State-of-the-Art Collaboration with Significant Cost Savings

Customer: Vitmark-Ukraine Ltd.

Industry: Food & beverages

Solution:

• Migration to Microsoft Office 365 incl. Skype for Business Online, OneDrive for Business, Teams
• SharePoint Online
• user trainings in Office 365 workloads
• advice on Office 365 license selection
• Microsoft Windows Server backup software upgrade
  

Vitmark-Ukraine faced a number of challenges. The company wanted to unify the various communication tools used in different departments – they were inefficient and caused high support and maintenance costs. Thus a solution was needed to improve communication processes, reduce IT efforts and also solve problems with older hardware. In addition, the company’s mail-based exchange and approval of documents was slow, insecure and error-prone. Therefore, Vitmark was also looking for a solution to regulate and automate document workflows. Last but not least, Vitmark’s Software Assurance for its Microsoft Enterprise Agreement expired – the company needed to act. "We had to decide whether to buy new hardware and software or opt for cloud solutions," says Vitmark-Ukraine’s IT director Vladimir Shevchenko. "SoftwareONE recommended Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint Online. Then they helped us select the right offerings, optimize licensing costs, and implement the solutions."

After thorough examination, Vitmark-Ukraine decided to implement Office 365 for the majority of its employees but also kept a couple of on-premises seats. SoftwareONE therefore set up a hybrid IT infrastructure. SoftwareONE experts configured 300 Exchange mailboxes, implemented OneDrive, Teams and Skype for Business, and also supported the adoption of the new solutions with trainings for IT staff and users. Special attention was paid to selecting the most cost-effective Office 365 plan mix of F1, Enterprise E1 and E3, tailored to the actual needs of different users. Moreover, SharePoint Online has been implemented to efficiently manage Vitmark’s document workflows.

When actively using Office 365 and SharePoint-Online-based document workflows, Vitmark quickly realized that moving to the cloud was even more advantageous than expected. "Not only did we get state-of-the-art communications solutions with significant cost savings in hardware purchase, licensing and system support", explains IT director Vladimir Shevchenko. "Employees collaborate much more efficiently thanks to powerful tools and automated workflows, and we can better plan and control IT costs." Vitmark even received a Windows Server backup software upgrade without additional licensing costs thanks to the Microsoft Software Assurance agreement. Most importantly, the company is discovering more and more the benefits of previously unconsidered Office 365 features such as the included OneDrive and Teams applications.