Samskipcasestudy

April 2013

Written by

OrdMedMere.dk

Headline

Global logistics company secures smooth communications with Office 365

Resume

With Office 365, Samskip chose a platform that binds the global company together by offering employees fast, secure and highly stable access to productivity-tools like mail, data and unified communication. Furthermore, the solution eliminates the need for a physical setup – including the need for heavy IT-administrative skills – while giving the company the possibility of offering employees easy access to the newest Microsoft Office on a need-to-have-basis.

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– Office 365 has proved itself as a coherent, fast, secure and highly stable cloud-productivity suite that offers great functionality we simply did not have before. For instance, I guess that – in time – Lync-conferences will replace quite a lot of travelling in our geographically dispersed company, thus saving employees precious time with their families, says ÆgirPálsson.

He is Director of Technical IT Services at Samskip, a global logistics company offering transport and related services by land, sea, rail and air with a particular focus on cost efficient, sustainable and environmentally friendly transport. With an annual turnover of €530 million, Samskip is one of the larger transport companies in Europe with offices in 24 countries in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia employing 1,300 people around the world.

Over the years, Samskip have streamlined a fair amount of IT-services, but maintained a heterogeneous productivity-setup consisting of a mix of IBM Lotus Notes and older Microsoft Office-versions in offices across the globe.

Logical and cost-efficient subscription-model
– But then we became aware that it was possible to provide employees across entire company with an updated, cloud-based productivity-suite as well as the newest Microsoft Office on subscription-level. It looked like it could solve quite a few issues – cost- and license-wise – while providing us with much-needed functionality and opportunities, ÆgirPálsson explains.

For instance, while approximately 800 employees needed the entire Office-suite, 100 only needed access to mail and calendar by browser. But with the Office 365, it was possible to choose exactly the subscription needed in each case.

–Basically, if an employee only needs mail-access but not Outlook and the entire Office-suite, then why pay for it? And with Office 365, we don’t have to. That makes a lot of sense from my perspective, says ÆgirPálsson.

‘The users simply jumped right in’

On the other hand, being able to offer employees the newest Microsoft Office instead of outdated versions or – in many cases – Lotus Notes, went down very well indeed with the employees, he adds.

– The employees are quite thrilled, basically because Microsoft Office and Office 365 areso very easy to use. For instance, I have been using Lotus Notes for more than 15 years, but jumped right on board and using Office instead, and I think that the same went for almost everyone else. We did offer training sessions, but was able to keep them on an absolute minimum, as Outlook is very easy to use and the user interface are similar to other well-known Microsoft products. I’m not so sure it would have been so easy to adapt, if we had migrated between platforms the other way around, says ÆgirPálsson.

Simplified administration saves a lot of time and resources

Furthermore, with 25 gigabyte of space reserved for each user, ÆgirPálssonand his colleagues no longer have to nudge people to trim their mailboxes all the time, but can allocate resources to far more valuable – and appreciated – tasks.

– Also, there’s no doubt that we save a lot of time, because the administration of Office 365 is very straightforward compared to our earlier setup. Furthermore, we don’t have to maintain and power a costly infrastructure with numerous servers and disks anymore. That’s quite a relief, says ÆgirPálsson.

Partner

Nýherji

+354 569 7700

Customer

Samskip Holding BV

+31 88 400 1000

Template

Office365

Country

The Netherlands

Industry

Shipping

Customer profile

Samskip is global logistics company offering transport and related services by land, sea, rail and air. With an annual turnover of €530 million, Samskip is one of the larger transport companies in Europe with offices in 24 countries in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia employing 1,300 people around the world.

Challenge

Samskip wanted to provide users across the globe with an updated productivity platform.

Solution

Unified productivity- and communications-platform based on Microsoft Office 365

Advantages

  • Forms a unified productivity- and communications-platform across a global company
  • Offers fast, secure and highly stable access to mail, data and unified communication
  • Cost-effective, efficient and user-friendly collaboration platform
  • Eliminates the need for a physical setup and heavy IT-administrative skills
  • Scalable and flexible solution – also with regards to licensing
  • Tight integration with other Microsoft-based solutions as well as with standard solutions from other IT-companies
  • Great mobile experience on any platform

Primary Microsoft-products featured

Microsoft Office 365

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Quotes

Office 365 has proved itself as a coherent, fast, secure and highly stable cloud-productivity suite that offers great functionality we simply did not have before. For instance, I guess that – in time – Lync-conferences will replace quite a lot of travelling in our geographically dispersed company, thus saving employees precious time with their families.

ÆgirPálsson, Director of Technical IT Services, Samskip

The employees are quite thrilled, basically because Microsoft Office and Office 365 areso very easy to use. For instance, I have been using Lotus Notes for more than 15 years, but jumped right on board and using Office instead, and I think that the same went for almost everyone else.

ÆgirPálsson, Director of Technical IT Services, Samskip