Microsoft Office 2010Customer Solution Case Study

Industrial Services Company Revamps Its Infrastructure and Desktop After Acquisitions

OverviewCountry or Region: AustraliaIndustry: Industrial services

Customer ProfileHeadquartered in Perth and Brisbane, Australia, Cape Australia is part of Cape PLC, an international provider of industrial multi-disciplinary services to the energy and natural resources sectors.

Business SituationAfter acquisitions of three companies, IT leadership looked to improve the reliability of its disjointed systems, improve communications, and reduce employee frustration.

SolutionCape Australia partnered with Microsoft to revamp its core infrastructure and desktop solutions with a platform of Microsoft technologies—including Microsoft Office 2010.

Benefits Reduced IT administration and costs Reduced travel Increased employee productivity Reduced time to manage email Increased employee retention

“Our company takes advantage of best practices and leading innovation built into Microsoft desktop and server applications to provide benefits to our IT staff, our employees, and ultimately, our clients.”

Jason Cowie, Executive Manager of Business Services, Cape Australia

Headquartered in Perth and Brisbane, Australia, Cape Australia provides industrial multi-disciplinary services to the energy and natural resources sectors. In 2007, the Australian operations grew but became more complex when the company acquired three additional companies. With a disjointed technical environment, IT leadership sought a new strategy to improve the reliability of its systems, improve communications, and reduce employee frustration. The company partnered with Microsoft to help revamp its core infrastructure and desktop solutions with a platform of Microsoft technologies that includes Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft 2010 server applications, and Windows 7 Enterprise. With a standard operating environment, Cape Australia can reduce IT administration and costs, lower travel costs with new online communication options, and provide more capabilities that benefit its employees.

SituationHeadquartered in Perth and Brisbane, Australia, Cape Australia is part of Cape PLC, an international provider of industrial multi-disciplinary services to the energy and natural resources sectors. Cape Australia employs 1,250 people and provides new and improved industrial products and services for its clients across Australia.

In 2007, the company’s Australian operations grew but became more complex when the company acquired three companies based in Australia. Each company that Cape Australia acquired had its own infrastructure and desktop applications including multiple versions of Microsoft Office. Cape Australia hired Jason Cowie as the Executive Manager of Business Services to head up IT for the business, manage key shared services divisions, and assist the acquisition integration.

Cowie and his IT team spent the first few months investigating the infrastructure and applications. Cowie explains, “When I joined Cape Australia, the technical environment was disjointed and had real functional problems. In addition to handling significant Internet, domain, and network issues, Cape Australia had already extended its team with subcontractors to help support the infrastructure and multiple versions of core software. Services and servers did not work together consistently or reliably. Fragmented systems, connectivity issues, and reliability concerns all led to an increase in IT administration and daily employee frustration.”

IT leadership visited multiple office locations to understand how employees worked with technology. They talked with employees, who identified the frustrations outlined above but also expressed a desire to communicate better with their coworkers, especially those across the country. Employees also expressed the need to collaborate better on large projects and key documents, such as tenders and monthly reports.

Cowie says, “Our staff relied heavily on email as its primary communication tool and document-sharing tool. Inboxes were overloaded, which caused delays in responses, document reviews, and problem resolution. Our management team was also spending a fair amount of time traveling between the multiple locations within our newly formed organization, which was time consuming and costly.”

Based on the evaluation, IT leadership developed a strategic plan to upgrade the IT infrastructure and desktop for all Cape Australia’s business branches and employees. Cowie explains, “Our aim was to deliver one core infrastructure and one seamless desktop experience that is all connected and interoperable. This solution would also improve employee communication, which would bring the company closer together.” The project, named One Way, was approved by Cape PLC’s board.

SolutionTo start the One Way project, Cape Australia approached Microsoft to help stabilize its licensing position and discuss

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“As a result of project One Way, we anticipate the timeline and associated labor costs for future deployments and upgrades to be reduced by 50 percent.”

Jason Cowie, Executive Manager of Business Services, Cape Australia

upgrading its email solution from Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. However, when IT leadership explained its project goals, Microsoft shared its roadmap for Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Lync Server 2010, and Windows 7 Enterprise. Cowie says, “We could see a lot of synergies in our vision and the upcoming Microsoft 2010 releases. Under the One Way concept, we reviewed whether Microsoft had a product for all of our core areas of the strategy, in addition to every area of core infrastructure. As this became evident, we began to formulate the Enterprise Agreement around Microsoft partnering with Cape Australia to provide the software required to build the One Way project vision.”

In 2010, the company completed a successful pilot program of the Microsoft technologies. Cowie says, “We gained organizational acceptance quickly as a result of the pilot. We were excited about the future and the capabilities the new technology solution would bring.” IT staff are deploying Office 2010, coupled with Windows 7, as the new standard operating environment on the desktop, and plans to complete the rollouts in early 2011. With these technologies, the IT team can provide a consistent look and feel for improved employee productivity, and make it simpler to manage the same software on each PC.

IT staff also deployed the following server applications:

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 delivers a consistent email solution for Cape Australia with larger mailboxes (500 MB to 1 GB), archiving, voice mail consolidation in employee inboxes, and higher availability and disaster recovery.

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 enables online communication alternatives available to the company for the first time; such as audio and video conferencing, desktop sharing, and instant messaging and presence indicators that display employee availability throughout the Office 2010 suite. Cape Australia plans to upgrade to Microsoft Lync Server 2010 in 2011 to deliver a more comprehensive communication solution, making PCs and mobile phones the only devices that employees need at work.

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 will be deployed in 2011 to improve the Cape Australia intranet and offer team sites for enhanced collaboration on large projects.

Cowie says, “Cape Australia basically decided to start with a blank canvas. We redesigned a new core infrastructure around a desktop connected to a single enterprise domain that is fully managed and protected. Our solution provides communication and collaboration capabilities to our employees and also allows IT to automate support processes for application management, user management, and deployment. The software works really well together and delivers a great experience for our users.”

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Employees believe the presence and communication capabilities in Office 2010 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2 are making the biggest impact on their business processes. “In Outlook 2010, I can see a coworker’s availability, position in the organization chart, and other contact details in a contact card,” says Matthew Regan, National Procurement Manager at Cape Australia. “With Office 2010, our dispersed team has new options to communicate and collaborate with each other and with other knowledge experts in the company. Using instant messaging, conferencing, and desktop sharing, you get a faster response than sending emails. We already resolve issues and make decisions during document reviews more quickly.”

The executive team is also more available to and personable with their teams, without the need to travel to multiple branch offices. “Because they can see my presence information, my team contacts me directly when they have a question. We chat, we invite others into an ad hoc conference, we share documents with desktop sharing—and we quickly resolve issues,” says Cowie. “I can stay in constant touch from wherever I’m working that day.” In addition, IT support staff uses conferencing and desktop sharing to train and resolve technical issues for employees.

With Outlook 2010 and Exchange Server 2010, employees at Cape Australia can better manage their email messages and calendars. To help with overloaded inboxes, employees can use Conversation View, which groups emails

into conversations based on subject. Employees can save time by easily deleting, moving, categorizing, or marking the entire conversation as read in one click. Management and team members can use shared calendars to view each other’s calendars in an overlay view. “Since Outlook 2010 is a tool most of us have open all day, capabilities that save us time, like Conversation View, shared calendars, and shared tasks, make our lives easier,” says David Meek, National Stock Controller at Cape Australia.

Employee acceptance of the new infrastructure and desktop has been favorable. Regan adds, "I look back now, and wonder what I ever did without it. I am very happy Cape Australia decided to go with Office 2010."BenefitsBy stabilizing the company’s IT with the latest Microsoft technologies, Cape Australia operates on a consistent, reliable enterprise infrastructure and desktop solution. Cowie says, “When Cape Australia started the One Way project, IT and employee frustration was high from issues caused by disjointed technical environments as a result of the acquisitions. With a standard operating environment, we can reduce IT administration and costs, lower travel costs with online communication tools, and provide more capabilities that benefit employees.”

Reduced IT Administration and CostsThe IT staff anticipates less work required to maintain the infrastructure and desktop systems once the Microsoft technologies are deployed on a single

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“Our executive staff alone has the potential to reduce their travel expenses by 25 to 50 percent a year as a result of project One Way.”

Jason Cowie, Executive Manager of Business Services, Cape Australia

platform to the entire organization. Cape Australia expects that fewer issues and faster resolution times will lead to lower IT costs. “The One Way project allows us to reduce the original IT support costs for the group by 50 percent, by eliminating the permanent need for subcontractors. With the application interoperability and user management features, we do not anticipate the need to significantly increase support personnel even while the business is growing,” says Cowie.

Because the technical environment is consistent, the IT staff can perform upgrades and migrations faster. For example, the IT staff can upgrade quickly from Office Communications Server 2007 R2 to Microsoft Lync Server 2010. “Office 2010 and Lync 2010 are already built to seamlessly work together. This makes our job easier and lowers our costs. As a result of project One Way, we anticipate the timeline and associated labor costs for future deployments and upgrades to be reduced by 50 percent,” says Cowie.

The IT staff can also improve its remote support with Office 2010 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2. “Our remote support is now more personable,” Cowie notes. “With desktop sharing, we can look at an issue with the employee. So not only can we gain access to address the issue, our IT staff can also deliver ad hoc online training for employees through instant messaging or conferencing tools. If employees can quickly work through more issues on their own, user downtime and IT help desk calls will decrease.”

Cowie adds, “This is the first time I can say Microsoft Office, Microsoft server applications, and Microsoft system management tools are totally interoperable, and it works seamlessly. This not only provides a great desktop experience for our users, but helps lower our IT administration and costs.”

Reduced Travel with More Communication OptionsCape Australia now offers its employees multiple ways to communicate with the capabilities in Office 2010 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2, such as audio and video conferencing. With these online communication options, employees can travel less for meetings, trainings, and one-on-one reviews. Cowie explains, “Our executive staff alone has the potential to reduce their travel expenses by 25 to 50 percent a year as a result of project One Way.” This expense reduction could result in providing a six-figure saving per year.

Increased Employee Productivity Cape Australia predicts it will improve productivity because employees can work together more easily with the new infrastructure in place. “Pilot users reported saving an hour a day. As more employees upgrade, the same staff indicates that their time savings are increasing,” says Cowie.

Because employees can spend less time traveling, they have more time to spend on core business objectives. When out of the office, executives can continue to be productive from virtually anywhere. Cowie says, “When I’m visiting other offices or working from home, my staff

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and I can still communicate and work together as if we were all in the office. I can quickly find available experts and make decisions to resolve issues in real-time—no matter where I am that day.”

With Office 2010, employees can collaborate more easily with each other, which also helps increase productivity. Employees can spend more time on the content within the document, compared to the process of handling documents through reviews and approvals. Regan says, “With Office 2010, the procurement team completed a tender document in less than an hour. This process used to take us days due to delays in collecting feedback through long email threads. We have reduced the cycle time by immediately locating available experts and using conferencing and desktop sharing to work through the document. We end up with the same result and quality from an online discussion, only faster, and we have more time to focus on the core objectives of our business.”

Reduced Time to Manage EmailTo lower the volume of email and promote better communication, executives request that employees use instant messaging or conferencing if people are shown as available. Executives and employees are adopting this informal policy to help resolve issues faster and to reduce the volume of email. Cowie explains, “I have notified my staff to only send me emails when my presence indicator shows I am not available. I can now address issues immediately and be more personable with my staff. As an extra benefit, the reduction in email removes clutter from

my inbox, which reduces the risk of missing important emails.”

Increased Employee RetentionThe executive staff also believes it can increase employee retention with its Microsoft solution. “With less issues and downtime, employees experience less frustration. Less frustration leads to higher employee productivity and a happier workforce. With a more content workforce, we anticipate increased retention,” says Cowie. He concludes, “We have a great partnership with Microsoft. They talk to us about their roadmap; they listen to and understand our vision. Our company takes advantage of best practices and leading innovation built into Microsoft desktop and server applications to provide benefits to our IT staff, our employees, and ultimately, our clients.”

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Microsoft Office 2010Microsoft Office 2010 gives your people powerful, timesaving tools to do their best work from more places. With new capabilities and insightful updates to Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook, Office 2010 offers the complete package—with familiar, intuitive tools. Now you can express ideas, solve problems, connect with people, and create amazing results—in the office, at home, or on the go.

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

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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 Cape Australia Holdings Pty Ltd. products and services, visit the website at: www.capeplc.com.au

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

Document published December 2010

Software and Services Microsoft Office−Microsoft Office 2010−Microsoft Office Communications

Server 2007 R2 Microsoft Server Product Portfolio−Microsoft Exchange Server 2010−Microsoft Forefront Client Security−Microsoft Forefront Security for

Exchange Server−Microsoft Forefront Security for

SharePoint

−Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway

−Microsoft Lync Server 2010−Microsoft SQL Server 2008

Enterprise−Microsoft System Center

Configuration Manager 2007 R2−Microsoft System Center Data

Protection Manager 2010−Microsoft System Center Operations

Manager 2007 R2 Windows 7 Enterprise