With its 2020 Vision for the Keihin Group, Keihin Corporation aims to expand globally by promoting various initiatives such as the development of information infrastructure that links offices worldwide, and achieve its goal of becoming a truly independent system parts manufacturer capable of competing with mega-suppliers on products and technology that contribute to the global environment. The company revealed that its IS department faced difficulty in allocating sufficient resources to the planning and development of new initiatives, as it was burdened by system maintenance operations that have expanded from the backbone system to the information system. It leveraged on “Management Consulting”, a corporate technical support service provided by Microsoft Premier Support team. Through Management Consulting, it was able to identify issues in its business which led to a breakthrough.

Deliver Australia works with local partners to provide transport solutions across the Australian continent. Its business runs on a Microsoft Office 365 and Windows Azure cloud infrastructure. The company sought a process diagramming tool and chose Microsoft Visio 2013 because it works in a cloud environment. Now, Deliver Australia and its partners can co-author transport process diagrams to better serve customers, who can track their deliveries by viewing dynamic diagrams with near real-time information. By using Visio 2013 for data visualization, Deliver Australia has boosted its competitive advantage and improved its relationships with both its customers and partners.

As part of its continuous effort to increase efficiency, ABB Switzerland—which provides industrial power and automation products—searched for a new process diagramming solution. Specifically, the company needed an application that provided support for both the Event-driven Process Chain (EPC) and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) 2.0 standards. ABB Switzerland executives were eager to evaluate the latest release of Microsoft Visio. They sought to take advantage of numerous product enhancements designed to make it easier to create and share diagrams. After participating in an early adoption program for the technology, the company deployed Visio Professional 2013. ABB Switzerland now uses Visio 2013, together with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 to enable employees to collaboratively create BPMN 2.0-compliant diagrams—60 percent faster than before.

A major telecommunications company in Brazil, Intelbras S/A operates in hyper-competitive markets. To help project teams be even more efficient, Intelbras upgraded to Microsoft Project Server 2013. Project managers can produce reports in minutes versus weeks, which accelerates the pace of business. All project data is accessible in one place, and employees can communicate more fluidly with the email and instant messaging capabilities built into Project Server.

Bassier, Bergmann & Kindler (BB&K) is a branding and training company in Germany that manages hundreds of projects a year. It recently upgraded to Microsoft Project Online and deployed Microsoft SharePoint Online to better share information, model business processes, and access project tools online. BB&K expects to trim project management costs by 10 percent and has gained more flexible infrastructure scalability and improved communications.

Solutions provider Manhattan Associates wanted to reap business rewards from social networking by combining Yammer social functionality with Microsoft SharePoint. It now enjoys collaboration that transcends organizational and geographical silos and a mobile workforce that taps into corporate “tribal knowledge” anytime, anywhere. Savvy knowledge management means successes are replicated, significantly boosting productivity and the bottom line.

Fresenius Medical Care sought a business solution that would make it easy for employees to work together, visualize data, and access information. It adopted Microsoft SharePoint 2013 and used Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 data management software to convert third-party data into business intelligence reports. The company benefits from a self-service solution that improves productivity and streamlines data viewing and access to resources.

The University of Colorado Denver provides online programs and degrees to nearly 17,000 students. As tuition prices and online education competition grew, CU Online needed to invest in marketing campaigns that would attract and recruit the right students. Integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM into existing Microsoft products provided transparency, accountability, and data-driven decision making to invest in the right media outlets and ultimately, provide the best experience for students world-wide.

Shinola is a design and manufacturing company that needed the most efficient solution to streamline its processes and reduce manufacturing costs to gain a competitive advantage. In April 2012, three Shinola employees began using tablets running the Windows 8 Pro operating system. The company plans to use the tablets for shipping and receiving, inventory control, point-of-sales discussions, and monitoring plant security cameras. Shinola benefits from an intuitive interface, robust functionality, and near-seamless mobility.

As part of an ongoing effort to support its mobile workers and to keep up with the latest technologies, the Century Council deployed Windows 8 Pro to run on tablets and desktop PCs. Soon, the operating system will be deployed organizationwide, but the council is already seeing increased productivity from employees who can easily connect to office computers from tablets. Some projects have been trimmed from hours to minutes.