Mosa

Improving collaboration and business through a modern workplace

Royal Mosa is a manufacturing company in floor and wall tiles that is rapidly innovating ICT facilities and adopting a cloud-first strategy. Virtually all business applications have been migrated. Valid helped Mosa revamp legacy office automation based on Office 365. This was necessary to support Mosa's global growth ambitions.

Challenge: better collaboration

The expiring license contract with Microsoft prompted Mosa to take a close look at its IT needs. Not only of the mobile employees, but also of the people at headquarters and in the factories. Mosa was looking for a platform that would allow the entire organization to better collaborate, share information and find each other more easily.

Microsoft's cloud application Office 365 has everything to meet the various needs and demands, provided the implementation is done right. Implementing Office 365 is much less a technical issue - after all, all technology comes from the Microsoft cloud and remains invisible to the user - than a business challenge: how do you get the organization to go along with a new way of working? And how do you ensure that people actually use the new capabilities? "For this we enlisted the help of Valid, which has proven expertise in the field of Office 365," says Patrick Wenmeckers, IT manager at Mosa.

Mosa
Valid - working together
Solution: transition to Microsoft 365

The choice of Microsoft 365 fitted seamlessly into Mosa's vision of ICT. It should support mobile working and enable more sales at more points of sale. By embracing the cloud, Mosa also wanted to prevent shadow IT. This means that people will deploy applications themselves if IT takes too long to come up with a solution. The deployment of cloud should also reduce the pressure on the IT department. Wenmeckers: "IT is becoming increasingly complex, more and more knowledge is needed. It's better to outsource that to the cloud and SaaS vendors, so you can concentrate on your business."

Benefit of cooperation: careful approach

Change management in particular has been carefully handled. "Everyone has hundreds of reasons not to do something new. We overcame that as much as possible by mainly showing the new possibilities, and not dwelling on the past. In the course of the process, you have to communicate more and more and more tailored. Keep explaining why this is necessary and showing what it means for the employee's daily work."

To gently direct employees to the new environment, the team set the existing files on the network to read-only. If people want to reuse these files, they will have to copy them to the new environment and assign metadata. After three months, the files will be made "invisible," to force users to transfer their files in a timely manner.

Result: modern workplace that meets all needs

Valid helped migrate data and set up a proper search system. Valid established links and set up Identity & Access Management (IAM) in the cloud. Employees received laptops and tablets, allowing them to work independent of time and place. Wenmeckers is satisfied with the course of the project, but is also critical. "Microsoft 365 is a nice product, but not always consistent and clear. Our financial administration, for example, works a lot with pivot tables. However, these are limitedly supported by the web version of Microsoft 365."

"IT is getting more and more complex, more and more knowledge is needed. It's better to outsource that to the cloud and SaaS vendors, so you can focus on your business."

Patrick Wenmeckers IT manager at Mosa
Valid - workplace 2
Valid - man workplace
Ready for the future

Valid was invaluable to the success of the implementation, according to Wenmeckers. "Looking back, Valid was the best choice. They get a 10. The technical piece went flawlessly. You could tell that Valid has dealt with this bit before. They deployed proprietary tools and scripts that accelerated the implementation. Valid had prepared things thoroughly but was also able to anticipate unexpected developments. They kept the intended result in mind. The division of tasks, planning and mutual coordination went very well."

Valid specialists also helped provide information and training to users. They have a lot of experience in this. After the final training they helped people on their way by floorwalking. Wenmeckers: "In close cooperation, we achieved a great result, with which we are ready for the future."

"Looking back, Valid was the best choice. They get a 10. The technical piece went flawlessly. You could tell that Valid has dealt with this axe before."

Patrick Wenmeckers IT manager at Mosa
About Mosa
  • Active in more than 50 countries across 4 continents
  • Founded in 1883
  • More than 600 employees
Results
  • Simplification IT
  • Significantly fewer support questions
  • Increased innovativeness at constant OPEX
  • Accelerating sales process
  • More quotations per employee
  • Hassle-free place- and time-independent working
  • Strengthening corporate culture
Added value Valid
  • Proven expertise in implementing Office 365: technical and organizational
  • Proven methodology and convenient tooling
  • Result-oriented
  • Structured yet flexible approach
  • Teamwork