Lion Nathan

Australasian Beverage Maker Further Utilizes Conferencing and Collaboration Solution

Lion Nathan is a leading producer, marketer, and distributor of premium alcoholic beverages in Australia and New Zealand. Because employees at Lion Nathan frequently work from home or in one of its many locations across Australia and New Zealand, employees depend heavily on audio and Web conferencing to collaborate and manage projects. To help create a seamless experience for its users, the company agreed to take part in the Rapid Deployment Program (RDP) for Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Lion Nathan expects that with new audio conferencing capabilities, it will be able to reduce its dependency on external conferencing vendors. Lion Nathan also expects that with new desktop sharing and Group Chat capabilities, employees will be able to identify and resolve issues faster by increasing communication and collaboration between support teams and the business.

 

Situation

Based in Sydney, Lion Nathan is a leading alcoholic beverage company with operations in New Zealand and Australia. The company makes premium beers, wines, and spirits for the Australasian and international markets. The company has ties to Australia’s first brewer, James Squire, and has a brewing heritage that dates back to 1840. Today it employs about 3,400 employees and is a publicly traded company on the Australian and New Zealand stock exchanges.

With Office Communications Server, we can gain significant time savings, especially for teams located in various geographical locations. Mick Faber Technical Analyst, Lion Nathan

Many of Lion Nathan’s people, especially the company’s management team, frequently travel to office locations across Australia and New Zealand. Lion Nathan has a culture that also supports its people who work from home. Employees who work away from their local office depend on the ability to communicate effectively when out of the office. Audio and Web conferences are important methods of communication for Lion Nathan.

The company’s headquarters is also the IT support hub for all Lion Nathan sites. The IT support team manages systems that are critical for day-to-day business functions, and delivers help-desk support to the entire company. “We have geographically dispersed teams throughout the organisation that need to share information,” explains Mick Faber, Technical Analyst at Lion Nathan. As with many support operations, a major challenge is the effective handover of issues from one technician to another. Lion Nathan wants to take advantage of unified communications capabilities to improve help-desk handoffs. 

In mid 2007, Lion Nathan began deploying Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007, one of the cornerstones of unified communications solutions from Microsoft, providing instant messaging, presence, remote call control, and Web conferencing. By 2008, over 800 Lion Nathan people depended on Office Communications Server 2007 for instant messaging and Web conferencing. Lion Nathan users can also make, receive, and manage phone calls from their computers by using Microsoft Office Communicator 2007.

Faber comments that Office Communications Server 2007 has been easy to manage. “After the users were on board, very little ongoing maintenance or support has been required. It’s been very stable.”

Traditionally, Lion Nathan depended on several vendors and tools for its audio conferencing. Brett Watkins, Systems Manager, explains that some of the current challenges include a lack of integration with the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 messaging and collaboration client. “Our people have to go to a couple of different areas to book a single meeting. They have to make sure that not only the room is available in Outlook 2007, but also that there are audio ports available for that time slot.”

Web conferencing is becoming more important for Lion Nathan. Microsoft Office Live Meeting has been deployed, although the company is not yet using the audio and video functionality. Lion Nathan finds Office Live Meeting effective for planned meetings to keep people on the same page or screen.

 

Solution

To meet its challenges, Lion Nathan accepted an invitation from Microsoft to take part in the Rapid Deployment Program (RDP) for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Lion Nathan has deployed the update in pilot mode for IT to test the new functionality. It expects to upgrade its 800 users in 2009. 

Lion Nathan plans to implement several of the new capabilities in Office Communications Server 2007 R2, with one of the most important being dial-in conferencing. When deployed, Lion Nathan people will be able to use dial-in conferencing to set up internally hosted audio conferences that can be called from a regular mobile, desk, or home phone as well as within the Office Communicator client. In the future, Lion Nathan will be able to provide a single point of reference for all video and audio requirements to customers, partners, and employees working both in the office as well as remotely.

We have geographically dispersed teams throughout the organization that need to share information. Mick Faber Technical Analyst, Lion Nathan

When dial-in conferencing is deployed, Lion Nathan will further reduce its dependency on, and the costs of, external conference providers. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 audio conferencing offers several advantages. Faber says, “Integration is important. The integration with Outlook adds to the ease of use. People can very quickly start working efficiently and gain the benefits of communication enhancements.”

Watkins concurs, “Our people will have one place to book their conference calls. Because users can access this from outside their offices, the tie-in with Live Meeting will be very valuable. The solution also provides an external URL so we can offer the desktop sharing as well as the audio/visual service to customers we are working with.” 

The IT support team is expanding its unified communication capabilities to improve efficiencies and deliver better service to users. Currently, IT support members depend on the integrated presence information of Office Communications Server 2007 to focus their support tasks. Presence information is shown with colored icons that are integrated in Outlook and other Microsoft applications. By looking at the icons, IT support team members can quickly see who is online and available for communication.

With the deployment of Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Lion Nathan will benefit from desktop sharing with federated partners, service providers, and customers, which can be done quickly through Office Communicator 2007 R2. Faber explains, “For example, when we work with one of our business partners in Turkey to resolve IT issues, he is just a single click away from seeing my desktop through the desktop sharing feature.” 

Being able to use the Group Chat client, “could be a big win from a support point of view,” according to Watkins. IT support members could carry on topic-specific, multiparty instant messaging discussions that persist over time. “Having a centralized Group Chat line that they can jump in and out of and search on history is very compelling. With Group Chat, support team members could quickly understand what the issue is, what has been resolved, and what is still outstanding.”

The Group Chat service presents an opportunity within the brewery operations team as well. Watkins explains, “Team members are spread across various locations at our breweries. The people running the brewing process need a way to see what decisions have been made.” Neil Schiff, Operations Technical Development Manager, says, “As the Operations teams across Australia and New Zealand move towards functioning as a single manufacturing team, collaboration tools like Office Communicator will become more important for instant messaging, presence, etc.”

Lion Nathan can use the Group Chat capability as an audit of the decision making process. With better information, project managers within the factories will make more informed operational decisions that in turn can lead to more efficient operations, fewer mistakes, and cost savings.

The Attendant Console is another feature that Lion Nathan is reviewing with interest. The integration of presence information will improve efficiencies with call handling. The ability to handle calls across multiple sites also enables a degree of redundancy.

 

Benefits

Lion Nathan has seen many benefits in its use of the first release of Office Communications Server 2007. When deployment of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 is complete, Lion Nathan expects to improve its communications capabilities with little additional investment. With Office Communications Server, support staff will be able to improve efficiency by helping employees collaborate and solve problems more effectively. Lion Nathan expects to continue to reduce its external conferencing costs as well as improve support efficiencies. “With Office Communications Server, we can gain significant time savings, especially for teams located in various geographical locations,” explains Faber.

Reduced Costs, Improved Communications

From an overall IT perspective, Office Communications Server 2007 has resulted in a significant improvement in communications both within and between teams. Mick Faber Technical Analyst, Lion Nathan

While there are opportunities to reduce costs, Lion Nathan believes that greater use of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 will create greater communication efficiencies and drive incremental business benefits.

Lion Nathan can reduce telephony costs by using Edge Services, which offers the ability to make calls via Office Communicator 2007 whenever users have an Internet connection. Individuals who are traveling can use Office Communicator 2007 for calls instead of their mobile phones. Users who work from home can save on long-distance telephone charges by using Office Communicator 2007 instead of their home phone for toll calls.

The company also sees time savings associated with audio conferencing using Office Communications Server 2007 R2 for both IT and business users. Watkins says, “For IT, it will be one less system to maintain and train people on. Employees will save time by being able to book meetings, set up audio, and provide application sharing in one single place.”

Improved IT Support

With the integrated presence feature in Office Communications Server 2007, Lion Nathan IT support teams are already improving efficiency and delivering better service to users. For example, users can tag contacts that are momentarily unavailable, so that they are alerted when those colleagues become available. Using this feature of Office Communications Server 2007, the Lion Nathan support team improves time efficiency.

Lion Nathan estimates that at the Service Desk level alone, the solution is helping nine IT Service Desk team members to recover at least 30 minutes from each work day. “We save a lot of time and effort by reducing the need for ‘phone tag’ and for leaving messages,” says Faber.

Enhanced Collaboration

Faber notes, “From an overall IT perspective, Office Communications Server 2007 has seen a significant improvement in communications both within and between teams. We’ve got development teams that we work quite closely with. Having a tool in place that signals when a person is available to collaborate has dramatically improved communication efficiency.”

With Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Lion Nathan gains the flexibility of having the ability to dynamically change conferencing tools or channels. This enables a simple two instant message conversation to expand to an application sharing conference call—all within the one interface.

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For more information about Lion Nathan, visit the Web site at:
www.lion-nathan.com