Vestas improves meeting productivity with purpose-built 3rd party app for Microsoft Teams meetings

With a mission to help the world move to sustainable energy sources, sustainable innovation is at the heart of everything Vestas does. It has spent the last forty years developing wind as an alternative energy source and now it has turned its focus on making its internal processes sustainable too. So, Vestas implemented Decisions, a purpose-built 3rd party app, into its Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 platform, enabling significant productivity improvements in meeting management throughout the organization. This new, powerful solution helps employees save time, make crucial business decisions faster and above all, improve mental wellbeing in the workplace by reducing frustration over poorly executed meetings.

“In the same way that Vestas is committed to building sustainable energy solutions, we think it’s imperative to help employees have a sustainable workday. How we ask people to collaborate, participate and contribute must be done in a way that’s meaningful to the employees, so their mental wellbeing can be safeguarded.”

Jakob Ventzel, Senior IT Collaboration Architect in Global IT at Vestas, is reflecting on why the global energy company set out to digitally transform its internal operations. Vestas employees throughout the organization conduct thousands of meetings every day, but very often these meetings are not as productive as they could be. This leads to additional follow-up meetings needing to be scheduled which can be wasteful and frustrating for those involved.

“We were looking for a meeting management solution that could make our meetings more efficient through enabling better preparation for, execution of, and follow-up on meetings,” explains Ventzel. “It’s important to us to equip colleagues in the organization with streamlined ways of getting their work done so they can have a fulfilling workday where they feel that their contribution to the organization is effective, and their personal goals are being achieved.”

Having already begun embracing hybrid working, the organization developed an adoption plan which involved implementing Microsoft Teams and phasing out its previous virtual meeting application. Fortunately, it was completed four months before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, so Vestas had all the prerequisites in place to enable employees to work remotely with a smooth transition.

“We managed to limit the disruption from the global pandemic which meant that we could focus on improving internal processes further,” says Ventzel. “We complemented the Microsoft technology we already had in place with the help of the Decisions for Microsoft Teams Meetings product to strengthen our digital workplace and support the improvement of our meeting culture.”

Existing meeting processes prove unsustainable

Based in Denmark, Vestas is currently the energy industry’s global partner on sustainable energy solutions. It designs, manufactures, installs and services wind turbines across 85 countries. With the data it harvests, Vestas can forecast and exploit wind resources to deliver leading wind power solutions.

“Although for many years we’ve been innovating at pace with our wind turbine technology,” says Ventzel, “internally, our workforce was faced with cumbersome collaboration tools, specifically in meeting management.

“With over 29,000 employees, the organization conducts more than 8,500 meetings each day. So, we have a responsibility to ensure that there are appropriate tools in place to support meetings across the business and with partners and customers. Our focus was to find a meeting management solution that could improve efficiency and the quality of meeting preparation, so participants are better prepared to collaborate, contribute and make important business decisions.”

From virtual meetings to an employee-centric meeting management solution

“Choosing Microsoft Teams was a logical step for us because it integrates with apps that were already ubiquitous across the company such as Outlook, Word, OneNote and Planner,” explains Ventzel. “This meant there would be less disruption and less upskilling needed. So, we began implementation which thankfully, was completed just before we went into national lockdowns across the world.”

With key objectives in end user experience and adoption of IT services, the global IT team introduced Microsoft Teams through a carefully designed continuous adoption approach. Employees were quick to realize the huge potential that Microsoft Teams provided. Vestas had also been exploring how collaborating with 3rd party apps could drive innovation. This drew attention to improvements needed with the organization’s meeting culture.

“We saw that Executive Assistants and Personal Assistants were heavy users of the Microsoft suite but there was still room for improvement in areas such as planning meetings where participants from across the organization came together to make important decisions.” says Ventzel. Vestas needed a solution that supported meeting management at this level – and that’s when they partnered with the Norwegian founded company, Decisions.

“Decisions builds on current functionality in Microsoft Teams,” explains Mikkel Stærk Dickenson, Senior Account Executive at Decisions. “Through the partnership with Microsoft, we have developed a solution which also integrates with Outlook, Word and Planner. Decisions makes agenda creation a collaborative process and ensures effective capturing of tasks and decisions.”

Meeting organizers in Vestas can create an agenda in Outlook, while participants can contribute to the preparation directly in Microsoft Teams. During the meeting, Decisions allows people in Vestas to manage time efficiently. After the meeting, the minutes can be automatically generated, and follow-up tasks can be managed in Planner.

“Virtual meetings can often go off track which can be both frustrating and demotivating,” says Dickenson. “It is important for meeting culture that everyone is aligned on the purpose of the meeting and the expected outcome, so the time participants spend together is more effective. To support this, the application nudges effective behaviour before, during and after meetings. It also dramatically reduces the number of emails being sent containing different versions of material, so everyone has up-to-date information.”

Since piloting the solution, it has been rolled out to more than 200 Microsoft Teams teams across the organization. The solution has been made available to all employees, and currently there are more than 2,500 active users globally.

Looking toward a digital future

“In the last two years, we have seen Vestas transform at an unprecedented pace,” says Ventzel. “Technology is empowering our employees to be more productive and collaborative wherever they are. Adopting better, fit for purpose tools has really helped to reduce the time and financial cost that inefficient meetings cause.”

Vestas is also working to digitalize other parts of the organization, so that colleagues in the factories, who spend less time using digital tools can still be part of the digital journey. Some employees who have never had an IT user account are now being given one as the company moves towards a digital future.

“In my view,” explains Ventzel, “other companies in the energy industry should start looking at how they can better streamline internal processes and really listen to the needs of the employees. Putting people at the center of transformation can optimize collaboration and increase employee satisfaction.

“By embracing technology in a people centric manner, we can now say that we are truly working to become a sustainable company, not just in the way we source energy, but in the way our workforce functions every single day.”