COLLABORATION

The mission of the Portuguese League for Professional Soccer (LPFP) is to organise professional competitions for soccer clubs in Portugal and to provide soccer entertainment of international quality. The need for a solution to meet the league’s communication needs with a variety of sports agents and to serve as a link for soccer fans, led the LPFP to create a true soccer portal built on Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007.

Marketing Giant McCann Worldgroup Streamlines Search and Collaboration

McCann Worldgroup, one of the world’s largest marketing communications companies, spans 130 countries and represents the world’s leading global marketers. McCann needed an easier way to find people and expertise within its seven separate business units, and it wanted to search and share content across the many networks that it had built for clients, business units, and locations. Using the search, portal, and content management capabilities in Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007, McCann enhanced both its internal and client communications sites and implemented new search solutions across the enterprise. Now McCann Worldgroup is providing its various business groups, project teams, partners, and clients with solutions to collaborate more effectively, find and share content more easily, and manage workflows more productively.

Technology Facilitates Collateral Development While Helping Ensure Brand Compliance

A large holding company in the entertainment industry—with 14 separate branded properties—wanted to find a way to improve the management and control of its brand identities. Each of its branded properties had been developing collateral independently, with the net effect of compromised brand integrity cross the board. Working with the direct marketing agency’s technology solutions group, the holding company presented its subsidiary brand properties and their ad agencies with a new software-based tool for developing collateral: a Web-based solution that not only automates and streamlines collateral development, but also produces attractive, compelling collateral that is, most importantly, brand compliant across all the properties. The properties were so enthusiastic about this solution that all 14 brand subsidiaries adopted it faster than mandated. What drives this agency’s winning solution? Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003, Microsoft SQL Server® 2005, and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007.

Ad Agency Saves Hundreds of Hours Weekly with Integrated Collaboration Solution

For 36 years, GSD&M Idea City has delivered visionary solutions to its clients, including AT&T, BMW, Southwest Airlines, and the U.S. Air Force. The company’s business strategy centers on extensive sharing of innovative ideas to solve advertising and marketing problems and create new market opportunities. To best support its collaborative environment, GSD&M Idea City built an IT infrastructure based on the 2007 Microsoft® Office system. With its new software—including Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 with Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, plus Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007—employees are able to communicate and collaborate more easily, can work more efficiently, and are saving hundreds of hours each week through easier access to business-critical information.

Credit Union Optimizes Infrastructure to Gain Efficiency, Attain Carbon-Neutral Status

The United Kingdom (U.K.) government’s Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) discharges its responsibilities through 3,000 core employees, dispersed throughout the country, who collaborate with a range of outside experts and stakeholders. Defra wanted a combined electronic document and records management (EDRM) system, and a tool set for 10,000 people to improve collaboration and comply with the government’s modernising agenda for e-government services. Defra chose Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 to fulfil all three objectives with a standardised solution. Users are now creating records as part of their everyday work due to the automated workflows, without any extra burden. The department hopes to make significant cost savings by adopting a single system for records management and collaboration.

Japanese Hospital Enhances Information-Sharing with New Online Portal

Fukui Saiseikai Hospital was established in 1911 by Imperial decree of the Meiji Emperor. It is a comprehensive medical facility providing leading community healthcare for the Hokuriku region as well as cancer treatment, acute care, and preventative care. In 2003, Fukui Saiseikai Hospital implemented the Saiseikai Quality Management System, an organizational operating structure, and incorporated the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) management method. To better implement the BSC, the hospital is deploying a new online portal based on Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007. The portal is allowing medical staff to collaborate more easily, thanks to more efficient information-sharing, and is helping the hospital achieve its goal of providing more complete healthcare.


School District Improves Education by Linking Teachers, Students, Parents Online

The fourth-largest public school district in the United States needed a consistent way to deliver information to more than 1 million students, parents, teachers, and administrators. Miami-Dade County Public Schools built a Web-based portal to give all these constituents a single point of access for relevant information, services, and applications. The district has improved learning potential for children, enhanced parents’ ability to participate in the education of their children, and improved the effectiveness and productivity of teachers and school administrators.

School District Standardizes IT Environment, Saves More Than $100,000 in Costs

Manteca Unified School District (MUSD) covers a large rural area in Central California. MUSD needed to update its aging, non-standardized IT environment to save costs and help staff and students work more efficiently. MUSD standardized its infrastructure on productivity and IT management technologies found within the Microsoft® School Agreement that saved more than U.S.$1 million dollars in licensing fees. Despite budgetary limitations, MUSD is now able to provide unified communications, a district-wide collaborative infrastructure, and an optimized desktop environment where staff can share ideas and students have better access to educational applications. With centralized IT management tools and Microsoft hosted services, MUSD saves more than $100,000 in telephone and IT administrative costs.

Standardized Portal Solution Increases Collaboration and Efficiency for Media Giant

As an entertainment company, MTV Networks must ensure the free flow of ideas and content. However, the company’s previous portal infrastructure wasn’t helping much, as end users could not publish their own content. MTV Networks standardized on Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007, upon which the company deployed a new intranet portal, a Viacom corporate portal, and multiple Internet sites. Self-service content publishing enables groups across the company to communicate better, while rich collaboration and search features are helping global employees to easily find and share information. With Office SharePoint Server, MTV Networks is benefitting from a standardized portal platform that delivers new capabilities in a reliable, scalable, and cost-effective manner, and will serve the company well into the future.

Analytical Device Leader Expedites Adoption of Productivity Software

PerkinElmer wanted to improve the productivity and collaboration capabilities of its employees by deploying Microsoft® Office Professional Plus 2007 and Office SharePoint® Server 2007. To support that deployment, PerkinElmer used Software Assurance benefits as part of its Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, and consequently its employees are learning the software and enjoying its advantages that much faster

Tyson Foods Improves Collaboration and Business Insight, Creates Process Efficiencies

Every day, the 15,000 information workers at Tyson Foods share information with one another to develop and market hundreds of products. To speed employee connections, strengthen business insight, and improve efficiency, Tyson deployed Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 as its companywide collaboration platform. Using the software’s Enterprise Search capability, employees can find the people and data they need quickly, and employees have created more than 700 personal sites to share skills and experience. Users can access dashboards that expose SAP data through SharePoint sites to aid decision making, as well as business intelligence tools that integrate with Microsoft Office desktop programs for improved insights. In addition, the IT staff has been able to quickly create powerful, new Office Business Applications that are boosting productivity and savings across the company.

Real Estate Firm Saves $500,000, Improves Service Delivery with Collaboration Solution

Jones Lang LaSalle had grown rapidly—and outgrown its tools for collaboration and content management. At the same time, an economic slowdown and global competition increased the company’s challenges. To fuel continued growth, Jones Lang LaSalle adopted a consistent solution for its intranet, client extranet, and Internet sites. Based on the 2007 Microsoft® Office system, including Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, the solution replaces flurries of e-mail messages with collaboration team workspaces that business units create and control themselves. Centralized enterprise content management reduces version control problems, eliminates the need to support storage of multiple document copies, and saves the company U.S.$500,000 per year. The solution was adopted with little or no customization required, containing development costs and speeding time-to-benefit.

Skanska USA Building Enhances Project Management with Scalable Web Portals

Skanska, a Fortune Global 500 company, is one of the world’s leading construction companies. One of its United States business units, Skanska USA Building Inc., is the third largest builder in the U.S. To facilitate efficient collaboration, Skanska needed to give external and internal project teams access to timely, reliable information, while maintaining the scalability and flexibility to handle more than 1,500 active projects with budgets ranging from U.S.$15 million to $1 billion. In 2004, Skanska used Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 to develop internal and external collaboration portals. In 2007, the company deployed Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to scale its collaboration portals for larger, more complex projects, improve change management processes, save time, reduce costs, and improve coordination with clients, subcontractors, and other project partners.

Natural Gas Producer Deploys New Intranet Solution, Meets Growth Challenges

Chesapeake Energy, the leading natural-gas producer in the United States, is a rapidly growing company that tripled its employee headcount between 2005 and 2008. To meet the challenges of such rapid growth, the company needed a more powerful intranet solution to boost worker productivity, improve workflow, and enhance collaboration across the oil and gas value chain. Using Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007, Chesapeake Energy developed and deployed a new solution that integrates the company’s intranet, extranet, and Internet presence. Through its extensibility, the solution streamlines collaboration across project teams, boosts productivity, simplifies data analysis, and creates the basis for consistent communications. With the business capabilities gained through the new solution, Chesapeake Energy is well positioned for future growth.

Telecom Company Calls on Integrated Collaboration Solution to Optimize Productivity

Irish telecommunications company eircom has recently moved to its new corporate headquarters in Dublin. The prospect of a state-of-the-art, modern work environment encouraged management to think about helping information workers move away from the manual, paper-based processes and face-to-face meetings that lingered from eircom’s history as a state-run company. eircom partnered with Microsoft to design its ‘New World of Work Program,’ a philosophy that focuses IT strategy on the information worker as the underpinnings of a new corporate culture. eircom then began implementing a suite of Microsoft® technologies chosen to optimize business productivity through improved communication and collaboration. The results of an early pilot project show tangible productivity improvements and time savings adding up to a potential value of many millions of euros.

Global Telco Pilots Collaborative Knowledge Management to Drive R&D Innovation

Since its inception 125 years ago, one of the largest telecommunications companies has been contributing to technology innovation and economic development. The company is looking to improve its research and development (R&D) processes, develop innovative products and services to meet customer needs, and shorten the time required to get products to market. To improve its ability to capture and share knowledge the company chose the 2007 Microsoft® Office system. Based on the first phase of a pilot program for a Microsoft-based knowledge management environment, the company expects to reduce time to market , decrease operating costs by U.S.$150,000 in the first year, and increase its R&D tax credit by 15 percent. The company plans to deploy the knowledge management solution in late 2007.

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