoming and departing materials and production schedules. Additionally, they were able to integrate their headquarters work environment into locations overseas.
One representative stated: “We’ve created a department-specific folder within Office 365 and are posting documents such as business logs, sales status, client status, and progress rate. Executives are referring to this and making important decisions.”
4. Company X Boosts Productivity by 200%
Company X, an organization that produces personal safety products, was struggling to understand major business conditions such as sales and manufacturing in real-time. By implementing Office 365, Company X executives are now able to share key information in real-time via the solution’s shared folders.
Additionally, Office 365 enabled them to standardize the research and development process, analyze performance against budget, and apply key performance indicators to reduce costs by 15%. Ultimately, this resulted in a 200% increase in productivity per member.
5. Health Supplement Organization Standardizes their Research and Development Process
Due to major fluctuations in the workforce and the constant changes within the industry, a health supplement company needed a solution that seamlessly communicated with headquarters and external research institutes. Essentially, they wanted to systemize their research and development process.
By introducing Office 365, the organization succeeded in standardizing and systemizing all research and development processes, including ordering, extraction, enrichment, and quality control. Materials such as documents, patents, test papers, certificates, and experimental resorts are all easily managed using Microsoft One Note.
“Through Office 365, we were able to meet both demands, including those who wanted to draft articles on PCs and those who wanted to author articles online,” one representative said. “We also used real-time document modifications to speed up the editorial inspections, and it’s much easier for reporters and desks to write articles together.”
6. Game Developer Reduces the Impact on Their IT Department
A mid-sized game developer (Company N) found that the burden on their IT department was increasing rapidly due to the success of their service. To relieve some of this burden, the company wanted to set up a work support and management system that was made specifically for mid-sized companies.
Office 365 was implemented so that all employees could create, edit, and share documents online through a personnel database or Active Directory. The Active Directory solution does feature single sign-on and user authentication to address security issues related to adding member accounts, removing dormant accounts, and safeguarding sensitive data.
Unlike running email servers in-house, Exchange Online has eased security concerns because it removes files or URLs with malicious code from the server prior to delivering them to the user.
7. Company R Boost Security
Similar to Company N, Company R is a mid-sized game developer that has developed various hit movies. This company introduced a solution to their technology stack that would inspect attachments in advance as well as monitor security threats from external incoming emails. Nevertheless, the solution struggled to respond smoothly to Zero-Day Attack (an attack aimed at security vulnerabilities).
To remedy this, Company R introduced Office 365, which supplies multi-tier security while providing similar speed as existing email servers. Thanks to this, the inflow of malicious code was prevented and spam mail was reduced to 1/10. Ultimately, the IT department’s email-related technical support requests and overall stress have been significantly reduced.
If you have any questions on Office 365 or other Microsoft 365 products, please reach out to JourneyTEAM today.