You’ve invested in Office 2007, and now it’s time for the actual migration. You cannot afford to approach the undertaking willy-nilly — a switch to Office 2007 promises to be like no other. The user interface is radically different, and your employees will hit snags just trying to figure out how to perform basic tasks. How you handle the inevitable learning curve depends on your preparedness – and it may dictate future budget allocations, even the health of your IT department. In this series, we break down the components of our Office 2007 migration readiness kit, and give you the information you need for a snag-free switchover.

Part Four, a Case Study:

Client Profile
Toys-R-Us, a public, U.S.-based, consumer goods company with 6,000 global PC end-users.

Business Challenge
Toys-R-Us made the decision to migrate all global end-users from Microsoft Office 2003 to Microsoft Office 2007. The company realized that it didn’t have the internal support resources to handle the learning curve end-users and IT staff would face, nor did it have the training aids available to deliver quick adoption and continued workflow.

With the company’s Office 2007 upgrade investment, it was vital that IT leadership not only prove ROI on their decision to upgrade, but accomplish this while remaining within budget and not compromising productivity levels.

Solution
Today, the company’s internal help desk handles all hardware, networking and proprietary application support and outsources their “how-to” desktop application issues including Microsoft applications to PC Helps Support.

Fourth in a five-part Office 2007 migration readiness series.

In October 2007, the company decided to migrate all knowledge workers to Office 2007. They chose PC Helps Support as their Office 2007 migration assurance partner for several reasons, including:

• End-users’ existing confidence and comfort with PC Helps’ “how-to” support
• The program offers on-demand support and training — 24 hours a day, seven days a week
• Pricing is scalable and usage-based, which allows the company to remain within budget
• The program provides ongoing, solution-based call reporting and quality assurance reports, which provides IT leaders with proof of ROI

Toys-R-Us rolled out Office 2007 to 30 end-users per day through the projected completion date. Windows XP operating systems remained with no immediate plans to upgrade to Vista. PC Helps’ client services team worked with the company’s corporate communications department to create and coordinate a global education awareness campaign about the timing and schedule of deployment and the array of support outlets that were available for Office 2007 questions and issues. The company changed the help desk voice menu to include Office 2007 “how-to” questions, which continue to be exclusively handled by PC Helps.

PC Helps extended its migration assurance program beyond on-demand phone support by offering an array of training formats before, during and after deployment. Toys-R-Us utilized PC Helps’ on-site training twice a week, two times per day, from October through December, and all knowledge workers were required to attend. IT staff members responsible for supporting executives were required to take advanced-level courses as well. PC Helps offered 30-minute, live, instructor-led, web-based e-training classes throughout all stages of the migration, and continues to provide training to employees today. This multi-prong training approach allows for maximum adoption in the shortest amount of time.

Results
By utilizing the PC Helps migration assurance program, Toys-R-Us successfully migrated 6,000 end-users from Office 2003 to Office 2007 in a four-month period with minimal impact on productivity levels.

IT leadership was able to prove a return on investment by providing quality assurance reports and solution-based call reports, which illustrate high customer-service levels, continued learning, and time savings.

Quality of Service
Toys-R-Us’ employees rated PC Helps’ service a 9.5 out of 10, based on the following key performance measures: Speed of connection, phone manners, product knowledge, speed of solution and overall.

Response Statistics
Abandon rate: 0.32%
Time to reach a certified computer consultant (including ring time):
• Under 5 seconds: 90.8% • Under 15 seconds: 90.7% • Under 30 seconds: 92.7%

Downtime Analysis
Based on survey responses, employees estimated the time to resolve their support issues without PC Helps would be 2.94 hours. Based on industry averages for labor costs, overhead, and benefits, the client’s hard-dollar savings by having PC Helps resolve these Office 2007 support issues in just a few minutes amounts to approximately $73.57 per call.

Next up, a white paper, “How Much Will An Office 2007 and Vista Migration Hurt?” (Jen Darr)

READ THE SERIES: Part One, The Big Picture | Part Two, Readiness Checklist | Part Three, Staffing Matrix

FIND MORE INFO IN: Office 2007 Migration Checklist + Tools | Migration Case Study | PC Helps eTraining | Desktop Application Support | Contact PC Helps

Jenny Sweeney Office 2007, Office 2007 Migration Assurance Program, ROI, Worker Productivity best-of-breed, Help Desk, IT leaders, Office 2007, Office 2007 Migration Assurance Program, Outsourcing, ROI, software support, Worker Productivity