Over the last few years, Microsoft Teams has evolved into more than just a collaboration tool for many leading businesses. The Teams ecosystem is a robust, all-in-one UCaaS environment capable of flexing to suit the needs of brands from any industry. This is something the GroupM business discovered when looking for a way to transform communications.
GroupM stands as one of the largest media investment companies globally, responsible for making significant contributions to the media and entertainment landscape. As of 2020, the organisation is responsible for around $48 billion in annual media investment.
With around 39,000 employees working across 400 offices in 100 countries, GroupM faced a similar challenge to many other businesses in recent years. The company needed a cost-effective way to keep its staff connected and aligned.
Let’s take a look at how Microsoft Teams helped GroupM to evolve.
Making the Transition to Microsoft Teams
Before the pandemic, GroupM was already facing concerns with its outdated communications system. While VoIP was available through Skype for Business Online access within the organisation, many employees were using toll-free numbers to dial into meetings. Team members believed this was the best way to save the company money, but it wasn’t the case.
Poor VoIP quality in various regions also pushed users to use the “dial-in” option. Eventually, GroupM decided it needed to do something differently, which was when it shifted to Microsoft Teams. As the company would subsequently discover, Teams would provide significant improvements to the quality of each call. The solution enabled one-click access to VoIP audio so that teams could start conversations much faster.
Although the GroupM company started slowly with its introduction of Microsoft Teams to the workforce, adoption quickly ramped up. According to the Global Collaboration Program Director for GroupM, Sonia Garcia, once Cos started seeing the cost savings associated with the migration plan to Microsoft Teams, the decision to become a Teams-only brand was obvious.
Rapidly, GroupM also began to see more value from the collaborative toolset of Teams. Alongside access to real-time collaboration on documents, the guest access features of Teams made it easier to share content with clients from beyond the network.
Deploying Microsoft Teams on a Global Scale
When the benefits of bringing Microsoft Teams to the workforce became apparent, the next step for the business was figuring out how to take the technology to everyone in the workforce. To help manage a broad global network, GroupM relies on a decentralised business model led by a range of regional CIOs. Each of those CIOs has their own technical challenges and investments to consider.
When the decision to embrace Teams was presented to the network, some CIOs were more eager for the change than others. Certain leaders were hesitant to drop the “dial-in” alternative.
To ensure all teams and regions had time to test the functionality Microsoft could offer and address any specific issues they might be having, GroupM implemented a multi-wave process for deployment. Teams were first introduced to early adopters across selected regions, with access to a helpful self-service installation via AppLocker whitelisting.
Gradually Teams was pushed out to employees in “Islands mode” to help with the transition away from the initial Skype for Business online traffic. During this time, the workers in the company had an opportunity to see for themselves just how effective the Teams environment could be for ensuring effective communications.
Offices in the Asia Pacific were often reporting issues with low call quality when using Skype for Business- particularly when they were managing calls with various participants from different countries. However, according to Productivity Tools Manager at GroupM in APAC, Rene Modery, Teams made video and audio quality for team members crystal clear.
Bringing Teams to the Entire Workforce
The GroupM brand believed implementing “Islands” mode as a gradual solution for transitioning to Teams really helped to ease the adoption. In areas where adoption was slow, the company could focus their efforts on figuring out how to improve perception and use of Teams.
The Islands approach also made it easier for the GroupM brand to address other challenges. For instance, more than half of the company is non-English-speaking, so training material needed to be localized and adjusted to suit the needs of different regional requirements. Taking a step-by-step approach, GroupM was able to assemble a network of 500 Teams champions within 2 months.
Training material was published on a central SharePoint site and sent to each region for individual translation. The localized content meant employees could get support for any issues they might have been facing in their own language.
As adoption levels continued to grow steadily across the business, the central IT team at GroupM eventually prepared to move all users into “Teams Only” mode. However, some people still weren’t willing to switch over to Teams exclusively. The organization needed to take extra steps to develop a detailed migration plan that would give every business leader peace of mind about the potential complications of the transition.
The team even put together a Power BI dashboard with Microsoft, where CIOs at the country level were able to check the adoption rates of Microsoft Teams.
Looking into the Future
With Microsoft Teams now implemented as an essential and central part of the GroupM environment, the business is looking towards new ways of enhancing its Teams infrastructure. Even back in 2020, the company was looking into ways of improving support for its remote workers with Teams. Additionally, GroupM is already investing in Microsoft Power Platform to create unique apps and tools to give teams more functionality within Teams.
This case study is an excellent insight into how successful the transition to Teams can be for businesses ready to improve communication and collaboration on a global scale.
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