Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Leading Agribusiness Cuts Costs by 50 Per Cent with Communications Technologies
Overview
Country or Region:Switzerland
Industry:Agriculture, fisheries, and forest—Agriculture
Customer Profile
Syngenta is a leading agribusiness firm specialising in commercial seed sales and crop protection. It employs more than 21,000 people in over 90 countries.
Business Situation
The company needed to refresh its Web conferencing applications to allow for faster virtual meetings with more participants, and new ways of communicating online.
Solution
Syngenta deployed Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 across five HP ProLiant DL380 G5 servers, supported by an HP storage area network.
Benefits
Effective communication
Costs halved
Smooth deployment
Better status visibility
Improved Web conferencing / “Office Communications Server 2007 will pay for itself within the first year, and the savings we make after that will be put into further developing our IT infrastructure.”
Daniel Rhein, Global Service Manager, Syngenta
Leading agribusiness Syngenta needed to refresh its internal Web communications. Its virtual conferencing systems were too slow and did not accommodate a sufficient number of attendees in meetings. As part of the Infrastructure Consolidation Program it developed with long-term technology partner HP, the company also wanted to integrate its software systems more closely and provide employees with new, more efficient methods of electronic communication. It worked with Microsoft and HP to roll out Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 to 21,000 employees worldwide. Users can now organise real-time virtual presentations with hundreds of participants in a few clicks, check colleagues’ statuses from any application, and solve quick queries using instant messaging. Crucially, the solution saves the company 50 per cent in costs compared to the previous system.
Situation
Syngenta is one of the largest agricultural businesses in the world. The company is a leader in crop protection and ranks third worldwide in the high-value commercial seeds market. With 330 offices across more than 90 countries, the company employs over 21,000 people in a wide variety of roles—from lab-based scientific researchers to marketing and sales teams.
The company has a long-standing partnership with hardware and services vendor HP. Several years ago, the two businesses worked together to develop the Infrastructure Consolidation Program, which aims to streamline the organisation’s IT environment. This was crucial in the wake of several mergers, which left the business with disparate IT systems.
One of the aims of the initiative is to improve electronic communication, which is hugely important to the business. Daniel Rhein, Global Service Manager at Syngenta, says: “Every day, hundreds of our employees collaborate on projects with their colleagues in different locations. Often, these meetings include three or four people, but increasingly we have large projects that require many more people to be involved. We’re always looking for ways to make the process more efficient.”
Syngenta is an early adopter of technology, and has had collaborative working solutions in place for several years. Its employees used Microsoft® Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server to deliver virtual presentations and document sharing to colleagues in various offices. It also used a hosted implementation of Microsoft Office Live Meeting to collaborate with external partners.
However, as the requirements of the business changed over time, employees began to experience limitations to these services. With Exchange 2000 Server, the limit of 40 attendees per meeting became restrictive, because many departments held monthly and quarterly virtual presentations that required hundreds of participants. The user experience could also be sluggish, because the technology was optimised for the slowest Internet connection in any given meeting. And while the company found the hosted Office Live Meeting solution extremely useful, it wanted more control over the cost of the service.
Syngenta also wanted tighter integration between its Web conferencing applications and its other collaboration technologies, including Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 mail server and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007. “We wanted all the services to link up, so that users could see the status of their colleagues, schedule meetings faster, and communicate in more ways than before,” says Rhein.
Solution
Rhein and his team started looking for a software system that could address the issues the company was having. After a thorough review of the market, and in-depth consultation with HP, they decided to deploy Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, a conferencing and collaboration solution.
Rhein worked closely with consultants from HP and Microsoft to design an implementation plan for Office Communications Server 2007. “We were impressed by how quickly the HP engineers got up to speed with the Microsoft application, and the design phase went very smoothly,” says Rhein. In 2007, Syngenta rolled out a pilot of the software to 450 employees. “We wanted to conduct the test with plenty of users, so that we could get as much feedback as possible. We were preparing to roll out a very new technology to thousands of people, so we needed to know the issues we might face,” says Rhein.
The pilot scheme was a great success, and in early 2008 the company used its existing Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft to roll out the Office Communications Server 2007 desktop client, Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, to 21,000 employees. This was followed by a transitional phase where users were encouraged to transfer working practices to the new system. “There was a little resistance at first, but we put a lot of effort into training, and once our employees realised how easy it was to use the new system, the adoption was very quick,” says Rhein.
Using Office Communications Server 2007, employees have access to advanced features such as presence awareness, which allows them to see the status of colleagues. If an employee sees that the person they need to contact is available, they can use instant messaging to get in touch immediately. The new technology is also integrated with the company’s SharePoint and Exchange e-mail solutions, so these functions are available in whatever application they are using.
The software runs on five HP ProLiant DL380 G5 servers, supported by an HP storage area network EVA 8100. The machines are in a configuration recommended by Microsoft: two front-end servers are linked to a director server, which in turn is connected to two machines that handle Web conferencing and e-mail traffic. “The Microsoft technology runs brilliantly on the HP hardware. We made sure to build a system with plenty of processing power, to give us the option of integrating IP telephony and video features, currently in planning phase for 2009,” says Rhein.
Benefits
The solution from Microsoft and HP has greatly improved internal communications at Syngenta. Employees are exploring new ways of collaborating with one another, and enjoying a much faster experience during Web presentations. Close collaboration between Microsoft and HP kept the project running efficiently, from design phase to deployment, and Syngenta is saving 50 per cent in costs using the new technology.
New Technology Improves Web Communications
Rhein and his team closely tracked the performance of the solution after it went live. They have observed a marked change in the way employees communicate with one another. “People are embracing more immediate ways of exchanging information. At times, the Microsoft system is handling 600 instant messages per minute, and more than 30 Web conferences simultaneously,” says Rhein.
Because Office Communications Server 2007 has no limit on the number of participants in Web presentations, there is no longer a problem with the company’s larger virtual conferences. “We’ve already held meetings with 350 participants, and the system works flawlessly,” says Rhein. Also, the company has more control now that the entire system is hosted internally, and employees can invite external partners to virtual meetings without going through a complicated process.
Consolidated System Reduces Costs
One of the most significant benefits of the new solution is the cost saving. Compared to the company’s previous combination of Web conferencing technologies, the new system costs 50 per cent less. “Office Communications Server 2007 will pay for itself within the first year, and the savings we make after that will be put into further developing our IT infrastructure,” says Rhein.
Microsoft and HP Keep Project Moving Forward
Microsoft and HP worked effectively together to help Syngenta during the design phase of the project. “The knowledge of the consultants from both companies was impressive, and it helped the rollout process run to tight timelines, and within budget,” says Rhein.
The company has enjoyed ongoing support from Microsoft and HP since the rollout. Says Rhein: “The guidance has been good, and we haven’t had many technical problems. We have powerful software running on powerful hardware. It’s a very good combination.”
New Software Improves User Experience
Using the presence features in Office Communications Server 2007, Syngenta employees can check one another’s status quickly and easily no matter which application they’re using, and suggest appropriate ways to communicate. They can use instant messaging to quickly resolve minor queries, or set up a brief online conference if they need to share files or collaborate on documents. “Setting up a conference is no longer a complicated process. Users can create a meeting in just three clicks,” says Rhein.
The user experience during Web conferences is also greatly improved. Office Communications Server 2007 is intelligently optimised with advanced compression and codec technologies, so virtual meetings run smoothly, regardless of the speed of participants’ Internet connections. “We still have employees in some areas using dial-up modems, but virtual presentations are now synchronised in real time. Our people say they now feel like they’re sitting in the same room as the presenter.”
Microsoft Office System
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