4-page Case Study - Posted 10/4/2007
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Supermarket Retailer Enhances Telework Initiative with Unified Communications
Giant Eagle, one of the largest food retailers and distributors in the United States, instigated a corporate cost-saving initiative to transition 700 of its employees to home-based offices. To ensure that these teleworkers stay well connected with their colleagues in Giant Eagle offices, stores, and warehouses, the company implemented a unified communications solution based on Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 with Unified Messaging. Integrated voice over IP, instant messaging (IM), Web conferencing, and presence helps employees stay productive and streamlines communication. In addition, the company experienced a fast, easy adoption process in which employees were conducting online conferences and communicating with IM on the same day of the deployment.
Situation
Giant Eagle is one of the largest food retailers in the United States, with 156 corporate and 69 independently owned and operated supermarkets, more than 128 fuel and convenience stores, plus its corporate offices and distribution centers. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the company has annual sales of approximately U.S.$6 billion, and its 36,000 employees support more than 25 different lines of business, including food retail, pharmacy, fuel, dry cleaning, construction, on-site child learning and activity centers, and more, at locations throughout western Pennsylvania, Ohio, north central West Virginia, and Maryland. The company is ranked number 32 on Forbes magazine’s list of the largest private corporations in the United States and is a past recipient of Progressive Grocer’s Retailer of the Year award.
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Microsoft unified communications will help Giant Eagle employees maintain their productivity as they transition to working from home.  |
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Bryan Finney
Emerging Technology Manager
Giant Eagle |
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In 2005, in an effort to enhance collaboration and streamline communication among employees at its many, geographically dispersed locations, Giant Eagle conducted a pilot of the Oracle Collaboration Suite for its unified-messaging capabilities, which consolidate e-mail, voice mail, and other communications into a single inbox, and also for its Web-conferencing and instant messaging (IM). “All of these technologies proved valuable to the people using them,” says Bryan Finney, Emerging Technology Manager at Giant Eagle. Finney says that the pilot deployments included employees in the IT department and a few small pockets of business managers and office workers who needed to collaborate easily and instantly among locations such as business offices, warehouses, and the company’s trucking and logistics sites.
However, Finney says that users desired more functionality from the Oracle solution. “They still felt somewhat disconnected with only IM, text, and voice—there was no IP telephony or video-conferencing capabilities.”
At the same time, some Giant Eagle employees were beginning to work from home. The company’s senior management was encouraging this trend, in an effort to reduce costs and conserve office space, and in fact has instigated a corporate initiative to transition 700 employees to home offices by 2010.
Although the company relies on a Private Branch Exchange (PBX) from NEC for its telephony system, the IT department implemented a small-scale deployment of the NEC Dterm SP30 SoftPhone to 50 of the company’s teleworkers, which provided the ability for them to make phone calls over the Internet by using their computers rather than a dedicated desktop phone. Finney says that the soft phone wasn’t an ideal solution; it required IT to support yet another tool on users’ computers and required users to dial in through a virtual private network (VPN), adding another somewhat cumbersome step to their communications. Nevertheless, it “showed us the benefits of a voice over IP [VoIP] solution,” says Finney. “The technology is very portable; it goes wherever the user’s computer goes.”
The company experienced other challenges with its PBX and its new telework environment, especially in the realm of voice mail. To conserve office space, some Giant Eagle employees work part-time from home and part-time in the office, sharing cubicles with other employees who have opposite days-on and days-off schedules. “One of the biggest issues is that it’s hard to even know if you have a voice message,” says Roger Black, Senior Systems Administrator at Giant Eagle. With the PBX system, the only way a user knows if there is a waiting voice message is by the indicator light on the desk phone—or by dialing in to the system through an external line. “If someone is working from home, they can’t see the indicator light. They have to proactively check their messages from their home phone, or the person who is in the cubicle will send an e-mail to let them know that their light is on.” The employee working from home has to read the e-mail message, and then dial in to the system to retrieve the voice mail.
Black says that for all employees, this can be a cumbersome, time-consuming process—but that in IT, it’s especially problematic. “We need to be made aware of issues quickly. If you’re away from your phone, it’s hard to know if you have messages waiting.” Black explains that the process for IT staff to locate each other for issue-resolution is also time-consuming and inefficient. To find a team member, employees refer to the IT department’s on-call sheet, which contains a list of phone numbers for each individual. Staff members are instructed to call the first number listed for a given individual, leave a message, and then wait 30 minutes. If there is no response, they are instructed to call the second number listed, wait 15 minutes, and then call the third number. Black says that it can take an hour or more to locate the person whose expertise is needed. During that time, “a server computer may be down, or a user may be having an issue. Voice mail in the PBX world served its purpose, but there is definitely room for improvement.”
Although the company didn’t expect the Oracle solution to solve all of its com-munications problems, it did see how a broader use of IM, online conferencing, and other integrated communications could benefit both internal workers and the company’s teleworkers. Therefore, Giant Eagle planned a broad rollout of the Oracle Collaboration Suite. “Unfortunately, the deployment was plagued with issues,” says Finney. “Oracle was very hard to deploy.” This prompted the company to further evaluate alternative communications solutions—to find one that would provide streamlined com-munications for the company’s remotely located employees and that would also be easy to deploy.
Solution
After evaluating solutions from Google and Cisco, Giant Eagle looked at Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 with Unified Messaging. Black says that when the company saw the significant advancements of the Microsoft solution, including the enterprise voice capabilities, the ability to consolidate different types of communication such as voice-mail messages with e-mail messages in the user’s inbox, and the ability to seamlessly transition to video conferencing from audio conferencing or IM, “The Microsoft unified communications solution far surpassed the Oracle solution anyway.”
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The Microsoft unified communications solution far surpassed the Oracle solution. |
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Roger Black
Senior Systems Administrator
Giant Eagle |
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In June 2007, with help from Presidio Networked Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and a subsidiary of Presidio, Inc., a value-added solution provider special-izing in advanced technologies for enterprise, commercial, and government customers, Giant Eagle began its deployment of Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 for a complete unified communications environment.
The company upgraded from Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange Server 2007, which provides Giant Eagle with unified messaging (UM) by managing asynchronous communications such as e mail, voice mail, faxes, and calendaring, and delivering these communications to users through the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client. Exchange Server 2007 also enables voice mail within the VoIP environment of Office Communications Server 2007. “We had Exchange Server 2007 up and running in a matter of hours,” says Black.
The company’s unified communications infrastructure includes three server computers running the Windows Server® 2003 R2 operating system for its Office Communications Server 2007 environment. On one of these server computers, a Dell PowerEdge 2950, Giant Eagle installed the Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 database software. On the second server computer, an HP ProLiant DL380 G4, it installed the Office Communications Server 2007 server software. The third, an HP ProLiant BL460, is used for the Office Communications Server 2007 edge server roles, including the Access Edge Server, the Web Conferencing Edge Server, and the A/V Edge Server, which support communications and multimedia conferencing with external users, as well as the Mediation Server role, which routes data between Office Communications Server 2007 and a media gateway to integrate the unified communications with the company’s PBX system. The Exchange Server 2007 environment includes two server computers also running Windows Server 2003 R2. On one, the Mailbox server role is installed, and on the second, the Client Access and Exchange UM server roles are installed.
To link the company’s existing PBX voice network from NEC to Office Communications Server 2007, Giant Eagle deployed a 92-channel DMG2120DTI Media Gateway from Dialogic. Black says that it took his team roughly one week to integrate the PBX system with Office Communications Server 2007. “There were some minor hiccups along the way as we got more familiar with the PBX system,” he says. Giant Eagle relies on an outside consultant to administer its PBX system. “But the actual implementation of the Dialogic gateway was simple,” he says. “That was really just a matter of taking it to the data center and performing some simple configuration steps to get network connectivity.”
When the final version of Office Communications Server 2007 is publicly available, Giant Eagle plans to add two more server computers to its configuration to enhance reliability and scalability—one for the edge server roles and another for Office Communications Server 2007.
Currently, 400 Giant Eagle employees are using the IM capabilities of the new solution, and 20 employees, including some members of the IT department and employees who work from home, are now using the VoIP functionality. Once its employee-training plan and documentation are complete, Giant Eagle will fully transition employees to the new solution.
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We had Exchange Server 2007 up and running in a matter of hours. |
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Roger Black
Senior Systems Administrator
Giant Eagle |
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For VoIP communication and presence awareness, employees use Polycom CX700 IP phones, Polycom CX200 desktop phones, and Polycom CX100 speakerphones. They also use USB headsets and the Microsoft RoundTable™ conferencing and collaboration device. The Internet Protocol (IP) phones connect to the Ethernet port on the user’s computer, and the desktop phones connect to the computer through a USB connection. To manage calls with the IP phones, employees can use either the Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 user interface (UI) on the phone’s touch-screen color display or the program’s computer desktop interface. With the desktop phones, employees use the Office Communicator 2007 UI to dial phone numbers and manage calls. Through either interface, employees have access to contact lists and presence status. Finney says that the Polycom CX700 IP phones are especially useful for people who spend less time at their computers, such as the company’s senior executives, many of whom rely on administrative assistants for day-to-day computing tasks. “With the Polycom CX700 phones, people can be a bit more independent of their computers,” he says. “But for the majority of users, who are accessing the Office Communicator 2007 interface through their personal computers, the Polycom CX200 phones work well.”
Although the company isn’t planning a complete replacement of its PBX system, all 700 employees who will be transitioned to working from home will use the unified communications solution. “We anticipate that after people see the benefits, more and more internal users will want to adopt Office Communications Server 2007, and unified communications will spread quickly, beyond its original intended target,” says Finney.
Benefits
With its new, unified communications solution based on Office Communications Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 with Unified Messaging, Giant Eagle has streamlined communications among its employees, has enhanced efficiency in the IT department, and is confident that the new tools will help maintain productivity as users begin to work from home. It also feels that the implementation of this solution will help the company lower costs and more easily accomplish its telework initiative.
More Efficient, More Powerful Communications
Finney says that one of the biggest benefits he’s seen from the new system is “having all modes of communications accessible within one interface.” With Office Communications Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007, Giant Eagle simplifies employees’ access to valuable communications tools—such as IM, voice mail, VoIP, and audio and video conferencing—by consolidating that access into one system.
As an IT worker often on the move, Finney finds it very valuable to be able to access voice mail on his computer. These and other unified-messaging capabilities help to mitigate the delays once experienced as staff members worked their way through phone numbers on the department’s on-call sheet. “On my PBX phone, if I missed a call, I had no clue. With Office Communicator 2007 I can immediately see who called with a notification in my Outlook inbox, and I can call them back even if they didn’t leave a message. I’m more proactive that way. And with Exchange Unified Messaging, I get my voice mail immediately in my inbox too, no matter what.” Finney also appreciates the flexibility of being able to respond to people and interact through IM, “or to instantly start a video conference if it seems appropriate.”
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We anticipate that after people see the benefits, more and more internal users will want to adopt Office Communications Server 2007, and unified communications will spread quickly, beyond its original intended target. |
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Bryan Finney
Emerging Technology Manager
Giant Eagle |
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Black agrees that the “anywhere access” capabilities of the system are of great value to Giant Eagle. “If there is an issue, people can now find me anywhere. I’m notified in real time; I don’t have to be constantly checking my voice mail, and people don’t have to try number after number to reach me. I prefer to know about a problem as soon as it develops—we can jump on things and solve issues faster.”
Black adds that the system has also improved his team’s collaboration during after-hours work. “As soon as we had it in place, we really took advantage of it. We use Office Communicator 2007 to collaborate remotely—we talk through issues by using IM, and it is a lot better than holding a cell phone to your ear expecting the call to be dropped any second. The great value is being able to reach people quickly and efficiently. If there’s a green circle by their name, they’re there. If there’s a yellow circle, you know you’ll be wasting your time trying to contact them.”
More Productive Employees
Giant Eagle believes that the streamlined communications delivered by this new system will positively affect productivity on many levels. “There will be a big advantage to being able to bypass the VPN,” says Black. “With Microsoft unified communications, people won’t have to start up a VPN connection each time they want to communicate from home or another remote location. If they’re traveling, as long as they have Internet access they can do their jobs without the VPN.”
Finney also says that “Microsoft unified communications will help Giant Eagle employees maintain their productivity as they transition to working from home.” Users will feel more connected to their colleagues with enhanced collaboration capabilities, including the ability to seamlessly move between e mail, IM, audio conferencing, and video conferencing. “The video functionality of Office Communications Server 2007 adds a lot of value. It makes people feel that they are still part of the company,” says Finney.
Finney adds that the company’s senior managers have also seen the benefits of unified communications. “We showed them some demos, and they really understood the benefits. For example, when people have the ability to create instant, online meetings, it means that a store manager might not have to take time out to drive in to the store to attend a meeting. And eventually, with Microsoft RoundTable, we’ll be able to make everyone feel as though they’re in the same room.” The Microsoft RoundTable conferencing and collaboration device is an advanced conference phone with a built-in, 360-degree camera that actively follows conversations by identifying the active speaker and broadcasting a close-up image of that person.
Ease of Deployment, Adoption
Black says that in addition to the relative ease with which the company deployed Exchange Server 2007, “we had the Office Communications Server 2007 Beta 3 up and running within three hours. And after the Office Communicator 2007 client was deployed, people were initiating meetings that same day. They saw the integration with Outlook, saw the value of the presence controls, and the fact that presence could be customized, and everyone just said, ‘hey, this answers a lot of our needs,’” says Black.
Lower Costs
The new solution will help Giant Eagle maximize cost savings. Finney says that deployment of the new system is cheaper because the IT department can use Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 to perform remote installations of the client software, “versus the Oracle client, which we had to install one machine at a time.”
Black also believes that the widespread use of Office Communications Server 2007—including IM, Web conferencing, and VoIP—could potentially lessen the need for employee cell phones, resulting in additional cost reductions.
Future Plans
Giant Eagle plans to make the capabilities of the new solution accessible from mobile devices, when it implements Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile. Users will then be able to determine other employees’ presence and see contact lists. When used in conjunction with a Windows Mobile® powered device with a wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) network adapter, Office Communicator Mobile can be used to make VoIP calls to other Communicator Mobile users or the desktop version of the client over a corporate Wi-Fi network.
The company also plans to use the Office Communications Server 2007 application programming interfaces to develop custom solutions. “One example would be a one-way push solution that we could use to broadcast urgent messages to store employees, such as if a product recall has been announced,” says Finney. The message sender would use the Office Communicator 2007 interface to send the message through IM and could even reach people on their mobile devices. “It’s much more immediate than e-mail, or than individual phone calls to store managers,” says Finney.
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 Presidio Networked Solutions products and services, call (800) 4-LAN-WAN or visit the Web site at:
www.presidio.com
For more information about Giant Eagle, Inc., products and services, call (412) 963-6200 or visit the Web site at:
www.gianteagle.com
Microsoft Office System
The Microsoft Office system is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.
For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to:
www.microsoft.com/office
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published October 2007
