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Microsoft Office 365 Customer Solution Case Study Confectionery Company Moves into Cloud to Cut Costs and Boost Collaboration Customer: Gandour “Everyone became very happy with the acceleration of Website: http://www.gandour.com Customer Size: 3,000 employees their day-to-day work. It was instantaneous. They were Country or Region: Saudi Arabia extremely happy.” Industry: Food & Beverage Partner: Consolidated Telecoms Mohamad Tomelieh, Enterprise Architect and IT Strategy Manager, Gandour Customer Profile Saudi Arabia-based confectionery Gandour is one of the Middle East’s biggest confectionery company Gandour, formed in 1857, has companies, with four factories and sales in more than 50 3,000 staff and sales in more than 50 countries, including factories in Saudi countries. The Saudi Arabian company switched from its long- Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt and India. standing e-mail system Lotus Notes (now IBM Notes) to Software and Services Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft’s private social network Microsoft Office 365 Yammer. The result was easier, faster and more flexible − Exchange Online − Lync Online communications internally and externally, easier administration Yammer and a 38% cut in communication costs. Business Needs processes and expansion within certain The e-mail system Lotus Notes (now IBM regions where we didn’t have enormous Notes) had been used by Gandour for 13 facilities and so required smaller offices,” years and, although it was stable, it was he recalls. Gandour has factories in Saudi slow, its administration was not simple and Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt and India and sales it did not support well the company’s in more than 50 countries. expansion or its need to fend off Lotus Notes was also expensive and international and local rivals. outdated compared with latest systems, “The Lotus Notes infrastructure was quite says Tomelieh. Many new Gandour inflexible,” says Mohamad Tomelieh, employees found it hard to adjust to the Gandour’s Enterprise Architect and IT user interface, he adds: “Lotus Notes Strategy Manager. “It didn’t allow us to required a very high IT literacy for you to scale up properly.” Setting up small offices, do the simplest tasks.” It was also difficult for example, was problematic and required for the Saudi Arabian company to find IT additional equipment, he says. administrators knowledgeable about Lotus For more information about other “We were looking for something that Notes. Microsoft customer successes, please visit: would enable agility within our business, “We were searching for something much www.microsoft.com/casestudies that would accelerate our business simpler. We were looking for a unified communications platform,” says Tomelieh. It From the beginning of 2013, the plan was • Pain-free migration wanted mobile access to e-mail for its sold to the Lotus Notes users, who were As existing Microsoft software was up-to- constantly-travelling executives, instant naturally reluctant to abandon the date, user-client migration of 30–50 messaging and to be able to keep in touch established and stable system, especially if people/day was straightforward with no easily with employees, typically so that it the switch disrupted their work. Senior disturbance. No new hardware was could spread messages better about executives were shown Office 365 in use needed. “We were expecting it to last Gandour’s vision and strategy, sales elsewhere and told that it would improve much longer and expecting additional successes, staff appointments etc. planning, marketing and other functions, difficulties, which we didn’t see,” says The plan also had to take account of most make meetings more efficient, provide Tomelieh. employees’ lack of strong computer literacy. information about staff activities and “We are not an IT company,” says Tomelieh. speed up decision-making. • Easier administration “We produce chocolate, chewing gum and Yammer was chosen largely because Administration interfaces are simple, with confectionery.” Yammer’s interface is similar to that of the little need for programming skills in locally very popular Facebook. “It was an PowerShell management framework or for Solution instinctive move,” says Tomelieh. advanced knowledge to move active Gandour considered the five-year cost of The two-month installation, from directory users to the cloud. installing its own local infrastructure and November 2013, was smooth, with For end-users, familiarity with other private cloud and came up with “some scary downtime of only about a day. Technically Microsoft products meant that training numbers”, says Tomelieh. “That left us with it required little more than cleaning up the was needed only for Lync and Outlook. only one solution; to go to the cloud.” active directory a bit. Yammer’s installation Yammer was accepted easily because of The options were in reality Google and “was extremely fast, it was painless”. familiarity with other social networks. Microsoft. Gandour had been using Microsoft products such as Excel for about Benefits • Staff satisfaction 20 years, says Tomelieh: “We didn’t want to Office 365 and Yammer cut “Everyone became very happy with the make a significant change in the interface.” communications operating costs by 38%. acceleration of their day-to-day work,” Choosing Microsoft would allow integration Migration was simple. E-mailing through says Tomelieh. By cutting out the previous with existing software and make financial Outlook was faster, meetings more e-mail hub, messages, including those to sense through modification of the existing efficient through Lync, business mobile devices, began to be transmitted Microsoft Enterprise license. information available faster and IT without delay: “It was instantaneous. They Gandour chose the cloud-based Office 365 management easier. Staff communication were extremely happy.” Lync is used set of tools, including e-mail, for 500 of its improved and end-users were very extensively and has reduced telephone 3,000 employees, and Microsoft’s private satisfied. use. social network Yammer. Yammer, relatively new in Saudi Arabia, is From local Microsoft partners, Gandour • Costs cut used daily. “It has enabled internal chose Consolidated Telecoms (Ctelecoms), Lotus Notes was expensive to run and branding, awareness of what is available which helped to refine Gandour’s strategy Gandour had 16 IT administrators at four on the market, etc. That enables quite a bit and to shorten the timetable. “We managed sites. The number was cut to two. “Lotus of change within the organization,” says to cut the time down significantly,” says Notes administration was quite Tomelieh. Tomelieh. complicated and required people to have He sees enormous long-term potential in Ctelecoms is an expert in Microsoft cloud six months of training,” says Tomelieh. IT the cloud: “The future role of the fully- technologies ─ its migration strategy for operating costs were cut by 38%, thanks integrated platform is mouth-watering.” Gandour provided appropriate training partly to modification of an existing while minimizing the downtime and Microsoft licensing agreement. avoiding user problems. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published April 2014 .