an innovative and evolutive flexible workspace to improve global collaboration and creativity of 20,000 employees in Europe, Middle East and Africa
Orange Business announced today that it will provide a multinational cloud-based unified communications solution to 3M to improve collaboration and increase productivity among 3M’s 20,000 employees at 75 sites in 25 countries in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Implementation of the solution – Business Together as a Service – will take place on a site-by-site basis with 16,000 seats being rolled out by the end of 2014 and the remaining in the following three years. 3M plans to extend the scope to Asia Pacific and Latin America.
With operations in more than 70 countries, 3M is a global innovation company that produces thousands of imaginative products and is a leader in many markets – from health care and highway safety to office products and abrasives and adhesives.
Business Together as a Service is a suite of on-demand collaboration solutions that complements the global wide area network and voice services that Orange Business already provides to 3M in 60 countries and mobile services in Europe.
“Business Together as a Service from Orange Business equips 3M with an agile, innovative and future-proof unified communications solution,” said Ernie Park, CIO, 3M. “This cloud-based solution is simple to implement and manage on a global basis, minimizes costs without any up-front investment, and provides 3M the necessary scalability that allows us to adjust our IT services to reflect our business needs in a fast-changing economic environment. Based on our existing relationship, we are confident that Orange Business can effectively help 3M achieve its goal of global creative collaboration.”
Business Together as a Service will make it easier for the five business groups of 3M to collaborate through a unified solution integrating a wide array of services – telephony, unified messaging, IM/presence, audio and Web conferencing, contact center service, video and mobility. To fit with 3M requirements, Orange Business integrated IBM Sametime® instant messaging, presence, telephony, IBM Lotus Notes and voicemail services into the solution. Through a customized self-service Web portal, 3M users will be assigned to one of five standardized user profiles based on their specific needs. The pay-as-you-grow financial model of Business Together as a Service means that each business group will be invoiced monthly for the profiles it uses and will be able to easily scale the profiles up or down through the Web portal depending on changing organizational needs.
Dr. Helmut Reisinger, senior vice president Europe, Orange Business, said: “Collaboration is a key for any globally organized company active in the innovation environment and knowledge-intense industries. I am very pleased that Orange Business is assisting 3M as digital coach, enabling the company to effectively take advantage to further increase user-friendliness of its innovation-driven workspaces. Since 2010, Orange Business has helped 3M by centralizing, standardizing and managing its global communications infrastructure. Now, by providing a collaborative workspace, we can help 3M further achieve its business goals through enhanced global collaboration with a pay-as-you-grow model. With Business Together as a Service, collaboration is only a click away for 3M employees around the world.”
About 3M
3M captures the spark of new ideas and transforms them into thousands of ingenious products. Our culture of creative collaboration inspires a never-ending stream of powerful technologies that make life better. 3M is the innovation company that never stops inventing. With $30 billion in sales, 3M employs about 88,000 people worldwide and has operations in more than 70 countries. For more information, visit www.3M.com or follow@3MNews on Twitter.
3M is a trademark of 3M Company.