LVMH accelerates the modernization of its digital workplace with Microsoft Office 365, Teams, and telephony

Increasing communication requirements

A longtime customer of Microsoft, LVMH increased its use of Teams to meet new requirements. “Since the beginning of 2019, the need to collaborate, communicate in real time, and share both information and documentation has exploded. This approach to working as a team has become more important throughout our entire Group,” explains Franck Le Moal, CIO at LVMH.

As a result, LVMH would like to streamline Group communications at all levels and make them more efficient:

• Among headquarters and the various houses located throughout the world.
• Within internal house teams.
• Within specific brands, with their international locations. 
• Out toward stores and sales consultants.
• Among production sites, distributors, and sales outlets.
  
  

Cloud telephone technology for improved scalability

A number of telephone systems were reaching the end of their life cycle at several of the Group’s houses, and LVMH was looking for an alternative to software as a service (SaaS) telephony. “The challenge was to find a simple, cost-effective approach. Cost rationalization was extremely important,” notes Vincent Belrose, CTO at LVMH. The chosen telephony solution is based on Microsoft 365 and Teams. It fulfills the international scope needed and is easily scalable. It can be deployed quickly and is centrally managed as required for a group like LVMH with a worldwide presence.

Integrating telephone service through Microsoft Teams unifies the end user’s tool set and maximizes the use of Teams as a true global hub for collaboration, offering instant communication, collaborative exchanges with shared files, team collaboration, task management, and phones. All this, from within a single platform that is highly secure, unified, and exclusive. “Having a cost-effective platform that brings everything together and makes it possible to easily merge the various channels with an easy-to-use interface—it seemed like an obvious choice to us!” confirms Franck Le Moal.

LVMH particularly appreciates the simplicity of Teams Phone and the telephone features it offers users, along with Microsoft’s efforts and investment in continually improving its cloud telephone technology. “Within a few months, we saw significant progress on the road map. These efforts validated our choice. We understood this to be a strategic focus for Microsoft and that we could bet on the future,” Vincent Belrose explains.

Benefits 

Microsoft and LVMH have confirmed that Teams Phone can replicate the most common telephone use cases and bring added value to additional scenarios such as employees in the field who need telephone equipment, telephones in stores, or service environments.

Today, certain houses have already (partially) deployed Teams telephone solutions: 

• Moët Hennessy 
• Watches & Jewelry 
• Perfumes & Cosmetics 
• Les Echos-Le Parisien 
• Christian Dior Couture 

Adoption was very easy thanks to the pilot projects conducted. “The ability to implement this solution is a valuable one. We were concerned about the complex integration process; however, in the end, everything went well,” says Vincent Belrose enthusiastically. 

For those involved, using Teams for telephone calls made it possible to:

• Manage telephone access from within Office 365—a suite that is already familiar to users— reducing the number of applications, and, in the end, saving time! 
• Reduce cost while improving the company’s efficiency. 
• Work smarter by grouping calls, chats, and Teams meetings together in a single application 
• Make calls from within the chat function, Contacts, Outlook, or Teams. The unified experience is very beneficial. 
• Use Office applications to collaborate during calls and meetings, from “anywhere” and with “any” device (creating efficiencies and time savings). 
• Stay connected with a single telephone number for the computer, mobile, and office phones. The result is greater mobility and the ability to work and make calls from anywhere. 
• Make the calling experience simple with an ergonomic display and easy dialing, using names or numbers.

All of this comes together to create a modern workplace, with a well thought out workstation that’s both efficient and up to date. “We are going to remove the old, landline-based telephone infrastructure to focus on a higher quality service that provides a pleasant working environment, including ergonomic, efficient headsets […] This lets us redirect the classic investment we were used to making in landlines into an improved experience,” Franck Le Moal points out.

Teams, transforming the modern workplace 

Modernization efforts will speed up in the months to come. Several houses within the Group are conducting a pilot to also switch to Teams’ telephone solutions. “Within the next 24 months, the Group will have switched over most of its telephone services to Teams Phone,” Franck Le Moal confirms. “The LVMH Group and its houses are also testing out new Office 365 cross-tenant features. They will allow the Group and its houses to work in an even more integrated fashion from within Office 365’s multi-tenant environment.”

In addition to making calls, this project is part of a larger modernization plan for LVMH workplaces. “All of our houses are moving toward agile operations and need more flexibility, agility, and responsiveness related to our specific business challenges and the process of transformation,” emphasizes Franck Le Moal. 

Teams met the Group’s new requirements. “Teams numerous features bring together what we see as the essential linchpins of communication: sharing and storing documents, collaborating through messaging, video, telephony with Teams Phone, and more. This solution has become the vector for communications among our operations teams, our IT teams, and within our business lines,” observes Franck Le Moal. “With the flexibility and agility that Teams allows, it’s clear that it supports and promotes a transformational approach to our way of working, modernizing our physical infrastructures, and giving birth to a new, flexible concept of the workplace.”