2 page Case Study - Posted 2/25/2009

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Peaks

Online Collaboration Tools Help IT Company Reduce Consultant Costs by 50 Percent

Based in Lyon, France, Peaks is an IT company with a mobile workforce of consultants deployed at customer sites. Peaks wanted better messaging and collaboration tools for its consultants to share data and expedite service. It partnered with YouSAAS and subscribed to Microsoft® Online Services to gain access to hosted communication and collaboration software. Now consultants can access data and project information to collaborate on better service. 

Business Needs

Peaks is an IT services company that provides network infrastructure and software engineering services on a project-by-project basis to customers in a wide range of industries. The company is headquartered in Lyon, France, and has regional offices in Paris and Reims.

Peaks builds its business through responsive customer service. Its highly-trained consultants, developers, and quality control and project managers are deployed around the world to work at clients’ locations when and where they are needed. “Our staff needed anytime, anywhere access to current project information and resources from our head office,” says Fabrice Garçon, Managing Director at Peaks. “Our work is collaborative and project-based, but our consultants did not have the tools required to find, communicate, and collaborate with each other quickly and easily.”

With no central place to manage information, consultants stored documents on portable USB drives and shared them as e-mail attachments. This introduced security risks and hindered version control, collaborative authoring, and project management. Also, Peaks found that it took too long for consultants to set up and establish a work environment at a new client site. “We spent about two weeks providing a consultant with a computer, and software, licenses, network access, and passwords,” says Garçon. “This adds up to a cost of approximately €4,800 [U.S.$6,130].”

Peaks’s corporate culture calls for highly-flexible IT solutions that support mobile information workers. While the company’s single server running Windows® Small Business Server 2003 for its messaging solution had served it well, Peaks required an agile solution that increased consultant productivity and bolstered customer service.  

“We wanted more choice in our technology tools so we could support our work style and expedite service delivery," says Garçon. "None of us have time for deploying software or managing servers.”

Solution

Peaks had already approached Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner YouSAAS for help and subscribed to the YouSAAS Desk, a customized Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 portal. The portal provides Peaks with security-enhanced access to any solution hosted in the YouSAAS online market place. Peaks wanted to subscribe to a SharePoint-based collaboration solution.

Microsoft Online Services are exactly what our mobile consultants need: flexible, hosted, and worry-free communication and collaboration tools. Fabrice Garçon Managing Director, Peaks

YouSAAS introduced Peaks to the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite. Through the suite, Peaks consultants gain subscription-based access to Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, and Microsoft Office Communications Online through the Internet—without investing in software licenses or hardware support.
“We tried Microsoft Online Services before we subscribed to the suite, and it was an immediate win for us,” says Garçon. “YouSAAS took only a couple of hours to integrate the suite into our YouSAAS Desk, and we started using the applications immediately.”

YouSAAS configured the solution so that the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 messaging and collaboration client is hosted in the YouSAAS data center, but communicates with Exchange Online in the Microsoft Online Services environment. This integration is transparent to the consultants, who access their applications through a single, integrated portal. With Microsoft Online Services and the YouSAAS Desk, all they need is an Internet browser for anytime, anywhere access to messaging and collaboration tools, e-mail messages, calendar, contacts, documents, and business information. 

Benefits

Now that Peaks has subscribed to Microsoft Online Services, the company is providing more responsive customer service, improving productivity, and reducing costs and increasing its competitive edge.

More Responsive Customer Service

Today, when Peaks consultants arrive at a new customer’s site to begin a project, they are ready to work instantly and Peaks doesn’t have to spend €4,800 (U.S.$6,130). “With Microsoft Online Services, the speed at which we can deploy our consultants to new worksites is unbeatable,” says Garçon. “Instead of two weeks, it takes two hours to deploy online access to all the productivity tools they need to get to work.” 

Improved Productivity

With easy access to SharePoint Online and Office Outlook 2007, Peaks consultants are working in productive virtual teams, streamlining collaboration, calendaring, and project management. “We are looking forward to using Office Live Meeting to save on travel time to meetings and use real-time document versioning,” says Garçon.

Reduced Costs

Instead of large capital investments to fund IT infrastructure, Peaks can assign a cost-effective monthly subscription fee to operational costs for easy budgeting. “Now we can better predict the costs of our consultants when bidding for contracts,” says Garçon. “And with Microsoft Online Services, we have reduced the cost required to support a consultant onsite by 50 percent.”

Increased Competitive Advantage

Peaks is using Microsoft Online Services to demonstrate an innovative new alliance with Microsoft that readily delivers up-to-date software tools. “It’s very important that our consultants show up with the latest and greatest technology. With Microsoft Online Services, we can do just that—without paying for any IT infrastructure costs,” says Garçon. “We plan to pass this advantage on to our customers by offering more competitive bids. That way, we all win.”

Since it is one of the first companies in France to use Microsoft Online Services, Peaks has increased its competitive advantage in a challenging industry. “Microsoft Online Services are exactly what our mobile consultants need: flexible, hosted, and worry-free communication and collaboration tools,” says Garçon.