May 18, 2020
Partner: Inova Solutions | Client: Garage Isla Verde, LLC. | Location: Puerto Rico | Size: 170 employees | Industry: Automotive
Garage Isla Verde (GIV) began 51 years ago as a service auto shop founded by Mr. Carlos M. Quinones and his wife Carmen Delia Gonzalez. The family business evolved to be now the leader of the auto industry in Puerto Rico for the quality of its employees who represent Mercedes-Benz. Today they are proud to continue their tradition of innovation and customer service and to extend this unique experience through their Virtual Dealer.
When facing the COVID-19 emergency at GIV they knew they had to act rapidly in order to keep succeeding in what they do. This pandemic served as a painful reminder that businesses should always be adequately prepared to ensure business continuity. The government ordered to close all non-vital organizations to stop the virus from spreading. This meant that the dealership couldn’t receive any customers and even worse, how were their staff going to continue working during this lockdown?
Fast transition amidst crisis
It was sudden and abruptly, that the company’s strategy for change management had to be implemented in matters of days, business transformation became more personal and urgent than ever. All employees were now required to learn to collaborate, do meetings and share files while keeping the security they are used to with M365. But how, a company with over 170 employees, could accomplish this new work environment in a short time? Inova, who helped GIV with their baby steps into digital transformation with M365, created an acceleration adoption plan for a network of ‘champions’ to help drive adoption at the company, which included:
- Intensive training program
- Support program
Training is a key element in empowering the end users because it provides know-how, encourages adoption, and builds momentum around using this innovative collaboration hub. Moving forward, Inova conducted virtual training sessions to these champions. To keep it interesting for these champions, the instructor used engaging teaching tactics to help embrace Teams. He challenged the champions, taught them how to use the technology and explained the ‘why,’ which ensured the end-users felt comfortable, capable, and self-reliant using Teams. After the formal training was completed, Inova’s instructor provided continuous learning and remote support to these champions and had several follow-up moments to check who may have been struggling, give extra assistance, and have one-on-one meetings for those who had more in-depth questions.
These champions are now teaching the rest of the organization on how to adopt Teams!
A truly unified experience
With Microsoft Teams, GIV has created a unified experience for chat, information sharing, meetings, and calls that brings the entire enterprise together. Employees can now easily share information and contacts, create virtual workspaces as they need them, and ultimately work in a more efficient and effective way. This has helped GIV improve its productivity and collaboration and there are no more barriers to working from home. It has helped their business up and running since the COVID-19 crisis began. Users have expressed how content they are with the tool, same for the IT team and the managers have expressed this. Inova got the honor of the feedback from their general manager, Mr. Pérez-Carro thanking us for all the benefits that Teams has provided them.
"Teams couldn't have come at a better time. Despite the lockdown we are going through, it has allowed us to work as a team remotely."
- Francisco Pérez-Carro, General Manager, 2020
“As an Information Systems Manager, I have long been looking for an integrated platform that would enable collaboration between users and departments inside and outside the company. A platform that would allow me to centrally organize the daily operation to provide support to users and have most of the resources accessible in a single environment.”.
- Eugenio Cardona, IT Manager, 2020
Their staff can now work from home; managers can have their meetings with all their staff securely and remotely. They cater their customers via Teams, either by IM or by calls as they recently added Phone System and Calling Plans to their subscription and can make external calls to customers and their partners. In order to add automatization to these new processes, GIV implemented Auto Attendants and Call Queues that have become a great need during this COVID-19 issue.
With Teams, there is now a huge reduction in the amount of time required to get their meetings started and now staff members schedule meetings for only half an hour, which they couldn’t really do before. Another advantage is that with the help of scheduling assistant, its way easier to create meetings, especially when multiple colleagues needs to participate. That’s a huge benefit, both in terms of staff satisfaction and in meeting productivity.
Achieving a new peak in collaboration
Microsoft Teams usage has increased tremendously since the acceleration adoption plan was implemented. Another important factor is the usage of email, this went down with almost 35% since the staff members of GIV are now communicating through Teams more proactively and efficiently; internal emails have been replaced by chat messages in Teams. Users are now using email for what it’s supposed to, external communication, where needed.
GIV had implemented the powerful tool like M365 that has integrated solutions for their current needs like Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive, yet something that needed to be adopted by the whole company. With Inova support and guidance, GIV can now profit even more of their Microsoft 365 cloud services and making their purchase more cost efficient. Prior to our solution, we have used the Microsoft Teamwork Assessment as base for the assessment that we performed for GIV. What made this a unique solution was the trust the customer has with Inova and the knowledge and resources to respond to their sudden need and offered tailored solution. Inova has implemented Teams for 3 more companies such as: Área Local de Desarrollo Laboral, SIMED, and HeadStart Humacao.