Office 365

Plante Moran prides itself on being technologically and operationally innovative When its intranet and extranet needed a refresh it used Microsoft 365 to rethink and revamp both environments with uniquefeatures such as social networking Since introducing its new private and public collaboration sites based on Microsoft SharePoint Online OneDrive for Business and Yammer Plante Moran has doubled intranet usage reduced the time it takes to find content and experts by 50 percent and lowered collaboration costs by USD600000 annually

ldquoThe fact that KnowledgeShare is highly secure and accessible from any mobile device any time of the day or night supports our business and our staffrsquos mobile lifestylesrdquo

mdashPaul Blowers Chief Information Officer Plante Moran

Accounting firm revolutionizes collaboration with cloud file-sharing and social tools

Plante Moranwwwplantemorancom 2500 employees United States

Professional Services

PartnerRightpointwwwrightpointcom

If your business is advising other businesses on how to run as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible you make it a point to practice what you preach

Plante Moran one of the largest certified public accounting and business advisory firms in the United States has always done just that using its own business to model best operational and technological practices for clients The Detroit Michiganndashbased firm provides financial human capital operations improvement strategic planning technology selection and wealth management services to companies across the United States Its 2500 accountants management consultants auditors and other professionals work in 23 offices throughout Michigan Ohio Illinois Monterrey Mexico Mumbai India and Shanghai China

Stay world-classKnitting this many people together across so many locations to share ideas solve problems and delight clients is no easy featmdashbut Plante Moran has consistently pioneered the use of technology to do all that and more In 2007 it used Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 to build an early intranet for document sharing among workers Five years later it used SharePoint Server 2010 to build an extranet where staff members and clients could collaborate

By 2014 it was time to modernize both environments ldquoThe firm embarked on an ambitious growth strategy and decided that technology would be a key enabler of that growthrdquo says Paul Blowers Chief Information Officer at Plante Moran ldquoWe had terabytes of content on both our intranet and extranet but the on-premises technology was inflexible and aging and our user interface screamed 2007 Mobile and remote access was too hard We pride ourselves on and have won awards for being one of the countryrsquos best places to work and for our long-standing reputation for delivering exceptional client service Our digital strategy had to match and amplify this and that started with a world-class digital collaboration environment uniquely built for what we dordquo

Transform with a trusted cloudAlthough the firmrsquos existing sites were based on SharePoint Server Plante Moran looked at other leading file-sharing and collaboration environments conducting in-depth analyses and pilot programs It knew it wanted to switch to a cloud-based platform to provide scalability security speedy access to new features and greater mobility for staff

In the end Plante Moran decided to stick with Microsoft and migrate both staff and client collaboration environments to Microsoft 365 Enterprise which includes Microsoft Office 365 Windows 10 Enterprise and Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security

ldquoWe felt that Office 365 provided the most complete suite of services and greater ease of userdquo says Joni Propst IT Director Project and Portfolio Management at Plante Moran ldquoWhen we were making this decision in 2014 not many people were entrusting enterprise applications to the public cloud so we knew that we needed the support of a trusted partner like Microsoftrdquo

Plante Moran used Microsoft FastTrack implementation services along with the help of Rightpoint a member of the Microsoft Partner Network to design and implement

ldquoCollaboration Center built on SharePoint Online is a competitive differentiator for us when we pitch new businessrdquo

mdashAmy Moore Rapid Application Development

Team Lead Plante Moran

Office 365

both sites ldquoWe had a vision for what we wanted our new intranet and extranet to look like but we needed help realizing itrdquo says Amy Moore Rapid Application Development Team Lead at Plante Moran ldquoRightpoint did the bulk of the work of designing both environments implementing our branding and building the whole intranet experience around Yammerrdquo

KnowledgeShare empower staff with mobile social collaborationYammer is the enterprise social networking service in Office 365 and Plante Moran has made it along with Microsoft SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business the framework for its new intranet Called KnowledgeShare it contains firm-wide news and rich content from across the organization and makes it readily findable and usable by all 2500 staff members

Every staff member has a personalized KnowledgeShare home page where they post news about their projects search for and ldquolikerdquo content created by others access line-of-business apps and client collaboration sites and participate in social mediandashstyle conversations about topics of interestmdashfrom any device with complete mobile freedom

Inside KnowledgeShare staff members access OneDrive for Business where they can more securely store personal files in the cloud They can share and access these files easily from anywhere and the IT department can administer the sites centrally

Plante Moran uses SharePoint Online to store team content inside KnowledgeShare It has 70 team sites organized by practice area that contain more than 22000 files and Microsoft Delve locates and displays relevant colleagues and content

Staff members use KnowledgeShare with its image-rich interface and powerful search and personalization capabilities to ease collaboration efforts Say a staff member wants to find a colleague who speaks Mandarin or who is an expert in benefits consulting She can either put the request in Yammer or use the KnowledgeShare search box KnowledgeShare returns information in list or visual card formatsmdashsimilar to Pinterest ldquoThe visual interface makes it very easy to zero in on information and find what yoursquore looking forrdquo Moore says

Since introducing KnowledgeShare in December 2015 Plante Moran has seen intranet usage double from 800 to 1600 users per day The firm has also reduced the time it takes to find content and experts by 50 percent and lowered intranet costs by USD600000 annually all by eliminating on-premises servers and software licensing

ldquoOur business today is global which means that our staff needs 247 access to informationrdquo Blowers says ldquoThe fact that KnowledgeShare is highly secure and accessible from any mobile device any time of the day or night supports our business and our staffrsquos mobile lifestyles Some staff are rarely in our office and with OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online they access their files more easilyrdquo

Collaboration Center engage clients and transform servicesBefore starting work on KnowledgeShare Plante Moran had begun to overhaul its client collaboration site called Collaboration Center using SharePoint Online Even though Plante Moran had about 8000 sites running in its SharePoint Serverndashbased Collaboration Center many clients had problems accessing the sites because of technology incompatibilities such as browser support issues Plante Moran eliminated all those problems by moving the sites to the cloudtechnology incompatibilities such as browser

ldquoBy offloading collaboration applications and infrastructure to Microsoft our IT staff can spend more time creating cool new apps and features to help our staff and clients and simplifying team site provisioningrdquo

mdashAmy Moore Rapid Application Development

Team Lead Plante Moran

Office 365

Office 365

support issues Plante Moran eliminated all those problems by moving the sites to the cloud

Consequently Plante Moran has seen the number of client engagement sites in Collaboration Center skyrocket to 12600 These sites cumulatively contain more than 42 million files Each client has a site and each Plante Moran project has its own subsidiary site within a clientrsquos parent site

ldquoWe get anywhere from 10 to 50 requests for new Collaboration Center sites every dayrdquo Moore says ldquoOriginally it took several hours to create these sites using a semiautomated process but we fully automated the process using the WebJobs feature in Microsoft Azure App Service Today we can set up a site within the hourrdquo

Staff and clients come together in Collaboration Center and use SharePoint Online features to share files edit documents together in real time and keep track of tasks The portal provides an overview of engagement status such as percentage of tasks complete and other progress metrics

Now that its millions of client-facing documents are in SharePoint Online Plante Moran uses the rich portfolio of Office 365 cloud-based productivity services to enhance client collaboration For example Plante Moran has developed its first SharePoint Online app which clients use to easily upload a Plante Moran document checklist that ensures they provide all the necessary documents needed for an engagement The app not only contains the checklist but also provides an easy drag-and-drop feature for transferring the documents into Collaboration Center

ldquoCollaboration Center built on SharePoint Online is a competitive differentiator for us when we pitch new businessrdquo Moore says ldquoSome of the larger national accounting firms have capabilities like these but wersquore far ahead of our midsize competitors Clients are impressed with the fact that we have highly secure online file sharing and sophisticated tools for analyzing organizing and presenting informationrdquo

Of course the smart way that Plante Moran has used Office 365 to transform its own business serves as an example and encouragement to clients who want to do the same The fact that security features such as legal hold eDiscovery and Data Loss Prevention are built into Office 365mdashand that Office 365 includes such a broad and rapidly expanding portfolio of productivity servicesmdashmeans that Plante Moran has access to just about everything it needs without needing to use third-party products

Optimize operations with the cloudIn addition to realizing an annual savings of USD600000 by moving KnowledgeShare and Collaboration Center to the cloud Plante Moran has freed its IT staff from spending enormous amounts of time administering and securing on-premises collaboration environments

ldquoBy offloading collaboration applications and infrastructure to Microsoft our IT staff can spend more time creating cool new apps and features to help our staff and clients and simplifying team site provisioningrdquo Moore says ldquoWe have more than 12000 SharePoint Online sites and we use Windows PowerShell scripts to update thousands of these sites at once with just a few lines of coderdquo

Plante Moran uses Microsoft Intune part of Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security to manage all its Office 365 services and to deploy apps to mobile devices

This case study is for informational purposes only MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES EXPRESS OR IMPLIED IN THIS SUMMARYDocument published August 2017

Software and servicesMicrosoft 365 Enterprise

Windows 10 EnterpriseMicrosoft Enterprise Mobility + SecurityMicrosoft Intune

Microsoft Office 365Microsoft Office DelveMicrosoft OneDrive for BusinessMicrosoft SharePoint OnlineYammer

Microsoft AzureMicrosoft Azure App Service

Microsoft FastTrack

It uses the Intune Conditional Access feature to ensure that staff access Office 365 services only from authorized devices

ldquoPrior to using Intune staff members could access only email on their smartphonesrdquo Moore says ldquoNow they can also more securely access KnowledgeShare and Collaboration Center putting assets and colleagues at their fingertipsmdashanytime anywhere from any device Irsquove worked in technology for 17 years and seeing the transformative capabilities that we now have with Office 365 Intune and Azure is truly remarkable We can now accelerate our business on a scalable highly secure cloud-based collaboration platform that really sets us apart from the competitionrdquo

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 who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTYTDD) 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 towwwmicrosoftcom

Microsoft Office 365The new Office provides anywhere access to your familiar Office applicationsmdashplus email calendar video conferencing and your most current documentsmdashon almost any device from PCs to smartphones to tablets

For more information about Microsoft Office 365 go towwwoffice365com

Office 365