Client Profile

Paradies Lagardère brings 70 years of experience in pioneering trends, developing innovative shopping, and dining options, and delivering engaging experiences for airport travelers across North America.  With a retail and dining presence of 850 stores and 170 restaurants and bars in more than 100 airports, Paradies Lagardère is among the travel industry’s best in creating memorable and positive customer experiences for today’s travelers.

Situation

Challenges:

Training & Awareness  (SharePoint vs Teams)

• Since SharePoint was not currently being used within the organization as an intranet for broad communications, end-users were informed of areas that overlapped with Microsoft Teams.

Existing Technologies & Processes

• Integrating change away from solutions currently being used, like Shared Drives, Box, Dropbox, to new solutions was essential to the organization.
• Email for link sharing and conversations around documents is an embedded behavior that is hard to break but would work better in SharePoint.

Local File Management (Version Management and Missing Files)

• Because files are often shared via email being on the latest/correct version is always a concern. There is a chance for loss of files due to machine failure, multiple versions being shared, users out of the office, etc.

Shared Drive Access

• The shared drive requires connectivity. Users in the field cannot access files in the Shared Drive, currently, files are shared by email, shared via Dropbox/Box, or by other means.  

Security Configuration

• SharePoint is intended for broad communications and potentially external communications. The need for governance and security is important for those who require access externally. 

Current Needs:

• Centralized,  Secure File Management & Sharing – This includes working documents and documents shared with those in and outside of the department.
• Document Collaboration – The ability for two or more people to collaborate on a document together.
• Team Chat/Collaboration  (Structured) – Communication within the Department in a Team around work products
• 1:1 or Group Chat – Ability to communicate between users
• Outbound Communications – Sharing information outside the department that may or may not include documents.
• Process Management – Organization around work products, projects, and deliverables that may or may not include workflows but involve lots of documents, departments, and communication.

Solution 

ThreeWill worked with Paradies to create a Microsoft 365 roadmap that consisted of a phased approach to leveraging the M365 platform for communication and collaboration. In Phase 1, the focus was to get all departments, teams, and users to embrace and leverage the core communication, collaboration, and document management features in M365. The key goal was to move all employees onto the same platform from Google Docs, DropBox, and all other file-centered collaboration tools.

Every department was scheduled to be onboarded independently to ensure all attention was focused on the transition, change management, and successful adoption in M365. Individual departments were engaged so that the outcomes would satisfy departmental goals as well as produce content necessary for day-to-day operations and for company-wide rollup.

Phase 1 included the launch of the Paradies Employee Experience “the Hub” that focused on employee communications, employee recognition, and collaboration. Custom theming and branding was created for the Hub to give it a clean, consistent look across all department sites as well as the Hub landing site. Employee Optimizers were added to the Hub’s landing site and department sites to increase both engagement and provide easier access to content. Examples include a company directory, birthdays, anniversaries, employee praise, custom search, custom page templates, and tagging.

An interactive training site was created to educate users on search, file/folder access, and using tools like SharePoint, Teams, and Office products online. News and Pages were created and tied to page templates to simplify content creation and allow for automatic curation of information on the top of site landing pages.

Business Benefits

The enhancements gave Paradies Lagardère content owners the ability to quickly create and publish high-fidelity, secured communications to employees throughout the organization. By leveraging the M365 suite of products they were able to have a centralized “Hub” for information and news consumption that improved search, document management, visibility of people, and communications. The new Paradies Employee Experience features a company directory, birthday/anniversaries, employee praise, and Hub news. This has been successful in generating Hub traffic, awareness, and overall employee engagement. Teams are now able to collaborate both internally and externally to create and update documents in a single location. By consolidating into a highly collaborative solution, the company reduced licensing costs and maintenance of multiple document management solutions.