Customer Solution Case Study
/ Emirates Airline Increases Productivity, Enhances Impact, and Reduces Costs with Office 2010
Overview
Country or Region: United Arab Emirates
Industry: Commercial aviation
Customer Profile
Emirates airline is the largest unit of the Emirates Group, which employs 40,000 people and generates annual revenue of U.S.$12.4 billion. Emirates flies more than 27 million passengers a year.
Business Situation
Emirates wanted to increase the productivity of its business teams, make it easier to communicate and manage projects effectively, and develop more engaging materials at lower cost.
Solution
Emirates used new and updated features in Microsoft Excel 2010, OneNote 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010, and Word 2010 to help its employees communicate and develop business materials.
Benefits
· Increased productivity
· Efficient communication
· Effective project management
· Higher impact at lower cost / “We can use Office 2010 to deliver almost 2,200 more training days a year. In a diverse, highly technical organization with more than 40,000 people, that’s a pretty significant benefit.”
Bobby John, Learning and Development Manager, IT Training Group, Emirates airline
Various business teams at Emirates airline are responsible for developing documents and presentations to support sales initiatives, performance research, and training programs for the company’s 40,000 employees. The company wanted to help its employees develop more engaging materials in less time and at lower costs, without having to rely on third-party software or outside vendors. It also wanted to make it easier for teams to communicate efficiently and mange projects more effectively. In 2010, Emirates launched a pilot project to evaluate Microsoft Office 2010 productivity software. The company successfully demonstrated how Emirates business teams can use Office 2010 to produce engaging training resources in less time, develop high-quality presentations under tight deadlines without external support, and manage information and projects more efficiently.
Situation
With a modern fleet of almost 150 aircraft, Emirates airline carries more than 27 million passengers a year, servicing 103 cities in 63 countries in Europe, North America, South America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The airline generates more than 80 percent of the annual revenue for its parent company, the Emirates Group. Headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the Emirates Group employs more than 40,000 people.
The Performance Development Department at Emirates airline evaluates ways to drive change throughout the company, create efficiencies, and improve the airline’s processes, services, and products. The group’s overall mission is to enhance productivity so that Emirates can continue to grow. To gather and analyze the information it needs, the 30-person team has to coordinate with every department in the company, distributed across many locations around Dubai.
Emirates researchers presented the results of their work in documents and presentations developed with Microsoft Office Word 2003 and the Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 presentation graphics program. Team members used Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 messaging and collaboration client to communicate with colleagues.
The IT Training Group in the Learning and Development Department creates training materials and presentations for information technologies and systems, and it delivers IT training to the Emirates Group’s 40,000 users. Training programs can vary from a few simple documents to multiday courses with curricula, lesson plans, and complex presentations. On average, it would take the Training Group about five days to prepare the materials for a one-day training session. The group usually prepared documents and slide presentations by using Office Word 2003 and Office PowerPoint 2003.
Each of the approximately 90 trainers in the Learning and Development Department can deliver about 120 training days a year. The department wanted to spend more time on training delivery and less time developing and customizing the training materials, but the IT Training Group still needed to create effective, high-impact material.
“We have to make the materials as engaging as we can to help sell the training programs internally,” says Bobby John, Learning and Development Manager for the IT Training Group at Emirates airline. “But adding high-quality graphics and images to the material often required third-party software and skill sets that many of my users don’t have.”
Emirates wanted to increase the productivity of its various business teams and reduce the time it took to develop work product by making it easier for employees to communicate and manage projects. To provide its employees the most advanced tools available, the company needed to update its productivity environment.
Solution
In January 2010, Emirates airline launched a pilot project to evaluate Microsoft Office 2010. Emirates employees in the Performance Development team, the IT Training Group, and other departments used new and updated programs and features in Office 2010 to communicate, manage their time, and work together to analyze information and create reports, presentations, and other documents.
The IT Training Group used Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 to develop the lesson plans, training documents, and presentations for 10 training sessions for Office 2010, which the team had to begin delivering in May 2010. By using updated features in Word 2010 and PowerPoint 2010, the team developed high-quality material in less time than it might have taken previously. For instance, team members used new features in PowerPoint 2010 to edit and embed videos directly into slide presentations, without having to use another software program or master a whole new skill set.
“We were able to launch our internal Office 2010 training program within no time, creating the entire documentation with Office 2010,” says John. “The team did not spend near the time that it would have taken earlier to produce the materials, and the documents and presentations were far superior.”
The Performance Development team uses Microsoft Excel 2010 spreadsheet software to help them organize, analyze, and present operational data. Team members use the Sparklines feature in Excel 2010—small charts that appear in worksheet cells to illustrate data—to work more efficiently and increase the impact of their data presentations. By positioning Sparklines next to the corresponding data, team members can illustrate trends or highlight values in a series of values.
Researchers use Microsoft Outlook 2010 to communicate and coordinate projects with one another and with other departments more effectively. They use the Quick Steps feature in Outlook 2010 to streamline routine tasks such as forwarding or organizing messages into a single click.
By using the Conversation View feature in Outlook 2010, researchers can see all the email messages in a conversation thread displayed as a single line item in a folder, often turning dozens of email messages into just a few items that can be scanned quickly. Group members can assign conversations to categories, so they can organize messages and information by project or by team.
“When I came back from a week away, I saved a lot of time by using Conversation View in Outlook 2010,” says Tim Collins, Strategic Research and Innovation Programme Manager in the Performance Development team at Emirates airline. “I didn’t have to wade through dozens of messages. Some email conversations can become quite long, and now I can find the messages I need in just a few clicks. I’m saving half the time I used to spend managing my email.”
Members of the Performance Development team have started using the Microsoft OneNote 2010 note-taking program to organize different types of information from multiple sources and work together with colleagues to develop initiatives and documents. “We are excited about using OneNote2010, as we can organize pictures, notes, simulations, information from the web, email discussions, and other research material at one point that we can share with other team members,” says Collins.
After successfully completing the initial pilot project, Emirates deployed Office 2010 to 1,000 employees in the Performance Development, Learning and Development, and IT Departments. As Emirates gathers and evaluates feedback from the pilot users, it will make plans to deploy Office 2010 throughout the enterprise.
Benefits
Emirates airline uses Office 2010 to help its business teams communicate more effectively and organize, evaluate, and present information easily, while producing more engaging materials in less time and at lower cost. Teams can produce training resources in 25 percent less time and develop presentations without external support.
Increased Productivity
Trainers, analysts, researchers, and other employees throughout the company can work more efficiently with Office 2010 and produce better material in less time. Analysts and researchers can prepare complex, engaging reports and presentations under the tightest of deadlines, without having to rely on IT support to help it manage third-party software.
The IT Training Group now spends 25 percent less time to create lesson plans, training texts, presentations, and other training resources using Office 2010, while increasing the quality of the material. By developing materials faster, the Learning and Development Department will be able to deliver more training programs in less time to help people enhance their productivity.
“If we can reduce the time we take for training design by just 20 percent, we will increase the amount of training delivery we can provide every year by 24 days per trainer,” says John. “With about 90 trainers in the department, we can use Office 2010 to deliver almost 2,200 more training days a year. In a diverse, highly technical organization with more than 40,000 people, that’s a pretty significant benefit.”
Efficient Communication
By using the enhanced features in Outlook 2010, Emirates employees can reduce the time they spend managing their email messages and communicate with team members and colleagues throughout the company more quickly and effectively.
“I get between 50 to 100 email messages a day, and a good chunk are related to each other,” said Collins. “I can use Outlook 2010 to reduce 100 messages to a handful of conversations that are much easier to manage, and I can use tools to organize messages and manage tasks in a single click. I estimate that I have doubled my efficiency.”
Effective Project Management
Teams like Performance Development and the IT Training Group help Emirates improve productivity, provide greater customer services, and reduce costs by taking advantage of advanced tools in Office 2010 that help members communicate, collaborate, and manage projects more efficiently. For instance, both Collins and John expect that their teams will use OneNote 2010 to organize information and work together more effectively to develop work products, accelerate projects, and compile project updates and references.
“I think OneNote 2010 should really helps us do what we do, organize information and bounce ideas back and forth,” says Collins. “With OneNote 2010, we should be able to bring another dimension to how we manage projects. I believe it will be one of our key tools.”
Higher Impact at Lower Cost
Employees at Emirates use Office 2010 to develop presentations and documents that have more impact. Trainers develop training material that is engaging and makes trainees more productive in less time. Researchers produce reports and presentations that will be easier for decision makers to understand and use. With tools that allow employees to place, trim, bookmark, and add effects to embedded videos, photos, and other graphics, they can do all this faster, without the expense of purchasing, managing, and operating third-party publishing software or contracting with an outside vendor.
“In the past, it required third-party products and a lot more time and work to develop impactful, professional training material,” says John. “Today, we have everything we need in Office 2010 to create effective presentations and engaging documents. It’s very simple and very powerful.”
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