Case Studies:ACA Boosts Collaboration, Saves Money by Expanding Use of Microsoft Office 365

Multiple tools, multiple headaches

ACA Compliance Group (ACA) is a leading governance, risk, and compliance advisory services and solutions company based in New York City. It helps clients mitigate regulatory and reputational risk with a variety of software applications and consulting services.

ACA has grown quickly, both organically and through acquisitions. With that growth came more employees in more places, more emails and email attachments, and inherited communications and collaboration tools that complicated everyday communications. This resulted in slower decisions, more frustration, and higher operating costs.

The company turned to AIS to help it streamline its communications landscape.

Change management key

Because ACA already owned a Microsoft Office 365 subscription, using Microsoft Exchange Online for email, AIS recommended building on that investment. We provided a Microsoft Customer Immersion Experience (CIE) demonstration for key ACA Compliance managers to both listen to their needs, feedback, and concerns, and introduce them to full suite of Office 365 applications.

Managers liked what they saw—especially Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Planner—but were concerned about the potential for disruption caused by adopting new tools.

Small steps first

We recommended starting small—by rolling out Teams and Planner to just two departments—to gain advocates, realize quick wins, and gather insights to guide the larger rollout.

During the pilot, we provided change management and user experience experts, business analysts, technical experts, and others who worked closely with ACA Compliance employees to help them marry Teams capabilities with existing work processes. We guided communications to employees, identified and trained internal champions, gathered best-practices data, and resolved technical issues along the way.

At the end of a few weeks, 90 percent of employees in the two targeted departments were fluent in using Teams to host meetings, exchange documents, chat, archive project materials, and more.

Just 16 weeks for the full rollout to 800 people

After the quick, successful pilot rollout, AIS helped ACA roll out Teams and Planner to the entire organization. Guided by lessons learned in the pilot, AIS accomplished the rollout to 800 employees in just 16 weeks—seven departments per month.

Improved collaboration, productivity

ACA Compliance employees enjoy dramatically easier collaboration and improved productivity by using a single, integrated communications hub. Instead of sending dozens of emails with attachments and constant hunting for information, all communication and sharing on a given topic happens in a Teams channel, where everything stays in one place.

Less expensive, too

Some departments were able to eliminate GoToMeeting and WebEx, which reduced subscription costs by more than $60,000 a year, money that ACA Compliance was able to plow into other projects.

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