The Technico Flor Group, which operates internationally, has chosen the Microsoft Office 365 suite. A year ago, the company naturally adopted Microsoft Teams. Jérôme Quinten, Information Systems Manager at Technico Flor, looks back at what led the group to switch to Microsoft solutions and shares his strategic vision for 2021.
Presentation of the Technico Flor group
Technico Flor is a family-owned company, based in Allauch, near Marseille. The group employs about 180 people in France and 220 people worldwide. The Technico Flor group has three main activities: the development of perfumes (fragrance compositions), food flavors, and the distribution of ingredients for cosmetics, flavors and fragrances.
Why did you choose Microsoft Office 365?
Jérôme Quinten explains: "Before the Office 365 migration, the IT department consisted of one person. Managing 150 mailboxes was tedious, so the company looked for more sustainable and up-to-date solutions. We chose the Microsoft Office 365 suite for the simplification of mailbox administration, for the volume and the future implementation of collaborative work."
What made you decide to adopt Microsoft Teams?
"Containment revealed this tool that we had natively with the Office 365 suite. We didn't use it before, but with the health crisis of 2020, Teams became necessary. We have different sites (Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône, Levallois, Allauch...) and with the containment, travel was limited. It was therefore natural for us to implement this collaborative solution, especially for video-conferencing. As the tool is easy to use, the teams understood that it was vital for the continuity of the company's activity and quickly adopted it. Both our employees and our customers came naturally to Teams. Indeed, even without being equipped with Teams, our customers join us on our video conferences made on the tool.
At the moment, Microsoft Teams is used for inter-team communication, but more and more, we are implementing collaborative work. Today, there are a dozen Teams, very collaborative, in which our employees exchange data. We have an 80% adoption rate, which I would not have believed if I had been told about it a year ago!" exclaims Technico Flor's CIO.
Why did you choose to combine the Poly equipment with Teams?
"We already had videoconferencing equipment, but it was point-to-point, between only two meeting rooms, one in Allauch and the other in Levallois. The Poly system, interfaced with Teams, allowed us to have more accessible conference rooms, for internal exchanges and with our customers.
The Poly equipment we have available is dedicated to video conferencing, but we have also provided individual headsets for employees. We still have limited travel between sites, so video conferencing is a key tool for team exchange," Quinten says.
What are your plans for this year?
"The projects for 2021 are quite extensive. The year began with a global digitalization project. We have developed a digital strategy, with about fifteen projects, linked to the commercial part, to production, and also to internal communication. Currently, in Allauch, we are building two factories to quadruple the production area. We are going to equip these new sites with Poly videoconferencing equipment. In order to move towards more digitalization, we are planning to create applications on Microsoft Power Apps, because I have seen the usefulness of this application and the power it can provide us", says the Information Systems Manager.
How do you plan to use Microsoft Power Apps?
"We have several applications in mind. For example, we want to dematerialize the visit book to facilitate the reception and follow-up of people on site. We are in the chemical industry and our site has restricted access. We use our badges, but the presence of external people is noted by hand in our visit book. What we lack today is a better tracking of the presence on site. We want to replace paper and pen with a tablet to centralize the data.
We also thought of making a maintenance booklet to follow up on all the small jobs to be done in a factory. The aim is to avoid sending an e-mail for each problem identified to the person concerned, and instead to use a portal that centralizes all events, all small repairs. This allows the manager to list, group by category and send the right person to intervene depending on the work to be done.
For the moment, we are not yet mature enough, autonomous enough, to develop our own applications. Our goal is to train our external developer in Microsoft Power Apps, so that he can create some applications that will make us faster and more versatile. Then we plan to train ourselves to become autonomous in developing applications internally."
You have used Blue Soft Empower , are you satisfied with the work of our teams ?
Jérôme Quinten confirms: "Yes! Empower has helped us to structure ourselves and to have a better organization. For example, license management, now streamlined, is much more fluid for me. It's an undeniable time-saver.
The Empower teams are very attentive and often have lots of ideas. It is a good collaboration. With Empower, it's friendly, efficient, it's fluid and clear. Of the fifteen or so service providers we use, Empower is in my top 4, my top 3. It's a provider that I don't question at the moment, that's for sure!"
