MSC enhances global operations with Office 365

The Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), a container shipping line with a distinctly global presence, is using Microsoft Office 365 cloud-based collaboration tools to help improve employee efficiency and reduce the cost of workplace solutions.

MSC has a fleet of 460 container ships, uses 200 sea routes and delivers to 315 ports. The company was looking to upgrade its business productivity technology to improve operations, and decided the best approach was to move to the cloud with Microsoft Office 365.

“Microsoft showed us that it has a more complete vision (than its competitors) about the communication environment today and what it needs to be tomorrow,” said Fabio Catassi, chief technology officer at MSC. “We asked to work with Microsoft Consulting Services to help with pre-deployment communications to our employees, and with post-deployment change management. Microsoft Consulting Services has the right knowledge and understanding of our business to maximise the value of Office 365 within our company. And that value is set to increase, as we have just added 17,000 seats of Office 365 E5 so employees can take advantage of end-user analytics like Power BI Pro, and we can expand our cloud-based telephony solution.”

Thanks to Office 365, the company has successfully raised productivity levels among its global workforce, while also eliminating communication gaps across the 148 countries in which MSC has a presence.

“We reduced the number of e-mail environments from approximately 65 to one and removed several third-party collaboration solutions,” said Andre Simha, global chief information officer at MSC. “We are saving approximately 45% in our IT budget that was previously allocated to business productivity tools.”

“Being efficient and cost-conscious is the key to the operation of any business, and one way MSC is achieving this goal is by simplifying our IT processes,” said Catassi. “With Office 365 ProPlus and Click-to-Run, everyone gets the latest Office apps on up to five devices, and we don’t have to worry about deployments. It’s easy to manage user identities and permissions within one global system.”

Office 365 is used by employees to connect with various MSC agencies and partners from across the globe. Skype for Business Online is a popular choice when conferencing with colleagues at foreign agencies, helping staff gain a better understanding of port capabilities and cost structures.

Employees out in the field use Microsoft Surface devices to access Power BI dashboards. And with OneDrive for Business, employees can access files from any location. Furthermore, to protect mailboxes in real time against attack, MSC is using Microsoft Exchange Online Protection hosted email filtering service and Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection.

The company also uses the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite for cloud-based user identity and mobile device management. Down the line, Microsoft Intune will be used to manage and secure these mobile devices.

Going forward, MSC will continue to harness Office 365 services, and a number of pilot projects are now underway in which employees are building workflows for document management in Microsoft SharePoint Online.

Microsoft Planner is also being used to enhance project management. For every plan within Microsoft Planner, a new Office 365 Group is created. This group comes with a shared inbox, files, notebook, and calendar.

“I’m using Planner for all my budgeting in 2017 and to organise my team’s deliverables for marketing events,” says Magnani. “It is just another aspect of the mobility and accessibility we are getting with Office 365 that is improving productivity for everyone at MSC.”