It’s been said that the best way to predict the future is to invent it. At The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, that’s never been truer—innovation is an integral part of the culture at Goodyear. From the continual evolution of our tires, manufacturing processes and information systems, innovation is present just about everywhere in our business. We have a market-oriented innovation strategy, which means we combine the needs and desires of our tire consumers with technology to create tires and service solutions that add value and distinguish our branded products from our competition.
In fact, we made the tire-buying process easier for consumers in North America when we recently launched an e-commerce program where consumers can purchase tires online. We’re the first tire manufacturer in North America to offer this kind of service, which is just another example of the continuous evolution of our sales program.
Sustaining this level of innovation throughout Goodyear depends on three essential elements: our people, processes and technology. Hiring the right people with the right skills at the right time is a critical component to ongoing innovation. We work hard to attract talented associates. Once they’re on board, we want them to succeed, so we make sure to put them in positions where they can be challenged and they have opportunities to grow and contribute. We also bring modern technologies to bear, providing our associates with useful solutions like Microsoft Office 365.
As a global company, we need to ensure that our associates are able to work effectively together as a team from anywhere. The better the communication and collaboration mechanisms that we give them, the more productive they can be. To that end, it’s never been easier for our associates to connect than it is today. With Office 365, they conduct meetings with geographically dispersed team members using Skype for Business Online, exchange instant messages for quick issue resolution and participate in enterprise social networking to bring creative ideas to the surface.
We’ve also made mobile productivity easier, supporting our associates with greater flexibility in how they handle their work. In the past, associates could take a laptop and work from home or elsewhere once they logged on via a virtual private network. But what we’re finding now is that associates are collaborating from home and elsewhere, using Office 365 to work closely with decentralized teams. We’ve always seen a certain amount of remote working, but now that associates are tethered even less to their laptops, they feel they can connect and get things done from anywhere.
One of our associates told a story about how he was driving to work on the way to an 8 a.m. meeting. Suddenly someone in front of him got a flat tire, so he pulled over to help the person, knowing that it would cause him to be late for his meeting. Then he realized that he had his phone with him and all he had to do was click the Skype for Business URL and join the meeting on time from his parked car after helping out. It was that easy for him. He wouldn’t have been able to do both in the past. Since road safety is one of our primary tenets of civic responsibility at Goodyear, we were happy he was able to help that individual and still participate in the meeting from his roadside location.
Taking advantage of Office 365 to give our associates that sort of flexibility helps us accommodate the current convergence between personal and work life. It’s more and more natural now for someone to handle a personal item while at work and a work-related item from home.
Simplifying associate collaboration is the most important way Office 365 supports innovation at Goodyear. Whether it’s co-authoring a document in Microsoft SharePoint Online, brainstorming with a team using Yammer or Skype Meetings or using presence to see who’s online to answer a question quickly—the way we use Office 365 services to streamline the collaboration process is a key contributor to our enhanced ability to innovate.
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Legal firm embraces cloud computing, wins case for mobile productivity
Lawyers at RTR, a criminal defense firm in Miami, Florida, had been using faxes, couriers, and an unreliable server—which impeded productivity. Then one of its lawyers introduced Microsoft Office 365, mobile devices, and smartphones. Now documents are stored online, lawyers access case files in court and at home, on any device, and they use simultaneous coauthoring to create briefs. Productivity is up by an estimated 25 percent.
During the last hurricane season in South Florida, a lightning strike destroyed the server that stored every electronic document ever created at the office of RTR, one of the largest criminal law firms in the southeastern United States. While this IT crisis caused some anxiety and embarrassment for the firm’s seven attorneys, it also served as an unexpected stroke of good fortune for one of them.
“Since joining RTR in 2008, I’ve been trying to bring the firm into the twenty-first century, technologically speaking,” says Joe Nascimento, the newest member of the firm. “Our senior partners are highly respected and have successfully argued cases in front of the US Supreme Court, but their understanding of business technology was a little behind the times. I wanted to improve mobility and productivity at the firm by introducing better business tools for the workplace.”
None of the attorneys used laptops or smartphones to access emails and documents while working on cases in courts across the country. They carried paper files and waited for faxes to be sent to hotel rooms. “We had already gone through three servers when the lightning struck,” says Nascimento. “We realized that something had to be done to safeguard our documents. I jumped on the opportunity to introduce cloud computing and the idea of mobility to the firm. It’s made a huge difference to productivity and efficiency at RTR.”
Nascimento chose Microsoft Office 365 for the firm’s cloud-based business productivity tools. Office 365 unites familiar Microsoft Office applications with the power of Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online. No on-premises server is required. RTR worked with ConQuest Technology Services to deploy the solution. “The transition to Microsoft Office 365 would not have been so smooth without the training and around-the-clock support of its IT service provider, ConQuest,” says Nascimento.
“Office 365 kick started our adoption of twenty-first century IT,” says Nascimento. “I’ve introduced my colleagues to laptops, mobile devices, and smartphones. I’d estimate that we are at least 25 percent more productive when working inside and outside of the office.”
Anywhere Access to Files
Today, RTR has a better disaster recovery solution: all electronic documents have been uploaded to SharePoint Online for more reliable storage at a Microsoft data center. No one is worrying about the safety of their case files when the next lightning strike hits. Lawyers and staff can search for and access files they need on any PC, laptop, mobile device, or smartphone, anywhere they are connected to Internet. This flexibility benefits RTR lawyers who must comply with different courthouse policies: some courts allow the use of phones during proceedings, while others allow tablets or laptops.
“While my partner is questioning the witness, I can use my phone or my tablet to retrieve a required document, edit it, and email it to my assistant in the office with instructions to file it electronically,” says Nascimento. “Five minutes later, the judge’s assistant receives the file, prints it, and brings it up to the bench. Before, I would have left the courthouse to find a lawyer I knew in the area and borrow a computer. With all our information at our fingertips, we’re providing more efficient and effective services for our clients.”
Round-the-Clock Productivity
Criminal law does not follow a nine-to-five routine. Nascimento often gets a phone call following an arrest in the middle of the night. Instead of having to go to the office to prepare the Notice of Appearance for his client and file it in court the next morning, he can access the relevant documentation from home, prepare the paperwork, and file it right away.
The tight deadlines of criminal appellate work mean that Nascimento’s colleague, Criminal Appellate Specialist and RTR partner, Benjamin Waxman, often emailed files to himself to work at home. Then he would email the latest version back to himself to resume work at the office the next morning.
“Sometimes, Benji opened the wrong document and begin reworking an older version,” says Nascimento. “Now he’s saving five hours a week because he saves his documents on his personal site and uses Office Online to edit the document from home. When he saves the document back to OneDrive for Business and starts work the next morning, he’s always using the latest version. With Office 365, Benji can take on a larger caseload, and spend more time with his family.
Search Saves Time
Previously, RTR lawyers relied on their memory of past cases and manually searched files to find particulars of existing appellate work that could be reused when starting similar appeals. Today, they are saving 10 hours of work every week by using search to look through old emails and files in SharePoint Online and quickly retrieve case law, statutes, and prior successful arguments that have relevance for a new appeal.
Seamless Collaboration
Waxman’s new work habits have a positive effect on productivity and teamwork at the office. His assistant, Elizabeth Hernandez, is relieved that when RTR lawyers work from home, they access and edit documents online instead of on paper. She no longer faces 50-page documents covered in handwritten notes waiting for retyping in the morning. She’s saving several hours of copy editing every week and working on more important projects.
RTR lawyers collaborate on the hundreds of pages of briefs that are necessary to appeal a case through state, federal, and supreme courts. Previously, coauthoring was an iterative process fraught with versioning issues.
“Collaborating on briefs is so much easier thanks to the simultaneous editing that we can do using the Microsoft Word app in Office Online,” says Nascimento. “I am in my office, Benji is in his, and Elizabeth is in hers, and the three of us can edit a single draft at the same time. This was an amazing eye-opener for everyone. Office 365 has completely transformed how we work at RTR.”
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Boost law firm productivity with Matter Center for Office 365
We are pleased to unveil a preview version of Matter Center for Microsoft Office 365 at the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Matter Center for Office 365 is a powerful documentation management and collaboration solution specifically catered toward law firms and law departments.
Working seamlessly with Office 365, Matter Center offers those in the legal profession a way to intuitively find and organize files without leaving the familiar productivity tools they use the most—namely Microsoft Outlook and Word. Matter Center for Office 365 enables professionals to quickly locate and collaborate on legal matters from virtually anywhere, anytime—from any device. In essence, a one stop shop for all your document collaboration and management needs.
Matter Center is the product of months of collaboration between our Legal and Corporate Affairs (LCA) group, outside law firms, and Office 365 product engineering teams. We are excited to have built the solution by using the cloud app model for Office 365, enabling Matter Center to expose rich document management, search and collaboration features directly through Word and Outlook. For external sharing and collaboration scenarios, Matter Center integrates with OneDrive for Business to maintain the ‘legal briefcase’ lawyers are familiar with.
The Matter Center experience
We made Matter Center easy to navigate, delivering a consistent experience across your productivity tools. For example, you can search and find matters and related documents directly within Outlook, and track or pin frequently used ones as well.
Search and find matters or documents inline, or pin them for quick access directly from an email in Outlook
You can also file email or email attachments to a matter directly from the Matter Center app within Outlook.
File email or email attachments directly to matters from Outlook
Matter Center is also accessible directly from Office 365.
Matter Center landing page in Office 365
Matter Center delivers numerous benefits for legal professionals
Legal briefcase in the cloud. Matter Center integrates with OneDrive for Business. That means you get 1 TB of individual storage and a personal briefcase that automatically synchronizes your documents across all of your devices, and can be accessed online or offline.
Get more work done together. Gone are the days of emailing multiple versions of the same document. Securely share your files with others, both within and outside of your firm. With Matter Center, you can work simultaneously on your documents with other attorneys, using the automatic version control to quickly and easily track changes.
Robust matter and document search. The powerful integration between Outlook, Word, and Office 365 enables you to easily search and find matters or related documents directly in the familiar interfaces of Word or Outlook. You can effortlessly track or pin frequently used documents or matters, as well as track just the most recent documents or matters.
Secure access and permission control. With Matter Center for Office 365, you can grant or exclude your user’s access to a matter. All of the subsequent documents associated with the matter will inherit the same permissions, thereby reducing concerns about ethical walls and data leakage.
Reduced overhead and increased billable time. With Matter Center’s seamless experience, you reduce the amount of administrative resources needed to support a document management system, enabling you to spend more time working directly with clients, building lasting client relationships, and most importantly, providing a positive customer experience for your clients.
Matter Center also caters to the needs of IT professionals
Confidently move to the cloud. Matter Center offers a way to begin your journey to the cloud at a lower cost and reduced risk, enabling you to maximize the ROI on your existing infrastructure with enterprise-grade security, management, and administrative controls.
Deploy based on your terms. Matter Center can be deployed in the cloud, in a hybrid scenario, or as a part of an on-premises Microsoft SharePoint environment based upon a firm’s needs and existing infrastructures.
Maximize ROI on existing IT investments. Adding Matter Center to an existing on-premises solution such as SharePoint and Exchange will help you to realize greater value as a unified productivity platform.
Built on an industrial strength platform. Matter Center includes enterprise-grade security, management, and administrative controls, and is compliant with multiple industry standards. Permission control and taxonomy are centrally managed and applied automatically; legal professionals don’t interact with the back-end settings.
Always up to date. Deploying Matter Center in the cloud, reduces the cost and time of upgrades and migrations as Office 365 is always up to date. No patches or software upgrades are necessary, and Microsoft adds new value and capabilities on a monthly basis.
Higher-adoption rates. Matter Center has an intuitive interface, simplifies processes, and can be accessed directly from Microsoft Office products that are used every day. This tool satisfies the most important needs of users, while reducing training and support efforts.
We are excited to bring Matter Center for Office 365 to market in the near future, and look forward to helping legal professionals change the way they work.
Matter Center is currently available in a limited preview, and interested customers should visit http://microsoft.com/MatterCenter to learn more about signing up for our beta program.
In an increasingly connected world, a customer’s experience matters now more than ever and maintaining your reputation is vital. As your customer base grows and staying connected with customers becomes more challenging, are you certain you’re making the most of your opportunities? What can you do to anticipate your customers’ needs so they don’t have an experience that sends them off to check out the services of one of your competitors?
Since your business already runs Microsoft Office 365, you are familiar with the value that Office 365 brings to your organization. What you may not know is that when you add Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, you extend that tool to get a complete solution that keeps your business in tune and engaged with your customers.
By adding Dynamics CRM Online, you:
Make it easy for everyone in your organization to get the information they need to deliver great customer experiences.
Boost productivity by empowering your sales and service employees to do their best work from virtually anywhere.
Get visibility into your organization to make informed decisions and grow your business.
You’ll find that the simplicity and affordability of the combination of Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online makes a critical business solution attainable and adaptable for any sized business. Best of all, you can move at your own pace and use only the elements that you need. Its enterprise-class cloud infrastructure, maintained by Microsoft, keeps your business secure and reliable with minimal technology support.
Get Started Now
Businesses who are up and running on Office 365 + Dynamics CRM Online never look back—enjoying gains in productivity and sales, and the competitive advantage from customer service excellence.
Contact us today 800-257-0691 to learn more about how you can use Office 365 + Dynamics CRM Online to shift your focus back on the things that matter most to your business.
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A Race Against Time... Management. See how Lotus F1 Team leveraged Office 365 APIs and extensibility to update their legacy travel application. A model for moving your org away from paper systems and legacy applications Watch it all here:
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Bye-bye, buyer’s remorse. Feel comfortable with your gift budget when you plan and track gifts in Excel. Click here to download the free guides now!
Get the new Office 2016 apps with Office 365.
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When: Webcast Available Until June 30, 2016
Why Are So Many Businesses Moving to the Cloud?
Grow Your Business Webcast Series
You’ve got big plans for the business, but do you have the technology in place that can support that growth? Your outdated accounting system can’t provide the data insight and efficient processes that propel business forward. Maybe that’s why 80% of midsize businesses are expected to use some form of cloud computing by the end of 2014, according to IDC.
As more businesses look to cloud technology to achieve their growth ambitions, many are choosing Microsoft as their cloud provider. The Microsoft Cloud provides a connected business platform that helps automate core processes, transforms data into insight for better business decisions, and allows you to scale up or down to respond to changing market conditions.
With Microsoft Dynamics ERP and Office 365, you get the power of fully integrated cloud-based business management systems plus the flexibility to adjust to change quickly. Modernize your business with tools that are affordable and familiar to your people. Join us for the “Why are so many businesses moving to the cloud?” webcast to find out if you should be in the 80%.
Speaker: Craig Crescas, Microsoft Partner Technology Strategist
Featured Products: Dynamics
Recommended Audiences: C-Level, Business Decision Makers
Office 2016 for Mac has arrived! Enjoy the familiarity of Office, modernized for you and your Mac. Available with your Office 365 subscription.
Office 365 Transform and Reinvent Your Business Model webcast answers many of the questions that users and executives may have about today’s topics at the intersection of technology and business. WEBCAST
Contact us Today!
Chat with an expert about your business’s technology needs.
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