Skype for Business Customer story
Globe University is constantly looking for ways to improve student learning experiences and extend the reach of its instructors. Globe adopted Skype for Business Server 2015 for lecture delivery, staff communications, and voice capabilities across its 19 locations. Faculty and staff appreciate the product’s better cross-platform support, more intuitive interface, and integration with Microsoft Office 365, which will be used by the university’s students.
"From online and remote learning to connected faculty members to recruiting, we’ve made Skype for Business absolutely critical to our business.” -Adam Hite, Globe University - Director of IT
Business Needs
Teaching without borders
Globe University is as expansive as its name. People seeking careers in everything from business administration to veterinary technology turn to this family-owned system of five career colleges, universities, and training centers. With campus locations spread across five states, Globe looks for ways to share knowledge among its faculty and staff and to make it easier for students to take the classes they want without having to travel.
That’s why the university participated recently in the early adopter program for Skype for Business Server 2015, the successor to Microsoft Lync Server 2013. By upgrading its communications solution, Globe can make its instructors more available, streamline internal operations, and enable colleagues to work together more easily, whether they need to track down the right resource to answer a prospective student’s questions or solve an IT issue for a remote faculty member.
There’s plenty of communications and collaboration among the university’s colleges. “We have a common curriculum and a shared faculty, so we offer some of the same courses at multiple schools,” says Dave Hagel, Director of Technology Services at Globe University. “Instead of having to shuttle among multiple campuses to reach their many interested students, our instructors use Skype for Business as a powerful, convenient technology to teach and transfer knowledge. A seasoned instructor who is an expert in her field can teach a course from one of our campus classrooms, and students from all over our college system can watch her lectures. By using Skype for Business, we can make the best instructors available to the greatest number of students without inconveniencing either instructors or students. This gives the college the flexibility to teach more efficiently, reach students in remote locations, and increase the quality of educational opportunities.”
Solution
A tradition of advanced communications
Globe University has long been an early adopter of unified communications technologies, going back to its implementation of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. The university’s first step was to upgrade 10 Globe datacenter servers to Skype for Business, which is now used by 1,500 faculty and staff. “With the in-place upgrade path, we had an easy move to Skype for Business,” says Adam Hite, Director of IT at Globe University. Globe plans to set up a hybrid environment in which staff and faculty can use either Skype for Business on-premises if they need enterprise voice capabilities or the online version available with Microsoft Office 365.
The university plans to roll out Office 365 to approximately 15,000 students. The goal is for students using Office 365 to be able to use Skype for Business to collaborate on class projects, get help from classmates, and work more closely as a team, even if they don’t sit in the same classroom on a daily basis.
The university’s Skype for Business environment works with Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013, which means that employees can view each other’s presence information from within their messaging and collaboration systems. Globe also plans to have Skype for Business interoperate with its customer relationship management (CRM) solution, public-facing website, and learning management system.
Benefits
Flexibility and collaboration
Many of the university’s faculty and staff have already embraced Skype for Business instant messaging, presence, and conferencing functionality, and some employees also opt for its voice capabilities instead of using the university’s PBX telephony system. Elaine Settergren, Online Librarian at Globe University, relies on Skype for Business to curate electronic resources, support instructors and other colleagues, and help students with research. “I use Skype for Business all day, every day, to help faculty figure out the best ways to incorporate digital library content into their courses, coordinate the efforts of our dispersed library staff, and respond to calls from students,” says Settergren. “If another librarian or faculty member needs help finding information for a student, she checks to see if I’m available; then we both can put on headsets for an audio call, share our screens, or quickly exchange instant messages.”
Globe also uses Skype for Business to conduct virtual faculty and staff meetings to minimize travel. Settergren, who works at home—more than an hour away from many of her campus-based colleagues—uses Skype for Business to participate in nearly all her meetings, from weekly team check-ins to faculty conferences with more than 100 attendees. “We share presentations right from Microsoft PowerPoint as well as share desktops, which helps us work more consistently as a team, advise on best practices, and resolve issues quickly,” says Settergren. “Without Skype for Business, I wouldn’t be as responsive to my colleagues, and our team couldn’t provide the same level of student and faculty support.”
Enhanced community interactions
Globe University has noted significant improvements in Skype for Business, particularly on Apple iOS devices—important because every student and faculty member at the university is given an iPad. “We considered the cross-platform capabilities good in Lync Server 2013, but they’re even better in Skype for Business,” says Hite. “It’s more reliable, the web interface is cleaner and more intuitive, and we get a richer experience for presentations. Because Skype for Business is so much more compatible with our devices, I expect its adoption to rise quickly among faculty.”
University employees also appreciate the flexibility to choose the right communication mechanism for each interaction. “For example, a member of our IT help desk may start by instant messaging with an instructor who’s having trouble, then decide to share desktops to get a better sense of the problem,” says Hagel. “The freedom to shift among modes of communication also helps faculty members assist students effectively during online office hours.”
Faster service and responsiveness
Globe uses Skype for Business to care for prospective students, as well as current ones. At the university’s call center, an agent receives a call, learns the caller’s areas of interest, and uses presence to identify a colleague with relevant expertise who’s available to speak to the caller. “We consider presence through Skype for Business an integral part of our business,” says Hagel. “Calls can be transferred to the right person right away, so prospective students get information immediately. If they had to leave a message and wait for a call back, they might lose interest. We want to capture their attention and keep it by being responsive to all their needs, and Skype for Business helps us do that.” In fact, the university’s international recruiting team plans to take advantage of Skype for Business to interview prospective students from other countries, who can easily participate using the Skype consumer product.
With its upgraded platform in place, Globe is poised to run even more cohesively across its 30 locations, increasing the quality and convenience of its educational experience. “From online and remote learning to connected faculty members to recruiting, we’ve made Skype for Business absolutely critical to our business,” says Hite. “Not only does everyone use it, but they’re using it in new, creative ways to serve our students.”
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.
Healthcare Staffing Agency Given An Opportunity To Grow
Business Needs
A healthcare staffing firm with about 20 employees had been with the same independent IT consultant since they were less than half that size. While the independent consultant did a great job supporting them in the early days, he was having difficulty keeping up with their day to day needs as they continued to grow. Things became even more difficult if he was out sick or on vacation. With improved economic conditions as well as new legislation for the healthcare industry, the client felt this would be the proper climate to grow their business. Although to make this a reality they would need guidance on what technology to leverage as well as a way to support their company as the number of employees continued to increase. They also wanted to provide employees access to work remotely from the office.
Solution
Managed Solution first partnered with the healthcare staffing firm by doing an assessment of their current environment while also taking on the responsibilities of the day to day IT support. The assessment provided the client insight to what was really going on in their network. A server that was thought to be only a year old was revealed to be over 4 years old, out of warranty, and approaching capacity. Also, it was not configured and patched properly which was the cause of some their daily challenges. What was also revealed was that their back-up solution had not worked properly for over a year. This was troubling due to compliance standards they thought were being met. Managed Solution was able to design and implement a new network infrastructure that would not only help them meet their HIPAA and Joint Commission requirements but also improve the way their employees were able to work together.
Success:
Managed Solution was originally chosen to partner with the client due to their growing demands for day to day IT support that were not being met. While this was addressed, the true benefit to the client was making them aware of why they were having challenges, both known and unknown, and providing them guidance to overcoming them. What is probably more exciting were the recommendations in technology that have helped them grow their business. After 1 year of working with Managed Solution, they were able to increase their staff by 25% because they know they now have a way to support them. With their continued success, they are now anticipating further growth by an additional 200% over the next 2-3 years.
Learn more about managed services provided by Managed Solution
For more info on Managed Services, contact us at 800-790-1524
Nationwide Senior Living Facility Saves $250,000 with Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure & Improves Employees IT Experience
Industry: Healthcare/Senior Living
Business Needs:
A large, nationwide Senior Living Facility with over 24 offices and more than 1200 employees needed to reduce IT capital and operational expenses while improving employee collaboration. The organization needed to focus on implementing new and innovative ideas to upgrade their IT infrastructure, move the business forward, and address HIPPA & PCI compliance issues. They also needed a partner that would ensure their infrastructure was running properly so they didn't need to focus on IT support.
Solution:
Managed Solution partnered with the firms IT department to create a hybrid cloud solution to virtualize more of their servers and move beyond virtualization to a private and public cloud environment. The hybrid cloud environment provided a solution for some applications to run on-premise in a Microsoft-based private cloud environment and others to run in Windows Azure, the Microsoft public cloud development, hosting, and management environment. Delivering IT as a Service provided the Senior Living facility with a solution that was able to provide reliable IT services that supported growth, reduced costs and improved the end user experience. Managed Solution implemented this strategy by performing a thorough network assessment of their existing infrastructure and understanding the firm’s business objectives.
Success:
By building a hybrid cloud infrastructure, the organization has dramatically reduced its IT spend by over $250,000 in the first year. This model supports business growth, addresses compliance issues and provides critical data back-up and disaster preparedness at an affordable price. The savings come from server consolidation, power and cooling, datacenter real estate, and management costs. Additionally, by standardizing, virtualizing, and cloud-enabling its IT assets, the firm reduced IT costs, enhanced end user experience, upgraded infrastructure and addressed HIPPA & PCI compliance concerns.
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Industry: Automotive
Dealership to Boost Employee, Customer Collaboration with Online Productivity Tools
Customer Success Story: Santa Margarita Ford
Santa Margarita Ford is committed to providing its employees with tools that enhance productivity. The car dealership switched from Google Apps to Microsoft Online Services and plans to use Microsoft Office 365 to ease collaboration with customers, enable employees to work from any smartphone, and help preserve business data. Because Office 365 is easy to learn and manage, employees will be able to use it without additional training.
Business Needs
Santa Margarita Ford has been selling and servicing Ford vehicles since 1997. The Rancho Santa Margarita, California–based company is known throughout Orange County for excellent customer service and has been honored eight times with the Ford Motor Company President’s Award, which recognizes dealers for superior customer satisfaction.
Part of what makes Santa Margarita Ford successful are the productivity tools that its employees use to get their jobs done. “We had been using Google Apps for email and online storage, but as our company expanded, we began to need more capabilities than the product could provide,” says C. J. Allen, System Administrator for Santa Margarita Ford.
Allen notes that the dealership needed a more reliable, secure email solution and an easy way for employees to schedule meetings. It also wanted video and audio conferencing capabilities to use for training purposes and an online workspace where employees could collaborate with customers. “We needed a solution that would help employees and customers communicate in a quick and effective manner,” says Allen.
Santa Margarita Ford contacted Managed Solution, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network, for help in selecting the best solution. “Most companies use Microsoft productivity products on-premises,” says Sean Ferrel, CEO and President of Managed Solution. “Because we want to provide them with a consistent online solution, we offer Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite instead of Google Apps or Amazon Web Services. Microsoft Online Services makes the most business sense for us, and we thought it would be a perfect fit for Santa Margarita Ford.”
The dealership agreed and switched to the Microsoft solution in 2010. “Moving to Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite was a great decision. It had the capabilities we were looking for, and it worked great,” says Allen. Since then, Santa Margarita Ford has been using Microsoft Exchange Online for email, Microsoft SharePoint Online for collaborating on documents and spreadsheets, and Microsoft Office Communications Online and Microsoft Office Live Meeting to enhance communications among employees.
Solution
Santa Margarita Ford is always on the lookout for technology advancements that can aid employee productivity. Thus, when the beta version of Microsoft Office 365 debuted, Managed Solution recommended that the dealership evaluate it. “When we saw the demo of Office 365, we got very excited. Office 365 encompasses all the capabilities that we currently use with Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite and takes them to the next level by making it even easier to work from anywhere. We are looking forward to using it,” says Allen.
Office 365, the next generation in cloud productivity from Microsoft, is a subscription service that makes enterprise-class communication and collaboration capabilities available to organizations of all sizes. It includes Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Lync Online, and Microsoft Office Professional Plus.
“Office 365 will provide Santa Margarita Ford with great tools for communicating, both within and outside the company. The dealership will be able to speed productivity and enable more personal interactions with customers. And the fact that Microsoft priced it affordably for small and medium-sized businesses makes Office 365 very compelling,” says Ferrel.
Santa Margarita Ford expects to use Office 365 to make it easy for employees to work from anywhere and collaborate with customers, and for the company to maintain data integrity. It will be able to use the service without having to invest in additional training or IT management.
“Office 365 means three things to me: It’s effective, it’s easy, and it’s exciting,” says Allen.
Easily Work from Any Smartphone
The 200-plus employees at Santa Margarita Ford, who use a variety of smartphones—including Windows Phone, BlackBerry, iPhone, and Android—will be able to access collaboration and communication tools from any device. “By using Office 365, our employees will be able to interact with email, SharePoint sites, and more from any smartphone. That’s very cool,” says Allen.
Enhance Communications with Customers
The dealership expects to improve communications with customers. “Using Lync Online in Office 365 will make it easier for us to collaborate with customers, even if they don’t have the same conferencing solution that we do. We’ll be able to send them an email with a hyperlink that is web-enabled for audio and video conferencing. It can’t get much simpler than that,” says Allen.
Maintain Data Integrity
Santa Margarita Ford can preserve data integrity. “My job is to make sure that data doesn’t get corrupted or lost when employees leave the company. That’s easier to do with SharePoint Online, and we’re really pleased that we’ll be able to continue taking advantage of this technology in Office 365,” says Allen. By using SharePoint sites, the company can maintain business-critical data in a central location rather than on employees’ individual computers, helping to ensure that data remains intact.
Enjoy Ease of Learning—and Managing
Allen notes that Office 365 will be easy for employees to learn and for IT to manage. “Because Office 365 has the same look and feel as other Office products, which everyone is familiar with, our employees will be very comfortable using it. It really eliminates the learning curve and the amount of training needed,” says Allen.
It will also be simple for IT to manage and scale. “I like that you can add a single user or do bulk uploads of users at one time, and can designate roles to users on a per person or group basis. It will make my life easy,” notes Allen.
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City IT Department Upgrades Infrastructure and Builds Successful Roadmap
Industry:
City/Municipality/Government
Business Needs:
A city in San Diego County with more than 1200 employees finally received budget to improve their IT infrastructure. The city needed to upgrade over 600 Windows XP desktops that were no longer supported because they presented a security risk. They wanted to migrate to a cloud based solution for email and were evaluating Microsoft Office 365 to improve employees productivity and increase collaboration. The organization also needed to migrate over 60 servers that were running on Windows server 2003 which Microsoft ends support in July, 2015. The city needed to focus on implementing new and innovative ideas to move the business forward, not worry about if their infrastructure was running properly or presented a security risk.
Solution:
Managed Solution partnered with the city's IT department to assess their overall network and provide a detailed IT roadmap. Managed Solution provided a GAP analysis for the IT department with the results showing how the city stacks up against contemporary IT services given their size and complexity of operations. Managed Solution addressed security concerns by making sure the environment was up to date, effective and not obtrusive into productivity. We also analyzed the city's network infrastructure ensuring they had appropriate bandwidth to run cloud based applications. Managed Solution recommended to virtualize more of their servers and move beyond virtualization to a private and public cloud environment. The hybrid cloud environment provided a solution for some applications to run on-premises in a Microsoft-based private cloud environment and others to run in Windows Azure. Delivering IT as a Service provided the city with a solution that was able to upgrade their IT infrastructure with reliable services. Managed Solution implemented this strategy by performing a thorough network assessment of their existing infrastructure and understanding the city’s business objectives.
Success:
Assessing the city’s network allowed Managed Solution to provide a detailed and comprehensive IT roadmap. The city was able to identify a migration strategy to reduce security risks, retire old infrastructure, and improve employees productivity and end user experience. The roadmap better supports business growth and provides strategies to standardize, virtualize, and cloud-enable its IT assets. The technology roadmap is allowing the city to focus on using technology for better operational efficiencies, while improving productivity and reducing IT troubleshooting.
Services/Resources:
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Healthcare Staffing Agency Given An Opportunity To Grow
Industry: Healthcare
Business Needs: A healthcare staffing firm with about 20 employees had been with the same independent IT consultant since they were less than half that size. While the independent consultant did a great job supporting them in the early days, he was having difficulty keeping up with their day to day needs as they continued to grow. Things became even more difficult if he was out sick or on vacation. With improved economic conditions as well as new legislation for the healthcare industry, the client felt this would be the proper climate to grow their business. Although to make this a reality they would need guidance on what technology to leverage as well as a way to support their company as the number of employees continued to increase. They also wanted to provide employees access to work remotely from the office.
Solution: Managed Solution first partnered with the healthcare staffing firm by doing an assessment of their current environment while also taking on the responsibilities of the day to day IT support. The assessment provided the client insight to what was really going on in their network. A server that was thought to be only a year old was revealed to be over 4 years old, out of warranty, and approaching capacity. Also, it was not configured and patched properly which was the cause of some their daily challenges. What was also revealed was that their back-up solution had not worked properly for over a year. This was troubling due to compliance standards they thought were being met. Managed Solution was able to design and implement a new network infrastructure that would not only help them meet their HIPAA and Joint Commission requirements but also improve the way their employees were able to work together.
Success: Managed Solution was originally chosen to partner with the client due to their growing demands for day to day IT support that were not being met. While this was addressed, the true benefit to the client was making them aware of why they were having challenges, both known and unknown, and providing them guidance to overcoming them. What is probably more exciting were the recommendations in technology that have helped them grow their business. After 1 year of working with Managed Solution, they were able to increase their staff by 25% because they know they now have a way to support them. With their continued success, they are now anticipating further growth by an additional 200% over the next 2-3 years.
Services/Resources:
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When a community college that has helped students move on to achieve success for over 75 years needed to improve their internal e-mail portal and reduce IT troubleshooting requests, Managed Solution built a custom Office 365 deployment and migration project for them.
Industry: Education
Community College Brings Students and Faculty Together Through a Unified E-mail System
Business Needs: Sierra College was looking for a better e-mail solution for their students and faculty as their current email system was on legacy SunMail. They wanted to provide a single solution that would allow both students and faculty to access their e-mail from anywhere at any time on any device, while still providing security and meeting FERPA compliancy requirements. They also wanted to provide SSO to access both email and the campus portal. In addition, they wanted to reduce their internal IT help desk tickets by providing training videos and tutorials so the end-user could familiarize themselves with e-mail capabilities and tools. The overall goal was to provide a user-friendly e-mail system with unlimited access.
Solution: Sierra college had a unique situation in that their student email system resided on a legacy SunMail system. Their staff email, however, resided on Exchange 2010. With Office 365, Managed Solution was able to migrate both systems to Exchange Online with minimal impact to the students, faculty and staff. Exchange Online migrations provide innovative ways to migrate from any source email system. With Sierra College, over 70,000 mailboxes were migrated to Office 365 over a relatively short period of time. On top of this, using PowerShell for Office 365, Managed Solution was able to provide them a means of automating many of the identity management needs and licensing for existing and new accounts on-boarding to their college.
Success: Through Office 365, students were also provided with Microsoft Office online suite, allowing them to easily take lecture notes from their tablets, create reports and access their school work from anywhere. Managed Solution partnered with their internal IT Helpdesk and Hub to also create Office 365 training guides, Office 365 end user guides and communication templates customized for their institution.
Savings! With Academic licensing, costs are low! Besides savings, the training videos and instructions with FAQs and troubleshooting information is posted on their internal campus portal, helping to ease the transition and reduce IT support requests.
Services/ Resources:
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Power BI for Microsoft Office 365 debuted earlier this year. The business intelligence tool that helps users analyze, visualize and share data in Microsoft Excel is already generating powerful success stories. Follow us as we share 5 great case studies and explore the power of Power BI.
Beth Deaconess Medical Center Shortens Query Times
Goal: Improve performance for mission-critical applications
Challenge: It took up to 45 seconds to run a query due to the growing volume of data
Solution: Beth Deaconess Medical Center combined the capabilities of SQL server 2014, Azure HDInsight and Power BI for Office 365 to simplify their IT management and deploy new features without rewriting applications. The result, query times were taken down from 45 seconds to 10 seconds.
Carnegie Mellon University Cuts Energy Usage
Goal: Understand and effectively manage energy efficiency in their large buildings
Challenge: Managing energy usage across Carnegie Mellon’s seven schools and colleges.
Solution: Carnegie Mellon University and OSIsoft teamed up to create a Power BI solution know as a PI System. This system allowed them to record energy usage over time, by category, by build and so on. The PI system utilizes Power Query, Q&A and Power Maps to ask questions of the data and get immediate answers. The neat thing about it, the data gets displayed in a map-based format. As a result, the university was able to reduce their energy consumption by 30 percent.
MediaCom Increases Productivity and Optimizes Ad Campaigns
Goal: Optimize performance and spending of their ad campaigns
Challenge: MediaCom was using isolated systems, numerous third-party data sources and cumbersome BI software
Solution: Using Microsoft and Power BI for Office 365, the company generated a “health check” which analyzed the many components of a media such as paid media effectiveness, earned media effectiveness, ratio of earned media to paid media, client value and longitudinal performance. By implementing these new business intelligence measures, MediaCom increased productivity by 10 percent and gained anywhere from thousands to millions of dollars per campaign.
LC Waikiki Deploys BI to Mobile Workforce
Goal: Implement better reporting tools for it mobile workforce
Challenge: Unreliable internet connections made it difficult for field employees to manage increasing amounts of data
Solution: LC Waikiki which operates 460 stores in 17 countries and continues to grow (rapidly) uses BI tools on-site through SQL Server 2012 Enterprise. They decided to extend this model with cloud-based Power BI for Office 365 and saved $1 million a year in IT costs.
Enlighten Designs Helps Clients Unlock Their Data
Goal: Help customers benefit from BI tools
Challenge: To find a solution that included tools easy enough to use by employees at all levels of an organization
Solution: Enlighten Designs is using Power BI for Office 365 to help clients such as schools and small businesses unlock data so they can start analyzing it. One of their clients is now using the Power BI tool set to pinpoint which students are struggling and in danger of dropping out.
To learn more about Power BI and Office 365, fill out the contact form to the right or call us at 800-550-3795.
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