Ascendum, is a Portuguese group with global reach and one of the largest global suppliers of industrial equipment for construction and infrastructure. With operations in Portugal, Spain, the U.S.A., Turkey, Mexico, Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Moldavia, Angola, Mozambique, Morocco and Poland, Ascendum is active in four major lines of business:
The main challenges were to be able to present, in a structured and centralized way, relevant information to employees; integrate the communication and collaboration infrastructure of several countries; and promote the sharing of knowledge and information among all employees, creating a productive collaborative environment.
"There was a need for a solution to share general information about the group, as well as guidelines that top management wants to ensure that are received simultaneously by all employees. In addition, we wanted to also stimulate informal sharing of information, easily and immediately, between all employees", explains Rui Galamba, IT & Business Development Director at Ascendum.
The solution designed by Create IT for Ascendum's challenges resulted in the development of an online portal (intranet) based on the Office 365 tools where Yammer plays a predominant role. As a Microsoft Gold Partner for 4 skills ( 'Application Development', 'Application Integration', 'Collaboration and Content' and 'Cloud Platform') and a wide experience in similar projects, the option for Create IT came naturally and had Microsoft's recommendation.
"We were invited by Ascendum to do a proof of concept based on Yammer and Skype tools as a communication support to teams from different continents. The proof of concept was a success and, from there, we set up a project for the entire organization", said Raul Ribeiro, Create IT's Project Sponsor.
Create IT solution aimed to take full advantage of Office 365 technologies, with special focus on SharePoint and Yammer platforms, and was based on three fundamental pillars:
Create IT approach allowed scale economies in terms of licensing, with a significant cost reduction, and the total alignment with the infrastructure services outsourcing strategy (cloud services tailored to the geographical dispersion of Ascendum), as well as accelerate the consolidation and adaptation processes of the Yammer platform to the internal communication strategy of Ascendum.
It is further noted that for Ascendum it was critical that the content management system was sufficiently user friendly to be able to distribute the responsibility for the contents to different profiles. "We delegate part of this creation and insertion of more structured contents to different geographies and different people, with distinct profiles and functional and technical capabilities. It was therefore essential that everything was fast and simple", reveals Rui Galamba.
The main added value of the project was the spirit of unity brought to Ascendum, an organization of large dimension and major cultural and geographical differences.
"With the new portal, Ascendum managed to approach and increase collaboration between teams, and improved the way subsidiaries communicate with each other. It empowered our employees with more information and strengthened team spirit. Regarding quantitative gains, it's difficult to measure in the short term. Ultimately, the intranet is likely to be reflected in a lower attrition rate, but this direct relation is always difficult to measure", says Rui Galamba.
The success of the project resulted in a partnership for ongoing maintenance and continuous improvement between Ascendum and Create IT, which is now the Office 365 Ascendum partner.
"As typical at Create IT, we worked in a single team concept, where there is close proximity and alignment among all. Nothing gives us greater satisfaction than see the before and after, the current motivation of people, the way they began to interact and communicate regardless of their location, and how we all contributed to a better Ascendum", concludes Maria João Ferreira, manager of the project.
