​UPM partnered with Accenture and its affiliate, Avanade, on the “Workspace” initiative that involved the following four active phases:

-Rolling out more than 13,000 workstations with Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2010.
-Creating two new UPM customer-facing web sites and nearly 30 intranet sites, based on Microsoft SharePoint 2010.
-Launching new email and communication tools (e.g., Microsoft Outlook 2010, Office Communicator and Lync) delivered via Microsoft Cloud Services.
-Implementing collaboration sites that leveraged  SharePoint.

Close collaboration between UPM and Accenture was critical, with a joint governance structure put in place to oversee the program. In addition, extensive change management efforts helped build engagement and buy-in. Accenture also developed training for all 24,000 UPM employees—and delivered it to more than 80 locations in eight different languages.

​With an aggressive 16-month implementation timeline, the UPM Workspace program was completed on time and under budget. The effort brought significant change to the organization, but it was conducted with minimal disruption to UPM’s employees. As an example,13,000 workstations were rolled out across five continents in just five months—and each workstation exchange took less than 45 minutes on average.
UPM’s new unified platform incorporates modern functionality and common tools, applications and processes that allow employees to more easily find and share information and ideas. This new way of working is vital to UPM’s strategy, aligned with its core values and a critical step along the path to high performance.