Meinhardt Group unifies communication and collaboration with Office 365

 |   Singapore News Center

SINGAPORE, November 26, 2013 – Microsoft Singapore today announced that Meinhardt Group, a Singapore-based global engineering consulting firm that drives more than US$15 billion worth of projects annually, has successfully completed the deployment of Office 365 in its Singapore and Australian offices, increasing productivity by an estimated 10 percent.

With this deployment, 755 Meinhardt employees in Singapore and Australia working across ten different locations now operate efficiently on a unified office productivity suite to share resources, collaborate efficiently, and communicate effectively.

A global conglomerate with more than 100,000 projects under its belt and 3,500 employees in 37 offices worldwide, Meinhardt Group consists of many smaller companies, each living in its own IT silo prior to the Office 365 deployment. A mix of different email systems and older versions of Microsoft Office applications limited employees’ flexibility to collaborate and was difficult and expensive to maintain. Additionally, some of these systems did not support updated global contact lists and had limited capabilities for collaboration and sharing of information and resources, hindering employees’ communications and productivity.

“In today’s rapid business environment, migration to a modern platform would be crucial to fully harness the productivity potential of our 3,500 employees worldwide. Office 365’s pay-as-you-use model is great in keeping our IT costs manageable as there is no upfront payment needed for IT infrastructure. Most importantly, our employees are able to hit the ground running with Office 365 as most of them are already familiar with Microsoft Office tools,” said Anderson Teo, Group IT Director, Meinhardt Group.

Expanding expertise beyond geographical borders
A critical component of Meinhardt’s Office 365 implementation includes the use of SharePoint to create a central Knowledge Management System (KMS), which acts as an up-to-date repository for all the company’s documents and resources, breaking down the walls between teams and facilitating decision-making processes by enabling seamless collaboration on projects across borders.

Additionally, the use of Lync, a single-client experience for presence, instant messaging, voice, video and meeting, also enabled Meinhardt to dramatically cut down on communications costs. Previously, Meinhardt had used third-party audio and video conferencing solutions to complement existing desktop programs.

As an initial pilot test, Office 365 was deployed for 180 users at Meinhardt Façade, a subsidiary of Meinhardt Group. Within a few months of implementing Lync, the test recorded savings of about US$13,000 in Singapore alone – an amount equivalent to about nine months of usage of the previous conferencing system globally. As a unified, software-based platform, Lync also greatly simplified the process of connecting with fellow employees. With its global address book and integration with Outlook, arranging and getting into a virtual conference was significantly easier.

“Meinhardt employs professional engineers in many different disciplines, but we can’t be hiring these engineers for every discipline in every country where we operate,” explains Dr. Shahzad Nasim, Global CEO, Meinhardt Group. “In this competitive market, we need collaboration capabilities that would allow us to work on projects in other countries while reducing operation costs and yet achieve higher productivity.”

In the next two years, Meinhardt intends to implement a roll-out of Office 365 to all of its offices, starting with regional and MENA offices, thereafter expanding collaboration worldwide.

Gerald Leo, Business Group Lead, Microsoft Office Division, Microsoft Singapore said: “Many regional businesses today juggle the challenges of managing disparate and costly communications systems with an increasingly mobile and connected workforce asking for more ways to communicate and collaborate with their colleagues, partners and customers. Meinhardt’s successful deployment of Office 365 is a good example of how regional operations can benefit from a cloud-based communications platform in driving greater productivity with a disperse workforce, while managing IT costs.”

###

About Meinhardt Group
Meinhardt Group, with 37 offices worldwide, provides engineering capabilities in Infrastructure and Environment; Structures; Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP); Project Management; and Planning and Urban Development. Our specialist capabilities cover Façade Engineering; Environmentally Sustainable Design (ESD); Specialist and Architectural Lighting; Fire Performance Engineering; Integrated Design Management; and Mission Critical Facility Design. Our team of experienced and responsive consultants provides a “one stop” approach for total project delivery, offering clients original and highly buildable design solutions that satisfy their cost and time requirements.

Annually the Group undertakes projects worth an estimated US$15 billion and ranks among the largest independent engineering firms globally by revenue. Some of our key projects include Marina Bay Financial Centre (Singapore); KL Sentral Station (Malaysia); TAMAR Development (Hong Kong); MGM Grand Ho Tram Integrated Resort (Vietnam); Xintiandi (China); The Dubai Mall (Dubai, UAE); Muscat International Airport (Oman); Rialto Towers (Australia).

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Tags: , , , , ,