- Microsoft’s Office 365 provides a stable and reliable communications platform for Niro’s expanding & increasingly mobile operations
- 26% of SMEs in Malaysia use Office 365 for document collaboration, ahead of Google Apps and OpenOffice
KUALA LUMPUR, 5 October 2015 – Niro Ceramic Group (“Niro”), a leading provider of high quality ceramic tile products and bathroom accessories, has recently adopted cloud computing in its expansion plans throughout Asia-Pacific.
Since the establishment of its first manufacturing plant in Switzerland in 1979, the Group has expanded its stable of products and brands and now offers complete bathroom fittings and accessories throughout Asia-Pacific, including Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam.
With this rapid expansion, information access became a challenge for Niro’s mobile business users, as they require continued access to data and customer information, while ensuring constant collaboration and communication with internal teams and customers.
The previous on-premise solution imposed constraints on the business’ expansion due to smaller mail boxes, limited mobile access and lacked advanced features. IT was also struggling to cope up with increasing cost and frequent disruptions. The traditional video conferencing systems were also expensive to deploy across all locations and limited collaboration to just office conference rooms.
Ian Kok, the Group’s Executive Director explains, “Since our beginnings, we’ve diversified our offerings and have gained the trust of both trade professionals and discerning home-owners in more than 100 countries globally. As a result, we’ve had to scale our operations, and in the process, we realized that our IT systems didn’t have the capacity to support our business growth. In particular, we were on the lookout for a stable and reliable communication platform that would allow us to better connect with internal and external parties. We found the solution in Microsoft’s Office 365, which provided us the control and stability we needed when communicating with these various audiences,” said Kok.
Fedelis, Niro’s IT partner, helped deploy the solution and also got users to adopt Microsoft’s Office 365 capabilities like OneDrive (cloud storage), Yammer (enterprise social networking) and Skype for Business (a voice and video collaboration tool to connect with co-workers) to drive strong communications. “We have worked closely with Niro, and are happy to find a solution befitting its needs,” said Vincent Choy, senior consultant, Fedelis.
Business users such as Niro can now benefit from enterprise class productivity platforms across all their devices, which include e-mail, document management, voice and video collaboration, as well as with social collaboration.
Azizah Ali, Microsoft Malaysia’s General Manager, Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partners, highlighted that Office 365 was built with productivity in mind, and that Niro’s success story was exactly what Office 365 was set out to do.
“Microsoft’s Office 365 enables your team to work together anywhere, with the same familiar experience across PCs, tablets, and mobile devices. Whether you are collaborating on important business documents, meeting with your team, or connecting with customers and partners, Microsoft uniquely offers a consistent, familiar platform for expanding the boundaries of your business. This is what we call reinventing productivity, and we’re thrilled that organizations such as Niro are able to leverage our business solutions to make the most of the moments that matter,” said Azizah.
26% of SMEs in Malaysia use Office 365 for document collaboration
In fact, a recent “Business Anywhere” SMB Survey 2015, conducted by Microsoft, highlighted that 26% of SMEs in Malaysia used Office 365 for document collaboration, and is the number one tool in its category, ahead of Google Apps for Work at 22%, and OpenOffice at 20%.
The same survey, which features responses from 200 SMBs from various verticals, also revealed that 43% of its respondents used Outlook/Exchange for email services. “We live in an increasingly digital world, where organizations are finding new methods every day to communicate and collaborate to get their jobs done more effectively and efficiently. This in turn requires infrastructure that is cloud-enabled, with better management tools and increased efficiency for better communication. The results of this survey is proof that businesses are turning to the Cloud as an answer to their communication needs. Being that Microsoft is the preferred choice for most of the survey categories tells us that our vision of reinventing productivity is on the right track,” said Azizah.
The “Business Anywhere” SMB Survey 2015 is just one of many forecasts and predictions on the evolving business landscape in an increasingly digital world. IDC also predicts there will be 1.3 billion mobile workers in 2015 while Gartner forecasts that 4.9 billion connected things will be in use in the same year, up 30 percent from 2014, and will reach 25 billion by 2020.
Azizah elaborates, “We can expect Mobility and Cloud to play an increasingly crucial role in shaping how organizations are running their businesses. In fact, a recent APAC CIO Survey has revealed that the Cloud is no longer seen as a disruptive technology, but an essential part of every organisation’s IT strategy to transform. There is no better time for businesses to embrace and leverage today’s trends to reinvent productivity. Companies like Niro have taken the imperative step of addressing the communication needs of their organization, with positive results, and we applaud their courage and insight.”
Kok concluded by saying that technology is and will continue to play a vital role for their company as they embark on expanding their footprint further, “We believe that Cloud Computing will support and complement the continued growth of Niro. With Office 365, we’re able to scale as our business grows, increase productivity through 21st century collaborative tools and we can feel confident that confidential information is stored and backed-up securely.”