Australian energy retailer, AGL Energy, said it has realised cost-savings, improved cost control, and simplified email support through its move to Microsoft’s subscription-based Office 365 service, a transition which was completed in April 2012.
According to a statement, AGL initially made the move to unify its operations under one platform and accommodate for employees’ communications access demands.
It required an email system that would be more economically viable to support, easier to deliver to new employees, more robust, and accessible through any smartphone.
“To cater to the increasing demand from employees for communication access virtually anytime, anywhere, we sought a compelling Cloud solution that could integrate with our existing IT infrastructure,” AGL chief information officer (CIO), Owen Coppage, said.
The company piloted Microsoft Exchange Online, part of Office 365, in September 2011, and said the Cloud-based email system was reliable and flexible. This spurred it to migrate its more than 3000 employees to the new system.
Just over a year since the overhaul, Microsoft Australia Office 365 product manager, Isabel Boniface, said AGL has “been able to reduce the cost of deploying email, and as Microsoft manage all of the upgrade, they are set to save in IT costs.”
She also said “Office 265 was a great fit for the company as it fits the way their employees like to work and is fast and easy to use.”
Each year AGL conducts two employee satisfaction surveys; according to the most recent end of year survey, completed in June 2012, It satisfaction increased to 82 per cent, up from 40.
