SEATTLE and LONDON – 25 JUNE 2015

Avanade, a leading global provider of innovative digital services, business solutions and design-led experiences, is working with Henkel AG on its digital journey by empowering employee productivity and collaboration in new ways with Microsoft Office 365.

With a distributed workforce of 47,000 employees, Henkel AG, a global chemical manufacturer for consumer and industrial products, needed a modern communications and collaboration platform to create new ways of working across borders, while continuing to promote innovation. To achieve this, Avanade is deploying the full Microsoft Office 365 suite of digital technologies and services; enabling a quicker, more flexible experience that allows employees to access real-time data anywhere, from any device.

“As an international company, our business depends on a smooth transfer of information. With Office 365, we now have a highly sophisticated, powerful unified communications and collaboration cloud platform for today and the future,” said Markus Petrak, corporate director integrated business solutions, Henkel AG. “Avanade has the know-how, Microsoft expertise and innovative spirit we needed to successfully undertake a project of this magnitude; helping deliver real, measurable results for our organization.”

The project is delivering the following benefits to this constantly evolving workplace:

• Improved productivity through a simplified and unified environment, as well as with a reduction in costs.
• Easier access and sharing of information through managed services surrounding the platform and end-user support for the Office 365 ecosystem.
• Faster response times and improved customer and supplier relationships through the use of streamlined business intelligence analysis and communications tools, which have also fostered greater digital interactions between employees.
• Closer connections to the disparate employee base through Microsoft Office 365, including Exchange Online, Lync Online, SharePoint Online and the Office 365 ProPlus client.
• More flexible and dynamic collaboration with more than 50 terabytes of cloud storage, 600 Team Rooms and 1,500 global applications that will eventually replace 11,000 Lotus Notes databases.

“A digital workplace not only increases productivity with intelligent and integrated capabilities, it empowers employees and delivers competitive advantage through new ways of working,” said André Huizing, Avanade Digital Workplace lead. “Avanade’s leading digital solutions and managed services help businesses transform their workplace to create employee experiences that are tailored to their unique work environment and requirements.”