“With Office 365, we can go straight to the cloud to get what we need. It will give mobile employees, including our CEO, anywhere access to documents and one another.”

Jody Leon Guerrero, Finance Manager, Thomas Kemper Soda CompanyThomas Kemper Soda Company is always looking for ways to make its busy and mobile staff more efficient. By subscribing to cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 services, Thomas Kemper plans to free up 40 hours a week companywide, save U.S.$7,400 annually on communications technology, and give mobile employees anywhere access to documents and one another. The hosted services will also eliminate six hours of weekly IT support work.

Business NeedsThomas Kemper Soda Company produces craft-brewed and all-natural varieties of classic sodas. The company bottles its soda in small batches and sells it throughout the western United States, with growing availability across the rest of the country and Canada.

About half of the company’s employees work in the office, and the other half are constantly on the road, which makes communication tough. “Our CEO works from his home office, airplanes, and everywhere in between,” says Jody Leon Guerrero, Finance Manager for Thomas Kemper Soda Company and one of the office-based employees. “Our sales representatives are also constantly on the go. Getting in touch and sharing documents was a daily chore.”

The company relied on email for everything. It used hosted email messaging services and a local file-share server. Accessing the file-share server was complicated, so employees ended up sending documents as email attachments. They generated a lot of email messages, and this made it difficult

to find the latest versions of documents. Employees found it equally frustrating to share calendars, so setting up meetings involved phone calls and more email messages. Because the company imposed a 5 gigabyte (GB) limit on mailbox size, employees frequently had to delete messages they wanted to keep.

With no IT person on staff, Leon Guerrero and the firm’s marketing manager spent several hours a week resolving computer problems and paid an outside consultant to help with bigger problems. The last straw was when the file-share server started acting up and the IT consultant told Leon Guerrero that it would cost U.S.$10,000 to replace it. “We could not focus on our jobs when we had to also worry about technology,” Leon Guerrero says.

SolutionIn early 2011, Microsoft introduced Thomas Kemper Soda Company to Microsoft Office 365 for professionals and small businesses, web-based versions of the popular Microsoft Office programs combined with cloud-based email, calendaring,

Customer: Thomas Kemper Soda CompanyWebsite: www.tksoda.comCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Manufacturing—Food service industry

Customer ProfileThomas Kemper Soda Company of Portland, Oregon, makes craft-brewed root beer, ginger ale, and other natural soft drinks that are sold throughout the western United States.

Software and Services Microsoft Office 365

− Microsoft Exchange Online− Microsoft Lync Online− Microsoft Office Web Apps− Microsoft SharePoint Online

Microsoft customer successes, please visit: www.microsoft.com/casestudies

Microsoft Office 365Customer Solution Case Study

Soda Maker Saves 40 Hours a Week by Communicating in the Cloud

collaboration, and conferencing services. Leon Guerrero and two colleagues tested the service. “When we saw a demo, we were amazed with all that was included,” Leon Guerrero says. “The Microsoft Exchange Online email service was of course appealing, but we also loved the web conferencing, screen-sharing, and presence capabilities of Microsoft Lync Online. I’ve never seen anything that was so easy to set up; with a few mouse-clicks we were up and running.”

When Thomas Kemper rolls out the service to everyone in the company, employees will have easy calendar sharing, email archiving, and 25 GB mailbox sizes. “Because our executives and salespeople travel so much, calendar sharing will be a huge benefit for us,” Leon Guerrero says. “The larger mailbox size is also valuable. As a financial guy, I sometimes have to go back and look up four-year-old email messages.”

Thomas Kemper plans to transfer all documents from its file-share server to Microsoft SharePoint Online so that all employees and contractors can access files from anywhere. The company’s CEO was excited about using Lync Online to move from an instant messaging conversation to a web conference with a couple of mouse clicks. “If our CEO is on a call with the sales team and wants to show them a document, he can just click to a web conference and show them the documents on his computer,” Leon Guerrero says.

BenefitsBy subscribing to Office 365, Thomas Kemper Soda Company employees can find who and what they need sooner, saving time throughout the day. The company will also save money. Specific benefits include:

Immediate access to documents. The company will be able to eliminate the painful remote server access procedure. “With Office 365, we can go straight to the cloud to get what we need. It will

give mobile employees, including our CEO, anywhere access to documents and one another,” Leon Guerrero says.

Making it easy to work together. Employees also can find one another faster with presence and web conferencing. “With employees divided between the office and the road, communication is critical,” Leon Guerrero says. “We can get answers to our executives faster, and our salespeople can share up-to-date sales forecasts and projections.”

Time savings of 40 hours a week companywide. Between accessing documents immediately, seeing where colleagues are, and getting in touch with people without delay, Leon Guerrero estimates that Thomas Kemper employees will each save an hour a day. “We’ll save at least 40 hours a week companywide,” Leon Guerrero says. “On extra busy days, even an extra minute helps. We have more time to tackle the backlog of work that we all have.”

Annual savings of $7,400; cost avoidance of $10,000. The company will also save about $7,400 annually by eliminating several third-party communications products and services: $576 a year for a videoconferencing service, approximately $3,000 a year for a conference-calling service, $700 a year for email hosting, and $3,120 a year on IT consultant fees, based on 2010 expenses. “We’ll also avoid spending $10,000 to upgrade our file-share server,” Leon Guerrero says.

Anticipated time savings of six hours a week on technology support. Once employees are using Office 365, Leon Guerrero estimates that he and his colleague will save about six hours a week on IT problem solving.

Peace of mind from enhanced data security. An extra benefit of moving to Office 365 is the ability

to keep data safe in Microsoft data centers. “Security was a bit of a concern in moving to the cloud, but Microsoft has access to the best security technologies in the world,” Leon Guerrero says. “They can keep our data safer than we can.”

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published July 2011