ZF Group selects Microsoft Teams to streamline communications for 110,000 frontline and office workers

When ZF Group acquired TRW Automotive Holdings in 2015, the merger created one of the largest automotive technology suppliers in the world. But it also created a complex communications headache.

On one side, TRW had deployed Office 365 and Skype for Business Online. On the other, ZF Group was running an on-premises infrastructure, including Skype for Business Server. What’s more, with 270 locations in 42 countries, ZF Group’s infrastructure was fragmented across departmental silos. “Employees complained that it was difficult to connect across the ZF environment,” recalls Timo Möllers, Head of Digital Workplace Services at ZF Group.

To modernize the ZF side of the new organization, Möllers and his team deployed Microsoft 365 after analyzing their environment using the Cloud Readiness for Office assessment. To reduce complexity, the company initially decided to stay with Skype for Business on-premises. Connectivity with TRW colleagues was enabled through network federation. But the system was not ideal.

As Thomas Mark, Senior Manager for Unified Communication at ZF Group explains, “We had trouble with the Skype for Business mobile application. And employees were lacking functions like being able to take a photo during a meeting.” This was particularly important for employees on the factory floor who wanted to share pictures during remote support calls.

Microsoft Teams addressed both shortcomings for frontline workers at ZF Group while also providing office workers with a more centralized platform for meetings and collaboration. Options like being able to organize teams into specific channels was particularly appealing, as was the improved video and calling performance that ZF Group saw, even in early testing.

ZF Group also wanted to streamline its telephony infrastructure with Teams Phone. For external calling, the company operated a complex network of traditional phones running on a private branch exchange (PBX) and other phones running Enterprise Voice in Skype for Business Server. There were also a multitude of conference room systems. With Teams Phone, the company could standardize on one platform while also enabling employees to access chat, meetings, collaboration and calling all on one screen.

Taking a phased approach

“Because of all the different dependencies we had on Skype for Business, both online and on-premises, we decided to introduce Teams in Islands mode,” says Mark. More than 110,000 employees across ZF Group were provided with Microsoft 365 E3 licenses.

In Teams Islands mode, employees ran Skype for Business and Teams simultaneously as two separate solutions. This enabled them to get familiar with the new Teams features without losing the familiarity of receiving external calls through Skype. Along with a hands-on experience, ZF Group implemented a comprehensive change management program.

“Communication, communication, communication,” says Mark, when asked about the company’s own best practices for user support and adoption. One communication channel that is particularly effective for ZF Group is an internal blog they call the “Smarter@Work blog.” It’s regularly updated with news about IT Services, M365, and the latest Teams features along with links to online training.

Ask the Expert sessions are popular, as well. “One of the most frequent questions we get during these sessions is ‘How can I best structure all of this great Teams functionality for my team?’” says Mark. To answer that question, the Teams champions take users through a detailed learning path, showing them how to structure features like Teams channels for their specific groups and objectives.

Setting the foundation for Teams Phone

While employees started using Teams in Islands mode, administrators began work on the next step in the migration—moving an initial 60,000 employees from Islands mode to Teams only and the switch to Teams Phone.

For a small group of these employees, Calling Plans were also deployed as a quick and easy way to provide Teams Phone capabilities. With Calling Plans, Microsoft acts as the telephony carrier. There were, however, a multitude of complex calling scenarios that required management through ZF Group’s own session border controllers (SBCs). These scenarios included a call center as well as multiple PBX types, such as Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications phones for workers in factories.

The better path here was Microsoft Phone System Direct Routing—an option ZF Group is currently configuring across its entire global network.

Managing complex calling scenarios with Direct Routing

When planning its move to Direct Routing, ZF Group started with employees using Enterprise Voice clients, followed by an update of PBX phones. “It’s much easier to move someone already using Skype for Business with Enterprise Voice to Teams than it is to migrate a classic PBX phone user,” says Mark.

Currently, the team is completing configuration of session initiation protocol (SIP) trunks in its EMEA region while also planning its North American migration. “ZF Group is excited to provide all of our employees running Teams with the additional calling benefits of Teams Phone,” says Mark. “Our goal is to free employees from their desk phones and enable them to answer business calls from anywhere using Teams and Teams Phone,” he adds.

The company’s migration plan also covers other telephony hardware such as conference room systems. ZF Group is currently replacing all Skype for Business systems with Microsoft Teams Rooms Standard systems. This includes more than 45 conference rooms with Crestron RL2 devices that will be replaced with Lenovo ThinkSmart Hub 500 units.

Looking forward to a bright future

As ZF Group continues to expand its Teams deployment, the company is also expanding its use of Teams features. Take live events, for example. Since moving to remote work during COVID-19, ZF Group migrated from Skype Meeting Broadcast to Teams live events to address large audiences with video meeting content.

“In October 2020, we had our first Teams live event with our Chief Information Officer, who addressed 1,400 people,” says Andreas Stauff, Former Senior Expert, UC Media Technology at ZF Group. Today, Teams live events is also used for management board meetings of up to 4,000 people.

Additionally, Teams is helping to drive improvements in technical support. Now, when there is a problem on a production line onsite, frontline workers use the Teams mobile app to meet with subject matter experts, share photos, and work through the issue in real time.

To better manage issues at one facility, ZF Group set up separate Teams channels for each production area. The idea was that, if issues were organized into distinct channels, problems would get solved faster, and it worked. “We saw an improvement in overall equipment effectiveness at one of the pilot facilities—simply because people could collaborate more effectively in Teams,” says Robert Copelan, Project Leader, IT Innovation at ZF Group.

“That's one of the biggest advantages I see from Teams overall,” says Mark. “Our employees are starting to use Teams to collaborate and solve problems in ways that simply couldn’t have happened with earlier unified communications solutions.” For people like Mark and the rest of the UC team, it’s these kinds of benefits that have made managing a complex migration well worth the effort.

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