As the third-largest and fastest-growing mobile communications provider in Ireland, Meteor Mobile Communications wanted to sustain its rapid growth in the very competitive mobile communications market. The company needed to achieve high levels of efficiency, responsiveness, and collaboration. After a detailed assessment of its user application software, Meteor management made a decision to upgrade its workstations to the 2007 Microsoft® Office system. With a new intuitive user interface and productivity capabilities, Meteor standardized its enterprise environment on the 2007 Office system and deployed collaboration tools that enabled both local and remote users to increase productivity.
Situation
Ireland’s third-largest and fastest-growing mobile communications provider, Meteor Mobile Communications has almost 19 percent share in the Irish mobile market. The number of Meteor employees and retail locations has grown rapidly. To remain competitive and sustain its rapid growth, the company needed to achieve higher levels of efficiency.
Meteor needed a solution that would enable its expanding workforce to respond to market opportunities more effectively. The company wanted to give employees better opportunities to collaborate on key projects, irrespective of distance or location.
In the summer of 2007, Meteor conducted a detailed assessment of its user application software. Besides the obvious desire for advanced features in newer technologies, Meteor wanted a solution with software and supporting applications that were easy to install, with minimum interruption to the normal daily workloads. And to minimize training requirements, the company wanted technology that was familiar and intuitive.
Impressed by the long list of enhancements and updates in the 2007 Microsoft® Office system, including a new user interface and greatly increased productivity capabilities, the management team at Meteor decided to upgrade its workstations from Microsoft Office 2000. As part of the upgrade package with the 2007 Office system, Meteor received free consultancy support and end-user training from Microsoft.
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Benefits
Meteor successfully completed and efficiently managed its enterprisewide rollout of the 2007 Office system within a short period of time. The company achieved the upgrade without investing considerable education and training time for non-technical users. With thorough planning and the right tools, Meteor managed a painless upgrade and achieved significant business improvements.
“We need systems that maximize the connections between people, information, and processes,” says Kirwan. “With one step to the 2007 Office system, we achieved these objectives in a very short space of time.”
Enhanced Productivity
Using the 2007 Office system, Meteor has achieved productivity improvements in many different areas. Because the new interface is more intuitive, with commonly used functions no longer buried in sub menus and applications better integrated across the entire 2007 Office system, users can take advantage of previously unused functionality.
Users can easily share information with colleagues by directly accessing documents from Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, eliminating repeated storage of data sets in many different areas. With new search features in Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007, users spend less time manually hunting for information throughout the system.
More Effective Collaboration
With the 2007 Office system, Meteor provides employees the ability to connect easily with colleagues and partners, both local and remote, enabling effective and productive collaboration. By deploying shared calendaring, e-mail integration, and shared workspaces with Office SharePoint Server 2007, Meteor has simplified the collaboration process and provided employees more efficient methods for sharing data. All participants work with the same data set, eliminating the risks that come from working with multiple copies of similar documents and helping to contribute to overall environment security.
Intuitive User Interface
By deploying the 2007 Microsoft Office system throughout the enterprise, Meteor gives employees an improved user interface that simplifies many previously complex activities and makes everyday productivity tools much easier to use.
The project team was initially concerned that the new interface would have an unknown impact on the user base. But inexperienced users encountered minimal difficulties and experienced users underwent a small learning curve. After that initial period, employees experienced an increase over previous usability. As a result, the conversion process proved to be effortless, with no negative feedback from employees.
Quick, Painless Implementation
Thanks to careful project planning, Meteor achieved a successful rollout of the 2007 Office system to over 800 users in just eight weeks. Key elements of the plan included ensuring that the client hardware could support the new applications and that the appropriate software tools would work across the organization within the tight time constraints. “Meteor has clearly demonstrated that enterprises can complete large-scale updates to the 2007 Office system quickly, and that the 2007 Office system can be rolled out in a diverse environment with minimum disruption,” says Fitzpatrick.
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:
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 Meteor Mobile Communications products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.meteor.ie
© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published May 2008
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