Microsoft Office SystemCustomer Solution Case Study

Smaller File Format Saves Service Company 300-Plus Hours per Week on

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Manufacturing—Professional services

Customer ProfileBased in Troy, Ohio, and with a network of 93 branch offices across the United States, Hobart Service delivers, installs, and maintains equipment for the foodservice and food retail industries.

Business SituationHobart Service wanted to make its processes for storing and backing up employee data more efficient.

SolutionWith guidance from KiZAN Technologies, Hobart Service upgraded to Microsoft® Office Professional Plus 2007 to maximize hard disk drive space, decrease the time that it takes to back up data, reduce operational costs, and improve employee productivity.

Benefits U.S.$50,000 annual operational

cost avoidance Higher productivity valued at

$345,000 Fast deployment Future-ready environment

“We were amazed at how simple the upgrade to the 2007 Microsoft Office release was. We spent 20 to 40 hours less time deploying it than Microsoft Office 2003.”Greg Greenwald, Senior Network Administrator, Hobart Service

Hobart Service delivers, installs, and maintains equipment for the foodservice and food retail industries. With nearly 1,400 employees working from 97 locations across the United States, Hobart needed a more efficient way to transmit, store, and back up user data on the company’s central server computers. When the IT department saw how much server space and bandwidth it could save by taking advantage of the smaller file formats used in the 2007 Microsoft® Office release, the company decided to upgrade its desktops to Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007. The compact, XML-based file formats of the 2007 Office release have helped Hobart avoid U.S.$50,000 per year of additional bandwidth usage costs, maximize hard disk drive space, and decrease employee downtime during data backups by an average of 333 hours per week.

SituationHobart Service is the service arm of Hobart, a leading manufacturer of commercial food equipment such as refrigeration, warewashing, waste handling, and food preparation products. Hobart is a division of Illinois Tool Works (ITW).

National programs run by Hobart Service provide equipment delivery and installation, warranty and nonwarranty repairs, maintenance, service contracts, extended war-rantees, parts, and specialty programs to hundreds of thousands of U.S. businesses. Approximately 1,400 employees—including field service technicians, sales and administrative staff, and managers working from 97 locations across the United States—provide these services. Ninety-three branch offices, a technical-manual publishing center in Troy, Ohio, a distribution center in Piqua, Ohio, and a manufacturing plant in Orting, Washington, connect to the company’s central server computers at its Troy headquarters through virtual private networks on persistent T1 connections.

Move from Mainframe to Windows-based EnvironmentIn 2005, with guidance from KiZAN Technologies—a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner and former Microsoft Solution Provider Partner of the Year—the company began to transition from an IBM z/OS/390 mainframe environment, which included some server computers running the Novell NetWare network operating system,

to server computers running the Windows Server® 2003 R2 Standard Edition operating system with Service Pack 2. At the time of the transition, Hobart Service also took advantage of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 and Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 for managing its IT infrastructure.

Also in 2005, on the desktop computers at its branch offices, Hobart Service installed Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 and configured it to automatically back up employees’ data to the company’s central servers in Troy. Each time an employee logs on or off a computer, data in the My Documents folder, including Microsoft Office files, is copied to an assigned network loca-tion, using the Folder Redirection feature of the Microsoft IntelliMirror® management technologies included with the Windows Server operating system.

Data Storage and Backup ChallengesAs the amount of user data grew, however, so did the bandwidth that the company was consuming over its T1 network. “We’re paying our telco for the low end of bandwidth,” says Dave Fuller, IT Development Manager at Hobart Service, “but as the number and size of data files increases, we run the risk of being placed into a higher price bracket. Staying within the low end of bandwidth means about a 60 percent annual cost savings.”

Greg Greenwald, Senior Network Administrator at Hobart Service, adds, “We also wanted to minimize the space consumed by user data so that we don’t have to continually purchase more hard disk space. Not to mention, the less time employees spend waiting for data to be backed up, the more time they have to work productively.” Greenwald estimates that it was taking up to 10 minutes to replicate data each time a user logged on or off a computer. Those working with graphic-heavy documents, presentations, or large spreadsheets had to wait the longest.

Need for Cost-Effective, Integrated Collaboration SolutionWhile Hobart Service was looking for a solution for minimizing bandwidth consumption and speeding data backups, it also decided to migrate from its current messaging and collaboration solution based on IBM Lotus Domino Server and Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 as part of an effort to standardize on Microsoft products and technologies. Hobart Service determined that it would be more cost effective to implement Microsoft-based collaboration than to try to extend and update its Notes-based environ-ment, because of how easily Microsoft collaboration software products integrate with each other and with other Microsoft software.

Hobart Service plans to move the resources and documentation currently in its Notes environment to Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server

2007. “We wanted to take advantage of the tighter integration between Exchange Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, and the other products in the [2007 Office] release,” Greenwald says. Fuller adds, “Another goal was to get familiar, common tools and functionality that many people are already used to—like Microsoft Office Outlook® [messaging client], which many people use at home—into the hands of our employees.”

SolutionAfter an evaluation, Hobart Service decided to upgrade everyone in the company to Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007, largely due to the more compact XML-based file formats used in the 2007 Office release, and also because the company saw implementing this suite of products as the first phase in constructing a new collaborative environment for employees. Hobart wants to take advantage of the advanced collaborative capabilities of the 2007 Office system, including:

Excel® Services in Office SharePoint Server 2007, which make it simple to use, share, secure, and manage Microsoft Office Excel 2007 workbooks as interactive reports in a consistent way throughout the company.

Workflow services and content management capabilities that let users initiate and track document review processes from within Microsoft Office Word 2007.

“The less time employees spend waiting for data to be backed up, the more time they have to work productively.” Greg Greenwald, Senior Network Administrator, Hobart Service

Enterprise Search capabilities of Office SharePoint Server 2007, which give people the ability to find information in many different formats and repositories.

The IT department first conducted a pilot deployment of Office Professional Plus 2007 to approximately 50 employees at company headquarters in Troy. “We got very positive feedback from users,” says Greenwald. “After about a week of adjustment to the new look and feel of the 2007 release, users liked it much better because they could find tools and features more easily than in previous versions.”

Next, Hobart Service deployed Office Professional Plus 2007 to computers at its 93 branch offices, the publishing center, the distribution center, and the manufacturing plant. The deployment team used the Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment 2007, which provides end-to-end guidance and automation tools for large-scale deployments of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and Systems Management Server 2003 to remotely perform Zero Touch Installation (ZTI). An installation file was sent to each employee’s desktop or portable computer and run automatically in the background.

“We targeted a few branch offices a night for the installation, using [Systems Management Server] 2003 and ZTI,” Greenwald explains. “After a few nights of successful

installations, we got more aggressive, and within about four weeks, we had deployed to all 93 branches.”

Approximately 800 Hobart Service employees now use Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007, with the IT department ready to deploy the suite to an additional 1,000 Hobart Service technicians “as soon as we finish evaluating mobile hardware options,” says Greenwald. Hobart Service is currently evaluating several different types of mobile devices that run the Windows Mobile® software. The company intends to dispatch service requests to technicians in the field through these devices, which will also be used to access e-mail, Internet content, and Microsoft Office documents and files such as technical manuals and documentation.

Hobart Service plans to complete its second phase, the deployment of Exchange Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007, by the end of 2007.

BenefitsMicrosoft Office Professional Plus 2007 helps Hobart Service keep its operational costs low and enhances the productivity of its employees. The company experienced a smooth, efficient upgrade, and it believes that the upgrade readies the company for a larger-scale adoption of integrated Microsoft messaging and collaboration technologies.

Operational Cost Avoidance of $50,000 Annually

“We installed Office Professional Plus 2007 without any disruption to or intervention from users.”Greg Greenwald, Senior Network Administrator, Hobart Service

The smaller, XML-based file formats help Hobart Service minimize its bandwidth usage. The company estimates that staying in the lower bandwidth pricing bracket with its telco allows the company to avoid an additional U.S.$50,000 per year in Internet access costs. The smaller file sizes also save hard disk space on the company’s IBM BladeCenter server computers. “With Office Professional Plus 2007, we’ll consume at least one less hard disk drive—maybe two,” says Greenwald.

Once all of the company’s Microsoft Office 2003 files are converted to the 2007 file formats, the company will consolidate data on server computer hard disk drives and repurpose any emptied hard disk drives for its Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 implementations. “This means we won’t have to buy more disk space for some time to come,” says Greenwald. For now, the IT department is letting users convert their files as they access them, but it also plans to use the Office File Converter (OFC), which enables IT departments to convert files in bulk. OFC is part of the Office Migration Planning Manager, a collection of tools that help IT departments prepare for migration to the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

Greenwald says that, unlike many other client software upgrades, this one has not required Hobart Service to invest in new computer hardware. “When you put new software on a computer, it often requires more

processing power. The desktop computers at the branch offices are fairly limited—they have Celeron processors and only 256 megabytes of memory. Prior to the upgrade, I was concerned about potential performance issues, but we haven’t seen any negative results,” says Greenwald.

Higher Productivity Valued at $345,000Employees are experiencing much faster data backups as a result of the smaller file sizes of Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007, and consequently higher productivity. “Most users’ My Documents folders are synchronized about 50 percent faster with the 2007 Microsoft Office release,” says Greenwald.

He estimates that this will result in a timesavings of 25 minutes per week, per user. With 800 employees using Office Professional Plus 2007, this equates to approximately 300 additional hours each week or 15,000 hours annually that Hobart Service employees can spend working on their computers rather than waiting for backups to complete. The value of this timesavings is approximately $345,000 per year.

The feature-rich Microsoft Office Fluent™ user interface has also had a positive effect on productivity, especially for the company’s power users. Greenwald says that users adjusted to the 2007 Microsoft Office programs more easily than to most past deployments of new software.

“Once users were accustomed to the new interface of the 2007 Microsoft Office release, the proverbial light bulbs flashed,” he adds. “People can find features faster and produce better-looking documents faster. The interface is much more dynamically related to their work.”

Hobart Service employees create marketing documents with Office Word 2007, and sales presentations with the Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2007 presentation graphics program. Employees also use Office Excel 2007 spreadsheet software to share accounting information such as end-of-month reports with branch managers and to track key performance indicators of branch business. “Previously, we had to split some of our marketing databases into two or three smaller spreadsheets,” says Fuller. With Office Excel 2007, Hobart Service employees can combine these databases into one, because spreadsheets now support 1 million rows by 16,000 columns, making it possible for users to work with massive amounts of data. “Employees are really enjoying the increased capacity of Office Excel 2007,” says Greenwald.

Technicians at the Hobart office in Troy use Microsoft Office Access™ 2007 database software to log support calls when troubleshooting complex questions about its sophisticated food industry equipment. In addition, the training department at Hobart Service plans to transition from Corel WordPerfect to

Office Word 2007 to create new service manuals, user guides, and training documentation of much higher quality and lower file size.

Greenwald and Fuller also anticipate that when the migration from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 is complete, users will find it easier to work within the Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 messaging and collaboration client than in the Lotus Notes environment. “Office Outlook 2007 has the Microsoft look and feel that users are accustomed to because they spend so much time using other Microsoft Office programs. Many of them already use Office Outlook at home. It’s cumbersome for them to have to know different commands in Lotus Notes. The consistency will streamline their work,” says Greenwald.

Fast Deployment“We installed Office Professional Plus 2007 without any disruption to or intervention from users,” says Greenwald. “The file installed in the background, and our installation error rate was less than 5 percent. The deployment tools helped tremendously; we were amazed at how simple the upgrade to the 2007 Microsoft Office release was. We spent 20 to 40 hours less time deploying it than Microsoft Office 2003.”

Geoff Pearson, Managing Partner at KiZAN, confirms the ease that Hobart Service experienced in the deployment of Microsoft Office

“Altogether, we spent perhaps a half-day’s time helping Hobart Service with their deployment.”Geoff Pearson, Managing Partner, KiZAN Technologies

Professional Plus 2007. “Altogether, we spent perhaps a half-day’s time helping Hobart Service with their deployment,” says Pearson. “We guided them to some resources on the Microsoft Web site [and] confirmed various aspects of their deployment plan, and then they ran with it.”

Future-Ready EnvironmentHobart Service has begun using Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 in anticipation of the enhanced benefits that the company will achieve once it implements Office SharePoint Server 2007. Together, the two products will deliver a complete set of enterprise content management capabilities that will simplify the way that the company works with information.

For example, Fuller says that the new system will significantly improve the company’s process for sharing technical documentation. Currently, documents are shared as attachments to e-mail messages in a variety of formats, making them difficult to track and manage. Storing and managing Microsoft Office documents within Office SharePoint Server 2007 repositories will “allow us to easily update and make technical documentation available to all branch offices, as well as our franchisees, through SharePoint sites,” says Fuller. The company looks forward to taking advantage of the advanced workflow capabilities of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to standardize

processing and publication of human resources forms and documentation.

Hobart Service also plans to implement the Windows Vista™ operating system in the second half of 2008.

Finally, as part of its move to Exchange Server 2007, the company is evaluating Microsoft Forefront™ Security for Exchange Server, which integrates multiple scan engines from industry-leading security firms into a comprehensive, layered-solution. “It’s a compelling option in terms of our plan to take full advantage of the integrated stack of Microsoft software,” says Fuller.

Microsoft Office SystemThe Microsoft Office system is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.

For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to: www.microsoft.com/office

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 who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. 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 KiZAN products and services, call (888) 327-0333 or visit the Web site at: www.kizan.com

For more information about Hobart Service products and services, call (888) 4-HOBART (446-2278) or visit the Web site at: www.hobartservice.com

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

Document published July 2007

Software and Services Microsoft Office Access 2007 Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

2007 Microsoft Office Word 2007 Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

− Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition with Service Pack 2

− Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise Edition

− Microsoft Operations Manager 2005

− Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 with Service Pack 2

Technologies− Microsoft Office Outlook Web

Access− Microsoft Solution Accelerator for

Business Desktop Deployment 2007

Hardware− Dell OptiPlex 160 and 170

desktop computers with Celeron processors and 256 megabytes of memory

− Dell Latitude D610 portable computers

− IBM BladeCenter storage area network with 1 terabyte of hard disk space