Today’s post was written by Sebastian Mahler, head of enterprise infrastructure at Linde.
When I joined Linde, I was interested in the challenges inherent in managing a global company. We are one of the world’s largest industrial gases companies—and over the 12 years I’ve worked here, these challenges have only grown more complex. We serve many local markets with numerous regional offices; however, due to an increasingly volatile and connected global economy, we needed to build a more cohesive collaborative organization. We replaced our on-premises Lotus Notes solution with Office 365 cloud-based business productivity services so everyone could work better together, and to drive agility and responsiveness in a digital marketplace.
Our core values—empowering people, innovating for customers, thriving through diversity, and a passion to excel—are all reflected in our decision to move to Microsoft 365 Enterprise. For Linde, empowering people is all about enabling collaboration among colleagues and with partners and customers. Productive teamwork, enabled by easy access to resources, further drives innovation. And empowered employees are inspired and passionate about what they do. In this way, Office 365 strengthens the principles of the “Linde Spirit,” which underlies our corporate culture.
Improving collaboration is crucial for enabling better communication among our global service functions. We’ll be using Skype for Business Online to run management meetings, where we connect people from all over the globe in virtual conferences, thereby accelerating business decisions. And collaboration extends beyond internal teamwork. We need to maintain close relationships with our partners and customers, especially as we are seeing an increase in our business to consumer engagements. One reason we did not choose Google was that that the Office productivity apps we rely on every day, such as Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, form a common language in the business world. Moving to Office 365 makes collaboration with outside parties seamless.
OneDrive for Business is another user-friendly collaborative service that helps us create a seamless workflow within a team, and even between departments. Setting up file shares was a cumbersome part of the collaboration process that Office 365 has essentially eliminated. And when we share spreadsheets or work together on presentations, version control in OneDrive ensures that everyone is using the latest material.
We also enjoy a more secure, mobile way of working, thanks to the security and integration capabilities within Enterprise Mobility + Security, which we deployed alongside Office 365 and Windows 10. Today, it’s simple for me to work from home—I use two-factor authentication to access everything I need. I no longer feel tied to my laptop because I can be productive on multiple devices without worrying about compromising security.
Our migration to cloud-based business tools is only just beginning, as we look forward to adopting services such as Microsoft Planner and Yammer. We’re working with Microsoft Consulting Services and Microsoft FastTrack to help us make the most out of the newest functionality. With their help, we can take advantage of the innovative evergreen approach that Microsoft is delivering across the cloud platform. Their expert guidance has helped us to establish change management communities and build a support network, so as we rollout new functionality, the change management process will be in place to empower our employees to make the best use out of the services. Everyone from plant floor workers to management staff will benefit from Linde’s renewed commitment to our global standard of excellence.
—Sebastian Mahler
Read the case study for more details on the Linde digital transformation.
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