With operations in over 65 countries, 3M recently rolled out Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus technology to more than 60,000 employees and on nearly 6,000 mobile devices, facilitating the level of efficiency and cross-company collaboration required for greater innovation.
“3M has a culture of creative collaboration that inspires powerful technologies—we continuously work to introduce new products that solve our customers’ challenges,” said Stephen Magnuson, manager of IT Infrastructure End User Services at 3M. “The next great idea can come from anywhere in the company and our organization is most successful when ideas can flow easily, whether that’s between our global R&D centers, or a salesperson sharing a customer process with others in the organization.”
Through the implementation of Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus, 3M now has access to Microsoft’s productivity suite of applications, including Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access and Publisher. Employees at 3M can download Office 365 on up to five PCs or on Macs, as well as on mobile devices such as Windows tablets and iPads, allowing them to perform their tasks virtually anytime and anywhere.
“We’re very proud of our record of innovation here at 3M, and we are always striving to improve,” Magnuson added. “Our devices now automatically perform Office updates from the cloud without IT involvement. And the fact that Office 365 ProPlus updates from both a functional and a security aspect was a big selling point for us, because we will never have to do a major Office upgrade again.”
For 3M, Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus was easy to implement. Links were sent to 5,000 early adopters across the company, followed by IT deploying the technology geographically in waves to minimize helpdesk and network impacts in the given region. Deployment increased to 20,000 links each week, with 48,000 employees installing Office 365 ProPlus on their own.
“It was taking too long for us to make the connections we needed internally or with customers, vendors, and distributors. Now, we’ll be able to improve and accelerate those connections,” Magnuson said.
Frances Correia, country manager, Microsoft Trinidad and Tobago, Eastern and Southern Caribbean stated the benefits experienced by 3M from implementing the cloud-computing technology is a significant example for the local business sector.
“The implementation by 3M represents an important model for local organizations as harnessing advancements in mobile and cloud technologies will help businesses modernize and innovate, as well as participate and benefit from the era of digital transformation,” Correia said.
