Even the transition from optional to forced work from home can be smooth and simple

Západoslovenská energetika, a. s. (ZSE) is a long-term customer of exe, a.s. (hereinafter ‘exe’). In January this year when ZSE started discussing more intensively the topic of online collaboration using purchased products of Office 365 (primarily Microsoft Teams), exe proposed the adoption campaign as a natural continuation of partner co-operation.

ZSE dedicated an internal team to the adoption campaign, while exe provided its experts with their crucial know-how in strategy and roll out. In addition to advanced training, the Adoption Team was trained also in the use of the applicationsPlanner, Stream and OneNote, meaning the staff of ZSE were shown how to digitalise working processes effectively using these tools.

The application MS Teams simplified the work of the ZSE employees especially during the sudden extraordinary situation

In reaction to the situation surrounding the COVID-19 virus, the Adoption Team published several quick and easy to use manuals on how to work with this communication platform, accompanied by user training for ZSE employees. Training was supported by a special training site, where various training videos were shared among the staff of ZSE. All the activities were tailor-made, foremost so that videoconferencing and document sharing were facilitated as quickly as possible.

Thanks to previous long-term cooperation in migrations to various collaborative platforms (SharePoint, OneDrive), and the optimal configuration of theMicrosoft Office 365 environment, the workflow at ZSE was digitally transformed as the adoption of new forms of communication didn’t come as a shock for employees. Thanks to effective time and content planning of training, employees received all necessary information when lockdown restrictions were imposed and so were able to adapt swiftly to the change in the system of work. The switch from flexitime to forced work from home was therefore smooth and problem-free.

Here at exe we regard our mutual cooperation with ZSE as on a highly professional level. As part of the project for migrating to Microsoft cloud, the top professional and technical readiness of ZSE was soon clear, and the whole process was eased greatly by the staff’s openness to new solutions. Adoption of the collaboration platform by ZSE employees was well managed under the leadership of Michal Piecka, Head of Managed workplace services at ZSE. The Adoption Team ensured sufficient webinars in a timely manner, which contributed greatly to the smooth adoption of Microsoft Teams and its collaborative functions, also for working from home.

Over 150,000 messages are exchanged within ZSE every week, with around 2,000 meetings organised online.

Employees were quick to embrace the online collaboration and intensively started utilizing all its basic functionalities. Each week, employees exchange over 150,000 chat messages, hold 2,000 online meetings and systematically cooperate on documents. They useco-authoring <87, allowing several people to edit the same document simultaneously, so there is no need to send large email attachments back and forth or waste time searching for the latest version of a document. All work essentials can be found in one place, saving employees time and streamlining the workflow.

Another aim is to provide training on advanced scenarios andto launch the Champions program, thereby supporting the development of digitalization and the work habits of ZSE employees.

“We are very satisfied with how our mutual cooperation worked with exe in the “roll out” of the new communicative and collaborative platform, thanks to which we coped extremely well with the situation around obligatory work from home. The expertise of our partner and its experience with similar projects was particularly helpful in the “roll out”. By using the application, ZSE employees enjoyed a smooth transition to working from home. On another note, it has inspired us towards greater digitalization of our work, the optimization and automation of processes, and the discovery of ever new ways of using collaborative tools” underlines Milan Netoušek, Head of IT Services at ZSE.