Adoption Campaign for implementing MS Office 365 in the company Slovnaft

Fast, simple and effective company communication is essential in today’s world. Whether it concerns communication with clients, partners or between colleagues, it is important to know the required information on time, distribute it among relevant parties, have the option to form teams, create, participate in joint meetings etc. Modern technology and information systems let us simplify working processes, because it is important that companies truly utilize and exploit them as much as possible. That is certainly true for large organizations such as one with over 3 000 employees, i.e. the Slovak refinery Slovnaft.  

All employees have had access to Office 365 for more than a year. It is not just the installation to computers that is important, but above all the adoption of new technology and incorporation of it into everyday working life. That is the aim of the adoption campaigns we help companies like Slovnaft with.  

The successful adoption of new technology requires a change in behaviour. There is much more to it than knowing how to use a new application. It is a fundamentally different mode of work.  

The company Slovnaft is an innovative and technologically advanced organization that tries to improve and streamline the work of its employees and so ensure them the best working conditions. It also wants to be a quality employer to attract young talent to its ranks. This clearly necessitates also the digitalization of working processes and procedures. For this reason, we have decided jointly to roll out a transformation project and help it achieve positive changes.  

• assistance with digitalization,

• full use of the potential of Office 365 to improve and streamline cooperation of individual employees, teams and working processes,  

• raising work effectiveness also thanks to cloud storage and file sharing via the internet,

• time savings, 

• limited business travel and absences at work meetings,    

• change management - change of culture and mode of work and communication in organization,  

• combining the technology of Microsoft Office 365 with the needs of Slovnaft, 

• creating scenarios based on defined needs. 

The digital transformation of the company is a long-term process, which requires thorough preparation, training, workshops and the like. For everything to run smoothly, the adoption campaign in the company Slovnaft was executed according to a precise time schedule.  

Training is organized on the principle of train the trainer. This means our experts from exe initially trained select internal employees of Slovnaft, who became the pilot users for all Office 365 applications. These employees became trainers in time or so called Office 365 gurus, who after a certain time could independently handover their knowledge to other colleagues.  

All training went ahead in the practical form of workshops. Based on the specific requirements of top managers of individual departments, we provided employees with tailor-made workshops. We provided our gurus with the necessary materials, created a training locality for them, containing all useful information, webinars, short video manuals and other useful materials.  

Throughout the whole process of the adoption campaign we have a team set up with our trainers in the application Teams so we can give them the necessary assistance, technological support or additional information. The whole campaign includes also an internal promo of activities at the customer, specific articles in the company monthly publication, videos on the training site or posts in the application Yammer.  

The benefit of our method is an approach that uses scenarios that come from real situations in the working life of the employee. 

• We focus on raining in practical business scenarios, thanks to which we achieve an innovative change in the culture and behavior of employees, not just the use of new tools. 

• We train with scenarios adapted to the specific needs of the customer, intended for specific groups of employees differentiated based on their job tasks and mobility. 

• The adoption campaign includes materials and adoption content uniquely created in the customer environment.  

• With the help of our specialists we provide a broad IT service that includes innovation of IT infrastructure, as well as IT consulting and resolving technical problems when adopting new technologies (not just Microsoft).

An important part of the adoption campaign is change management. A successful adoption campaign can therefore cause a change in the culture of the company, in the thinking of employees, change in the work habits of employees and also increase their input in the process of transforming the organization.  

These positive changes lead to increased competences of employees, to the modernization of working processes and, last but not least, to ensuring the return on investment in new technologies, thanks to their adoption by employees. 

Examples of successfully introduced functionality that helped streamline and digitalize many tasks:  

• shift of project management from tables, paper and MS Excel to MS Planner (retail, communication, parts of production, HR), 

• získavanie spätnej väzby cez MS Forms (spätná väzba z webinárov, HSE školení, zaškoľovanie vedúcich pracovníkov z výroby), 

• recording Teams meetings and regular meetings also for later use in training on new programs and onboarding of new colleague (MS Stream), 

• less travelling - regular meetings via MS Teams - sales, maintenance and retail already use the application also for videoconferencing, 

• monitoring sales reports and goods inventories from ČS via Power BI, integrated to MS Teams (in cooperation with MOL). 

Just how successful this digital transformation in Slovnaft was can be seen by the numbers alone, but also by employee feedback.  

• 1,597 computers with Office 365 installed

• 238 training sessions on Office 365

• 506 trained colleagues

• 1,840 active users of Teams in the past three months

• 6,366 exchanged messages in Teams

• 559 online calls or online meetings

• 2.8 million documents saved to OneDrive

Number of trained employees of the company Slovnaft (506) is as follows:

• 195 employees trained in person at the education institute

• 15 shift leaders trained personally in production

• 184 employees trained personally in departments

• 112 trained employees via webinars

We asked Slovnaft employees how using the application Office 365 changed their everyday work.

“Thanks to Teams meetings, I have the possibility to take part more often in important business meetings on the level of the whole MOL group, while the number of covered kilometres has dropped by more than 60%. I can finally spend more time with customers in Slovakia, and I still have the latest information from our meetings.”

”Having up-to-date documents and price lists in one place, also accessible from a mobile phone, we have needed that for a long time. In Teams, I can find everything I need, quickly and on my mobile.”

“Thanks to video conferences and the screen share option, our communication with external suppliers was made easier. We no longer send lengthy emails, but prefer now to call, explain and show everything necessary. Simply said, it has made mutual communication more effective.”

“Thanks to Office 365, I have the minutes from meetings and a list of my tasks on my mobile, always at hand. Sharing technical documentation with my colleagues from OneDrive is quick, easy and they don’t have to browse through emails. We had problems keeping track of the current version and its sharing within the department. Now it works the way it should! Swiftly and easily.”