Customer Solution Case Study
/ SGF improves productivity and collaboration with Microsoft Unified Communications (UC) platform
Overview
Country or Region:Canada
Industry:Financial Services
Customer Profile
Sociétégénérale de financement du Québec is an industrial and financial holding corporation of the Québec government.
Business Situation
SGF wanted to integrate its voice and e-mail systems, improve productivity and provide a foundation for unified communications (UC).
Solution
SGF deployed Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and the Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 client to help create a unified communications system.
Benefits
- Improved Productivity
- Unified Voice and E-Mail Messaging
- Enhance off-site experience
- Foundation for growth
Dominic Vaillancourt, IT Project manager, SGF.
Sociétégénérale de financement du Québec is an industrial and financial holding corporation of the Québec government. SGF employees rely heavily on messaging technologies to stay connected to clients and the office. To improve productivity, SGF deployed Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging. With the unified communications environment in place, employees can access their e-mail, voice-mail, in their inboxes—while at work, at home, or on the road. The company is using the anytime, anywhere” messaging platform to deliver a more enhanced level of client service.
Situation
Sociétégénérale de financement du Québec (SGF) is an industrial and financial holdings corporation of the Québec government. Since its inception in 1962, SGF has participated in a significant number of industrial projects that have contributed directly to the development of the Québec economy.
SGF’s motto is “more than a financial partner” and the company’s dedicated team of investment and business development specialists, consultants and analysts work closely with Quebec organizations and foreign investors. Most recently, SGF has been authorized by the Québec government to go beyond its traditional role as an equity investor by offering complementary financial solutions.
Collaboration, communication and employees work experience has always been essential to SGF’s success: 105 employees regularly rely on mobile devices and off-site services to do their jobs. Work-family conciliation and telecommuting urges the SGF to estimate tools allowing to work better remotely while maximizing collaboration between employees.
The company wanted to find an enterprise-wide unified communications solution – including email, voice mail, instant messaging and collaboration tools – that would help its employees be more efficient and productive. Having a single platform to manage all business communication, notes Robert Bryant, technical coordinator of the infrastructure team at SGF, would help to reduce future upgrade and support efforts and training costs. To better support mobile employees and improve “anytime, anywhere” communication, SGF wanted to adopt a unified messaging solution that extended its traditional voice-mail system.
“Fast and effective communication is part and parcel of our commitment to great client service. We were looking for a unified messaging offering that could integrate our phone and e-mail systems to help improve the productivity of workers, whether in the office or in the field,” says Dominic Vaillancourt, IT project manager, SGF.
Solution
In late 2008, the IT team at SGF began evaluating technologies. With the help of Victrix, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, SGF implemented a Unified Communications solution based on Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Microsoft was chosen because of its lower cost, flexibility and integration.
“The integrated platform provides SGF the flexible, powerful tools it needs for more effective communication and collaboration. On the IT management side, SGF can leverage a familiar Microsoft interface that extends its unified messaging and presence capabilities,” says Jesse Lemay, main advisor, Victrix.
Office Communications Server 2007 R2 streamlines communications for users, allowing them to find the availability of co-workers and external partners based on presence status and initiate an instant message (IM). With a single click, IM conversations can then be escalated to voice or a conference call, for a richer communication experience. In addition, Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging (UM) delivers the voicemail in the same inbox as their e-mail, providing users with “anywhere access” to all their business communications across the PC, web and mobile device.
The UC platform offers employees a unified inbox that includes e-mail and voicemail. The solution places voice messages into users’ inboxes alongside their e-mails, and they can access their messages from any phone and Blackberry. This means that mobile workers no longer have to dial back into the office to check their voicemail, allowing them to respond more quickly to customers and partners. Office Communications Server also works with the Active Directory® service in the Windows Server 2008 operating system, which authenticates employees when they log on to their computers. The Active Directory logon process automatically signs them in to the Office Communications Server functions. As a result, all of the company’s messages are in a single place, accessible from any device anywhere.
“We especially liked the fact that the Microsoft platform integrated with our existing telephony and videoconferencing hardware'' says Bryant.
Benefits
With Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, SGF will be able to improve user productivity and communication and enhanced significantly off-site experience.
Improved Productivity
The company will take advantage of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 to help boost productivity for SGF. Staff will have access to presence and instant messaging capabilities which enable them to see if colleagues are available. The staff will also send messages much faster compared to using e-mail or phone calls.
“We’ve been able to cost-effectively give staff more streamlined messaging platform and a more integrated way to receive voicemail and email regardless of their location ” says Vaillancourt.
“Email is our main mode of communication and staff particularly like having voice-mail messages and missed telephone calls automatically displayed in their Office Outlook inboxes,” says Bryant.
Foundation for growth
The Microsoft Unified Communication platform integrates with SGF’s existing infrastructure and can quickly scale to meet future needs. SGF is taking advantage of the Microsoft UC platform to help their users be more productive by making it easier to find and contact colleagues for information, check for messages and stay productive while out of the office, while potentially reducing operational costs.
“We’re looking forward to leveraging the solution to help improve system availability regardless of where our staff happens to be. We’re known as being more than a financial partner’ and improving collaboration using our new platform helps up deliver on that fact,” says Vaillancourt.
Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:
For more information about Microsoft Exchange Server, go to: