Big Button develops digital entertainment, such as animation and videos, along with websites and three-dimensional demos, focusing primarily on the corporate sector. The company’s clients, such as Rackspace, TNT, and England’s National Health Service—to name a few—have referred to Big Button as one of the easiest and most imaginative companies to work with. This is in part due to the company’s patience and dedication to aligning each and every production with its clients’ expectations. To maintain this reputation, managers at Big Button needed to help the team of 12 employees complete projects in less time—where quality is not compromised.

Situation
Based in the United Kingdom, Big Button provides digital entertainment services to clients that include Rackspace, TNT, and England’s National Health Service. The company’s employees noted that calendar requests were difficult to manage as they had to click back and forth between their calendars and email inboxes. Plus, if the meeting time didn’t work with their schedule, they would undergo a seemingly endless process of sending updates back and forth until all parties found a time that worked with everyone’s schedules.

Usability and clarity are at the heart of everything we create—and it’s what we look for in products we use. Microsoft Office Professional 2010 is by far the most intuitive, user-friendly productivity suite we have used. Mark Burgess Owner, Big Button

And managers found that sending pertinent email messages to team members required the arduous process of manually entering each email address.

Solution
Because seamless communication was paramount to the company’s success, Big Button decided to deploy Microsoft Office Professional 2010.

“Usability and clarity are at the heart of everything we create—and it’s what we look for in products we use,” says Mark Burgess, Owner of Big Button. “Microsoft Office Professional 2010 is by far the most intuitive, user-friendly productivity suite we have used.”

Benefits
By deploying Office Professional 2010, Big Button streamlined schedule management and simplified common tasks.

Streamlines Scheduling Requests
New scheduling tools available in Microsoft Outlook 2010 messaging and collaboration client make it easier than ever to schedule meetings that work with everyone’s schedule. The Reply with Meeting option, for example, enables employees to quickly send a meeting request to one another right from their inbox—without having to switch to the calendar view and input desired attendees’ names.

“The Reply with Meeting tool is one of those little features of Outlook 2010 that enables us to capture big time savings,” notes Andy McNamara, Managing Director of Operations at Big Button. “In fact, it’s saving us more than 30 minutes per day across the organization.”

Employees have found that the ability to easily send weekly calendars to recipients has helped save time and boost productivity. By using the Email Calendar feature, users can send weekly, monthly, or even annual appointments, events, and meetings to an email recipient. All they need to do is switch to the Calendar View, select the Email Calendar button on the home tab of the Outlook 2010 Ribbon, populate the date range, and hit “Send.”

“Email Calendar is a brilliant feature,” says Burgess. “We no longer need to send proposed times back and forth, ad nauseam. Now, we just click, send a weekly overview of availability, and our clients let us know what times work best for them.”

Saves Time, Improves Relationships
Outlook 2010 also includes the Quick Steps feature, which enables users to customize tasks, such as adding specific colleagues’ names to a “Team Email” or “To Manager” message. Once users define their Quick Steps, they can perform tasks with one click rather than manually entering information.

“So much of our communication is digitally based, so email is our lifeblood,” says Burgess. “With Outlook 2010 and features like Quick Steps, we are saving more time and communicating more effectively than before.” Burgess indicates that, when adding up the time saved by each employee, the feature has enabled the company to reclaim more than an hour each day.

Overall, Big Button sees new opportunities to strengthen relationships—and develop new ones—by using Microsoft Office Professional 2010.

“It’s not just about saving time, although that is a definite plus,” says Burgess. “With Office Professional 2010, we’re able to better connect with clients. And in our business, communication is the key to success.”

Microsoft Office 2010
Microsoft Office 2010 gives your people powerful, timesaving tools to do their best work from more places. With new capabilities and insightful updates to Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook, Office 2010 offers the complete package—with familiar, intuitive tools. Now you can express ideas, solve problems, connect with people, and create amazing results—in the office, at home, or on the go.

For more information about Microsoft Office, go to:
www.office.com

For More Information
For more information on Microsoft Small Business solutions, visit:
www.microsoft.com/uk/smallbusiness

For more information on Microsoft Midsize Business solutions, visit:
www.microsoft.com/En/gb/mediumbusiness/default.aspx

For presales questions on Microsoft products, please call: 0844 800 2400

For more information about Big Button products and services, call 0121 224 8265 or visit the website at:
www.bigbutton.tv