SoftwareOne case study

Citywide transforms communications to increase collaboration & flexibility

SoftwareOne helped Citywide to successfully unify communications with Microsoft Teams

Citywide wanted flexibility of services and modern communications capabilities to better cooperate with its partners and clients. Using Skype for Business on-premises had increasingly limited Citywide's ability to collaborate. With its digital transformation strategy in mind, replacing Skype became a priority, and Citywide chose SoftwareOne to make the switch to Microsoft Teams. The platform unifies communication and collaboration tools and opened up new avenues of efficient teamwork and reliable communications, no matter what time and place.

Consistently leveraging modern workplace benefits by extending O365 Suite with Teams helped Citywide’s employees become effective remote workers, especially when COVID-19 hit. To quickly adopt Teams, a training delivered by SoftwareOne optimally prepared Citywide staff to leverage the bandwidth of Teams' features. Moreover, Citywide could reduce the burden on internal IT staff by outsourcing the management of its communications environment to SoftwareOne’s Managed Services.

Client: Citywide Service Solutions
Industry: Public sector
Services: Unified Communications with Migration to Microsoft Teams and continuing support with SoftwareOne’s Managed Services
Country: Australia

I put SoftwareOne at the top of my service provider list. It’s all about the care factor. They want to look after their customers. That matters. More companies need to be like SoftwareOne.

Parry Singh
Head of IT Operations, Citywide Service Solutions

About the client

Citywide Service Solutions is owned and operated by the City of Melbourne, Australia, to meet the service needs of local government, commercial, and public sectors for infrastructure, waste management, and open spaces.

The challenge

Working with a wide range of partners and customers, Citywide wanted to improve its services’ flexibility and simplify interactions to enhance customer’s experience. The company had already started its cloud journey by using office applications and email communication in Office 365. These had enabled its employees to work and communicate more efficiently. However, there was still an expensive and inefficient legacy system in communications.

Using Skype for Business On-Premises had limited Citywide’s collaboration and federation capabilities. It required hosting local legacy infrastructure with high costs, heavy administration efforts, and inadequate external support services. Focusing on its digital transformation strategy, Citywide decided to move to a 100% cloud solution with Microsoft Teams to improve the communication service’s quality and reliability. As a company with numerous branch offices and many outdoor work assignments, Microsoft Teams offered the anywhere/anytime flexibility necessary for smooth and efficient teamwork as well as high-quality communication with partners and customers

The solution

The decision to move from Skype for Business to Teams had several advantages. As a cloud-based communication and collaboration platform, Teams provides modern communication tools and enhanced collaboration features, a complete new approach for the company. However, another advantage became obvious as Citywide confronted the COVID-19 pandemic. When restrictions required working remotely, Office 365 and Teams helped 600 employees to become effective remote workers.

Together with SoftwareONE experts, the Citywide team quickly developed a step-by-step implementation plan, including extensive assurance testing.

The teams were tremendously effective. A project like this is never a one-person show. It takes collaboration and a range of expertise. Together, we had all that we needed.

– Parry Singh, Head of IT Operations,Citywide Service Solutions

User adoption training helped facilitate a smooth and fast start with Teams after a prompt cutover. Instead of the planned face-to-face engagement, training was delivered remotely because of COVID-19 restrictions. SoftwareONE used Teams for training on Teams – a perfect introduction.

People like it. During COVID-forced remote meetings, Teams has done wonders for us,

– said Singh.

The new platform immediately impacted Citywide's office workers from high-quality video and voice calls to working and collaborating on documents in real-time. A new level of flexibility, efficiency, and work productivity increased collaboration among colleagues and customers. Even with COVID-19 restrictions, SoftwareONE’s Adoption and Change Management had helped to create the basis for a smooth, fast, and productive transition from Skype to Teams.

Citywide assured high-quality and reliable communication and collaboration resources by engaging SoftwareONE's Managed Services for comprehensive operational and support services that significantly reduce the burden on internal IT staff. A dedicated support team cares for incident resolution, service and change requests, as well as user onboarding/offboarding. SoftwareONE’s Managed Infrastructure provides operational support and manages the complete communications environment for Citywide.

The result

Citywide is implementing its digital transformation strategy with its move to Microsoft Teams making its business "fit for the digital age".
Citywide has positioned its infrastructure using Teams to meet requirements working with a wide range of public and non-public partners and customers with assured flexibility and speed.
Citywide consistently utilizes cloud-based modern workplace benefits by extending its use of O365 Suite with Teams. Employees can work and collaborate more efficiently, productively, and securely using application flexibility of time and place in circumstances forced by COVID-19.
Citywide uses SoftwareOne's Managed Services for Unified Communications to provide operational and support services, helping consolidate processes and reduce internal resource requirements.
SoftwareOne’s remote user adoption training successfully supported Citywide’s employees in the change and built positive trust in the Teams application. A fast adoption of the new technology has been important in providing successful business continuity while contending with the COVID-19-forced work from home conditions.

Citywide transforms communications to increase collaboration & flexibility

About the client

The challenge

The solution

The result

Unified Communications

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