Teck Cominco
Teck Cominco connects remote mining workers with Exchange Server 2007 and Unified Messaging
|
|
Company Overview
Vancouver-based Teck Cominco Limited is a world leader in the production of zinc and metallurgical coal and is also a significant producer of copper, gold, indium and specialty metals. To maintain its leadership position, Teck Cominco is focused on a business strategy that enables its people to recognize, analyze and act on opportunities that create value and maintain its competitive advantage. As a result, it is constantly looking at new ways to help enhance collaboration, teamwork and productivity within the organization.
Business Challenge
With over 30 mining and exploration sites located all over the world, many in extremely remote areas, Teck Cominco employees often travel, and many work outside the typical office environment. As a result, staff required more access to email and voicemail. In particular, the company needed to streamline its various voicemail and email messaging capabilities to promote better communication and collaboration across the organization.
“It was difficult to be away from the office because you didn’t know if you were missing important messages until you returned. Working with colleagues in different time zones made it that much harder to connect with them in real-time,” says Vern Kasdorf, IS Program Director, Teck Cominco. “We hire the best and the brightest people in the world and it’s their ideas and collaboration that fuel our success. We needed to consolidate all our emails and voicemails onto one platform to enhance our business and allow employees to have access to their co-workers, emails and voicemails anytime, anywhere.”
|
Solution
To help identify a solution that was cost effective and wouldn’t require the company to migrate away existing systems or incur significant training, Teck Cominco worked with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Bell Business Solutions.
“We explored a number of different options and vendors that would easily and seamlessly integrate with Teck Cominco’s current infrastructure, and in the end, we recommended that the company consolidate its servers and upgrade to a more advanced unified messaging solution based on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007with Unified Messaging and Office Communications Server 2007,” said Peter Hass, Bell Business Solutions. “Other options were just too costly, complex and disruptive. Teck Cominco needed a platform that could provide a quick ROI and grow with the company.”
Teck Cominco already had existing licensing agreements with Microsoft, so upgrading to Exchange Server 2007 was a natural way to leverage its existing IT investments. The company also saw the presence feature in Office Communications Server 2007 as a key benefit, as it allowed staff to see the status of colleagues before making outreach to them allowing them to choose the best way to reach someone: via Instant messenger, phone or email.
Implementing Exchange Server 2007 was a seamless process, since workers were already working with Exchange Server 2003. Bell Business Solutions built the server and had it up and running within two days. Little training time was required to get them familiar with the new system at head office and at the remote mine sites, and Teck Cominco was able to migrate about 100 users to the new system in only four hours.
“Using Microsoft technologies for unified communications meant that we didn’t have to migrate to a new platform – we could just extend the software we were already using,” adds Kasdorf. “Had we implemented another solution, we would have had to invest in additional training expertise and infrastructure, and we simply didn’t want to go down that expensive path.”
Unified messaging is the ability to access voicemail, email, calendar, and contacts over any phone plus providing voice message and fax delivery right to the workers inbox. The unified messaging server also provides a Speech-Enabled Automated Attendant, which answers calls via an automated operator and company-wide address list directory services. Callers can use this feature through touch tone menus or speech recognition using their own voice. In addition, the unified messaging server’s ability to convert text-to-speech enables callers to have email, calendar, personal contacts and other information read to them while they are on the go.
“After we migrated to Exchange 2007, I would walk by people’s office and they no longer used their desk phones. So many of them are simply talking on their mobile devices,” explain Kasdorf. “I wanted to make our desk phone experience as simple as the experiences on our mobile devices – just look up a contact and dial. I wanted to implement a system where all modes of communication could be accessed from one place, increasing productivity and saving money on our increasing cell phone bills.”
Business Benefits
Teck Cominco is already experiencing improved communications, enhanced mobility and a significant cost-savings as a result of deploying Exchange Server 2007 with Unified Messaging and Office Communication Server 2007.
Enhanced Communications
With the new system’s intuitive communications capabilities, employees no longer need to switch from their computer to desktop phones to retrieve voicemail messages. Workers can now receive their voice mail as email attachments in their Exchange Server 2007 inboxes, eliminating the need to check multiple devices for messages. They also no longer have to listen to voice mail messages in sequential order, they can open each voicemail individually within their email as needed by priority.
The automatic presence awareness feature in Office Communications Server 2007 also allows workers to see whether their contacts are in a meeting or on a call. Integrated with Exchange Server 2007, OCS 2007automatically changes a person’s status based on their calendar so that time is not wasted trying to contact someone who is not available.
“With Exchange 2007, now when I get a call, I know exactly who it is and whether they left a message, and I can see all of this information right from my computer or mobile device through Outlook,” says Kasdorf. “Then I can decide if I want to call the person back immediately, or wait. If I want to call them back right away, all their information is right in front of me. These are real productivity gains for our staff.”
Anywhere, Anytime Access for Employees
With mining sites all over the world, from Alaska to Peru, many employees are required to be onsite at a mine for several weeks at a time to manage day-to-day activities. With Exchange Server 2007, workers can stay connected via Outlook Web Access (OWA) and keep on top of their day-to-day business activities regardless of location or time-zone. Additionally ,mobile workers can further stay productive by taking advantage of Exchange ActiveSync technology, which delivers a familiar experience on a variety of mobile devices, with no requirement for extra software or services beyond an Internet connection.
“With Microsoft Exchange 2007 with unified messaging, Teck Cominco employees truly have access to their messages from anywhere, which is the one feature that Teck Cominco was most impressed with,” says Hass. “The fear that important information may be missed has now been virtually eliminated.”
Reduced Costs
While implementing an IT infrastructure can be expensive, especially for an organization of Teck Cominco’s size, the easy integration of Exchange Server 2007 with Unified Messaging and Office Communication Server 2007 into existing systems not only created significant ROI for the company, but it has also allowed it to reduce costs.
“With our existing licensing and the fact that we are already comfortable with Microsoft products, we saw the implementation of Exchange 2007 as a real time and cost-saver.” said Kasdorf. “People don’t need to spend work time learning the new system, and the ability to easily access your voicemail via email will save both time and money in the long run.”
As Teck Cominco continues to grow, the company is confident that its new communications system will scale accordingly.
“One of the key selling points for us was the ability for the system to grow along with the business,” explains Hass. “With Exchange Server 2007, all the company’s communications needs are amalgamated onto one platform, consolidating work efforts and reducing IT support costs.”
Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx
For more information about Microsoft Exchange Server, go to:www.microsoft.com/exchange
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about Bell Business Solutions products and services, call 604.340.4300 or visit the Web site at: http://www.businesssolutions.bell.ca/
For more information about Teck Cominco products and services, call 604.687.1117 or visit the Web site at: www.teckcominco.com
