Odgers Berndtson Russia passed to Microsoft Office 365

Activity of Odgers Berndtson Russia consists in selection of professional managers and in consultation of clients (the large Russian and international companies) in questions of assessment and employee development, HR strategy, work market situation. And as knowledge is capital asset of the company, Odgers Berndtson Russia needed the convenient and effective system of their accumulation, storage and use.

Also for the company it was important to provide equally convenient access to a mail service and information for all the employees: regular, non-staff, working in the remote mode. For the solution of this task Odgers Berndtson Russia reliable communication solutions and tools for joint work were required.

"From the point of view of IT, we aim at unification and consolidation of resources within a single platform now. Such approach simplifies management of an information system of the company and provides convenience of work to users, – Deobald Alexander, the Chief information officer of Odgers Berndtson Russia company tells. – Our infrastructure is under construction on the basis of server solutions of Microsoft. The exception was made by the platform of e-mail and the Lotus Notes applications from IBM. When the issue of transition to other service of corporate mail was resolved, on the one hand, we saw desire of users to work in Outlook, and with another, we considered requirements of architecture of a new CRM system".

The solution for benefit of Microsoft Office 365 was made after predesign of cost of ownership of a cloud solution in comparison with server. By estimates of IT service of Odgers Berndtson Russia company, economy when using a cloud service in the medium term (3-5 years), considering the cost of the equipment, software, means of protecting from viruses, the attacks and spam and also the cost of support of local infrastructure, will make from 30% to 50%. At the same time service provides free regular updating to the latests version of all products which are a part of Office 365 that also influenced decision-making.

"Odgers Berndtson Russia selected the tariff plan E3 providing access to all functions necessary for the company. Implementation of Office 365 was executed by forces of two people and about three months in the planned mode lasted, - Roman Shchemelev, the product manager of Office 365, Microsoft in Russia tells. - The expert help to the customer's IT specialists was also rendered by the staff of SKB Kontur, the Microsoft partner. Now in Odgers Berndtson Russia company the Microsoft Exchange Online postal service is completely unrolled, the basic communication Lync Online functions are implemented and preparatory work on implementation of SharePoint Online and formation on its base of corporate portals and libraries of knowledge is conducted".

With transition to mail based on Exchange Online all staff of Odgers Berndtson Russia received the comfortable environment for work and communications. Thanks to convenient navigation and smart search losses of working time were reduced – the necessary documents and letters are quicker now. And convenient remote access via web applications allows employees to stay constantly in touch with each other and clients and helps to make decisions on key questions quickly.

"The solution of Microsoft, certainly, works steadily, and users feel comfortably in Outlook. We noticed advantages of Exchange Online practically at once – the number of appeals to IT service decreased on average by 10-15%, and the speed of work of employees at the same time increased. The continuous communication and an information access are extremely important for business of our company – consultants and analysts of Odgers Berndtson Russia should react quickly to requests of clients and colleagues, irrespective of the location", – Alexander Deobald notes.

Service accelerates work of employees and does process of decision makings by more effective that leads to quality improvement of consulting services and, in the long term, will promote increase in profit of the company.

"Office 365 is stabler solution, than own server framework, it raises less questions, promotes decrease in operational risks. The value of this implementation can be explained following, quite simple, with the scheme: it is less than IT problems at employees – more time for the solution of professional tasks – high quality of work – more money from clients. Key advantage of Office 365 is its convenience to the user and speed of accomplishment of all transactions. And we see positive effect which these advantages of a cloud service render on our business already now", – Alexander Deobald explains.