ABB, a leading company in the fields of power and automation technology, is harnessing Microsoft Office 365 to help its workforce collaborate and continue to innovate.
A global company with people working in approximately 100 countries, ABB is working within industries that are constantly disrupted by change, such as the digital grid, solar and wind power, collaborative robotics and the internet of things.
“We pride ourselves on innovation that keeps us at the forefront of technological change in power and automation so we can deliver solutions that make this world a more efficient, cleaner place,” said Andy Tidd, global chief information officer at ABB. “My challenge is to ensure that creativity and inspiration continue to flourish at ABB without any technological barriers.”
The company deployed Office 365 to more than 125,000 of its global employees, at a rate of up to 5,000 seats a week.
Tidd explained: “It was a successful example of IT maintaining daily operations while enabling a strategic business objective — fostering global communications and collaboration to drive innovation. But to be relevant, the project had to focus on business productivity and user experience — bringing people together to enable them to create new products that deliver additional value to our customers.”
In order to achieve this, the firm got feedback from their employees and delivered a mobile, agile work environment that removes geographical boundaries. Office 365 offers flexible cloud-based services and works with a large range of PCs, tablets and mobile phones, enabling greater mobility.
ABB has now been leveraging Office 365 for over a year, and Tibb says that the platform is having a radical effect on the company’s business-led collaboration focus areas.
“Yammer is everywhere facilitating teamwork. SharePoint Online is used extensively thanks to the simplicity of setting up Sites for project collaboration,” he says. “Employees are empowered to share knowledge that addresses issues and goals across departments and geographies. Everyone uses the tools as a natural extension of how they work, creating teams, messaging each other and quickly starting up Sites to accelerate projects, foster innovation and get to market faster.”
Tibb adds that ABB is now achieving ‘the collective power of knowledge’ thanks to business-led collaboration.
“Today, the sum of our talented individuals can be brought together to work toward improving customer satisfaction through innovative products,” he says. “To a large extent, that’s down to Office 365.”
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