As with Many Organizations, E-Mail Is the Lifeblood of Levick S Everyday Work. but With

Situation

Since 1998, Levick Strategic Communications has delivered public relations and strategic marketing communications for high-profile clients in and around Washington, D.C.

As with many organizations, e-mail is the lifeblood of Levick’s everyday work. But with thousands of messages arriving across the organization every week, employees found that simply organizing these e-mail messages monopolized their time and impeded their ability to respond to clients as quickly as they would like. Even routine tasks, such as forwarding messages to specific groups of recipients, required manually entering multiple e-mail addresses.

Printing documents to meet specifications typically required employees to click through menus, printing the file to see how it looked and repeating the process until they achieved the desired effect. And creating client-facing documents meant spending hours using a costly third-party application to produce professional results.

For Levick managers, performing business analysis was also time-consuming and difficult, and the end-result of any given report often resulted in rows of data that was difficult to quickly comprehend.

Solution

To simplify and accelerate everyday tasks, Levick upgraded to Microsoft Office Professional 2010. With a suite of tools that enable users to better manage and organize correspondence and streamline printing and document creation, employees were empowered with new ways to deliver more efficient communication and outstanding client-facing documents.

Levick managers also discovered powerful analysis tools that not only simplify the reporting process, but also enable them to present information in a way that everyone can easily comprehend.

The Conversation View feature in Microsoft Outlook 2010 messaging and collaboration client gives employees easier ways to sort and retrieve related correspondence.

An enhanced Ribbon, which is consistent across Office 2010 applications, supports the way people work by enabling them to customize menu options to suit their unique working styles.

Levick employees also enjoy the Quick Steps feature in Outlook 2010 and Microsoft Office Backstage view. With Quick Steps, employees can add or create frequent steps in Outlook 2010, such as the ability to forward messages to specific groups. Backstage view replaces the traditional File menu to provide a single location for all account management tasks, such as bringing all formatting and printing options to a single interface.

With the enhanced photo-editing features in Microsoft Word 2010, employees can create stunning documents faster and easier than ever before.

Microsoft Excel 2010 includes new improvements that help employees simplify report creation and analysis. By using the Sparklines feature, users can create tiny graphs related to a row of data within a single cell.

“Sparklines enables us to create visual representations of data with one click,” says Matt Stuckey, IT Director of Levick Strategic Communications. “It makes it easier to grasp data, and it’s helping our CFO analyze trends on the spot.”

Benefits

Levick takes advantage of Office 2010 to improve communication and streamline everyday processes. “To anyone who wants a system that works the way they really want, I’d say get Office 2010,” says Stuckey. “You will save time and work more efficiently than you might imagine.”

Improves Communications

With Conversation View, each message with the same subject line is automatically grouped together, eliminating the need for employees to sort through endless folders and messages to find a specific message. Levick saves about 1,600 hours a year with the Conversation View feature.

“Conversation View is what I’ve been waiting for,” Stuckey points out. “We’re a communications firm, and having the ability to trace conversations back to the source is vital to us.”

The enhanced Ribbon available in Outlook 2010 helps streamline the entire suite of Office 2010 applications.

“I love the new Ribbon,” Stuckey says. “And now that it’s in Outlook, everything has one look and feel. Plus, you can customize it to the way you work.”

Quick Steps further enhances this ability to customize an individual work space. Levick estimates that is saves about 800 hours a year with this feature.

“With Quick Steps, I can set up specific rules just the way I want them, such as setting up a group that I regularly correspond with,” says Stuckey. “It’s a really quick and easy way to get your job done.”

Streamlines Everyday Processes

By clicking on the File tab of a document, employees can control options, such as specific print settings to a particular printer—reducing frustration and helping Levick save on paper and ink costs. Levick saves about 160 hours a year with the efficiencies it gains with Backstage view.

“Backstage view makes it easy to see what you’re about to print without having to click through endless menus,” says Stuckey. “Even better, it prints the file right the first time, every time.”

Makes an Impact and Leverages New Insights

The photo-editing features in Word 2010 help empower employees to deliver high-impact proposals and reports that make a lasting impression. With these enhanced features, Levick can also cut down on the use—and related costs—of third-party design software.

“With the photo-editing capabilities in Word 2010, we can create slick documents so easily,” says Stuckey. “It has reduced our dependency on costly third-party applications by 90 percent!”

Levick employees use the Sparklines feature in Excel 2010 to help managers better understand information in reports and carry out important business decisions in less time.

“The Excel 2010 features have basically given us a sophisticated business intelligence tool without the exorbitant costs,” Stuckey says. “It’s definitely improving the way we work.”

Microsoft Office 2010

Microsoft 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