Microsoft Office 365Customer Solution Case Study

Entertainment Retailer Reduces Hardware, Licensing, and IT Costs with Cloud Solution

OverviewCountry or Region: The NetherlandsIndustry: Retail

Customer ProfileFree Record Shop Holding is a privately owned retail entertainment company with brands in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, offering gifts and entertainment items (such as records, movies, games etc.), as well as web properties.

Business SituationFree Record Shop needed a flexible solution that would enable file sharing and easy file access anytime, anywhere, while minimizing work for IT staff.

SolutionBy moving to Office 365, Free Record Shop was able to reduce its hardware and licensing costs, trim its IT headcount, and increase productivity and collaboration across its various brand companies.

Benefits Saved €150,000 on licensing Saved €90,000 annually in IT

overhead Increased collaboration and

productivity by 5%

“From a user’s perspective, the look, feel, and functionality of Office 365 are in a whole different league―plus, employees don’t have to spend a lot of time adapting to the new solution.” Denys Purwin, CIO, Free Record Shop

Free Record Shop Holding is a privately owned retail organization. Its brands include a mix of both company-owned and franchised stores offering gifts and entertainment items (such as records, movies, games etc.), as well as web properties. Free Record Shop’s four corporate offices are located in Rotterdam and Breda (Netherlands) and in Aartselaar and Oelegem (Belgium). The total revenue of Free Record Shop Holding is €300 mln.

Situation Entertainment retail is a fast-moving market, in which quick, comprehensive communication between departments, such as marketing and sales, is critical to business success. Free Record Shop’s stores need to be continually updated on which titles are the top sellers and which are not as popular. The company strives for the most efficient way to do business, and looks for synergies between different departments, and in situations where teams from different properties work together on a project.

It’s important for the company’s staff to know its customers’ preferences and ensure that they are the first store (both online and offline) where customers can buy the latest entertainment titles at a competitive price. Having trained and skilled employees in the shops’ assists with these goals is important to maintaining customer satisfaction, and to providing a unique shopping experience. The product mix of Free Record Shop’s stores provides small margins, so the company needs to manage costs and overhead.

Impeding responsiveness and collaboration was the fact that the company’s regional managers―each of whom is responsible for many shops―were not able to access important documents while traveling. Another challenge was the “bricks and clicks” connection―facilitating the ability of physical stores to connect to real-time online store inventory to obtain titles that a customer is requesting, and vice-versa, while keeping costs low. Keeping costs flexible is even more important; the company needs the flexibility to quickly close stores in a brand that isn’t performing and rebuild them under another brand, a difficult task for its IT department to support. The company needed a flexible solution that would enable file sharing and easy file access anytime, anywhere, while minimizing work for IT staff.

SolutionThe company had begun moving to a more cloud-based environment two years ago by switching to Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), a set of messaging and collaboration tools delivered in the cloud. Having hosted solutions minimized the initial investment required and helped the company keep skilled people on its IT staff.

Looking to take additional steps in cloud-based computing to further facilitate collaboration and reduce the impact on IT staff, the company evaluated several solutions, including OpenOffice and Gmail Documents, before settling on Microsoft Office 365.Its IT solutions provider Wortell had already supported Free Record Shop with Microsoft BPOS so Office 365 seemed the next logical step as it includes even more capabilities—it’s the natural upgrade with the latest Microsoft technologies. “From a user’s perspective, the look, feel, and

functionality of Office 365 are in a whole different league―plus, employees don’t have to spend a lot of time adapting to the new solution,” comments Denys Purwin, Chief Technology Officer of Free Record Shop.

The company is currently using Microsoft SharePoint Online for senior management, giving them a fast and easy way to share files while traveling and access real-time store inventory. Free Record Shop sees the potential to extend the solution more deeply throughout its brands, enabling employees across brands to work together on projects―a process that has historically been very difficult.

The company also appreciated the impact afforded by the Office 365 pricing model. “The pay-as-you-go pricing with Office 365 gives us the flexibility we need in a constantly changing environment, with employees and stores moving from one company or brand to another within the company. With Office 365 we also do not need to invest a lot of money in replacing current end-of-life hardware,” says Purwin.

BenefitsBy moving to Office 365, Free Record Shop is able to improve productivity and collaboration across its various brand companies while trimming its IT headcount and reducing its hardware and licensing costs. The company sees the potential to further expand collaboration with the use of Microsoft Lync Online for presence awareness, instant messaging, audio/video calling, and online meetings with audio, video, and web conferencing.

5% Increase in ProductivityWith Office 365, Free Record Shop can push out applications to its brand companies more quickly, and to make changes to brands with the flexibility

23

“Office 365 not only helps us work more

efficiently and effectively together. But the savings are

also phenomenal. Bottom line, this

solution is increasing our competitiveness.”

Denys Purwin, CIO, Free Record Shop

and speed it requires. “Office 365 is a giant leap for us in collaboration possibilities on documents,” comments Purwin. “Overall, we are benefiting from having a web-based suite that offers a full set of communication and collaboration tools that enable employees to access information anytime, anywhere with virtually any device. This gives them time to focus more on business opportunities and act on them instantly.”

Reduced IT HeadcountAs a result of its various moves to cloud-based applications, requiring maintenance of fewer applications in house, Purwin has been able to reduce the company’s IT headcount by one to two people. This equates to savings of €90,000 in personnel costs annually.

Reduced Hardware and Licensing CostsDue to the move to Office 365 hosted applications, Purwin estimates that the company has saved €150,000 on hardware and user CALs, plus an additional reduction in running costs of €50,000 per year. The company is using the pay-as-you-go pricing model with Office 365, which further enables flexibility as the company scales its application usage up or down to accommodate brand changes. “Office 365 not only helps us work more efficiently and effectively together,” says Purwin. “But the savings are also phenomenal. Bottom line, this solution is increasing our competitiveness.”

Microsoft Office 365Microsoft Office 365 brings together cloud versions of our most trusted

communications and collaboration products—Microsoft SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online—with the latest version of our Office desktop suite and companion web applications for businesses of all sizes.

Office 365 helps save time and money, and it frees up valued resources. Simple to use and easy to administer, it is financially backed by a service level agreement that guarantee 99 percent reliability. Office 365 features robust security, IT-level phone support, geo-redundancy, disaster recovery, and the business-class privacy controls and standards that you expect from a world-class service provider.

For more information about Microsoft Office 365, go to:www.office365.com

33

For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about APCOA products and services, visit the website at: www.freerecordshop.nl .

For more information about Wortell products and services, visit the website at: www.wortell.nl .

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published June 2011

Software and ServicesMicrosoft Office 365

Microsoft Office Web Apps

Microsoft Exchange Online