Henkel advances digital transformation journey with move to Office 365 E5

Today’s post about Office 365 was written by Markus Petrak, corporate director at Henkel.

Henkel is looking at more than 140 years of company success—founded in 1876, our brands such as Schwarzkopf, Persil, and Loctite are well known among customers globally. As our environment evolves from a mere brick-and-mortar business to one where we see new sales records in e-commerce for beauty care products in a single day, it’s clear that as a company we must adapt to ongoing change. Today, digitalization is a major driver that is transforming our organization, capturing the ingenuity and dedication of more than 50,000 employees around the world. And of course, digital transformation is unthinkable without the constant development of our IT landscape. Three years ago, Henkel deployed Microsoft Office 365 to kickstart a digital workplace transformation to strengthen our competitive position in a rapidly changing market.

We are making huge strides in business cohesion and agility with Office 365, taking an important step in connecting our company through a common set of tools that contribute to increased productivity and agility. I like to think of our IT teams implementing these tools, enabling a modern work environment where everyone uses cloud services to share expertise and collaborate without geographical or hierarchical boundaries. Today, we’re upgrading to Office 365 E5 and taking Henkel to the next level with enhanced security, collaboration, mobility, and business intelligence.

Of course, security is uppermost in our minds as Henkel continues its transformational journey and employees enjoy mobile access to corporate data stored online in OneDrive for Business. While some people might think there is a tradeoff between security and mobility—that is not the case with Office 365 E5. We’re using Advanced Threat Protection as an intelligent defense to filter out phishing attempts and protect employees from clicking on unsafe links and attachments. And as far as compliance goes, we are working with Microsoft to help us achieve mandatory compliance with the new General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, which is a big topic in Europe now. Office 365 gives us a level of security we cannot achieve on our own. That’s another reason why we are glad that we are on the road with Office 365.

With Office 365 E5, we’re delivering an intelligent workplace, where employees gain self-service access to interactive, graphical reports and dashboards through Microsoft Power BI. Our employees use this service to create their own reports on demand. And for Henkel, there’s huge benefit in supporting efficient, widespread access to business information, such as increased agility in a market that’s moving faster than ever. The possibility to quickly assess the impact of an advertising campaign might serve as a good example: It’s easy to use Power BI to analyze real-time sales data and fine-tune our marketing activities to drive sales.

We’ve treated mobility as a given requirement for the modern workplace for a while now, but with Office 365 E5, we’re introducing cloud-based telephony as another way our employees can communicate and collaborate on any device, anywhere. Now we have a consistent Skype for Business Online experience across all devices, using one business number to stay in touch with colleagues. The faster we can communicate, the more efficiently we can get to market with new products. We’re also able to connect better with our global customers through Skype video calls. Today, we provide the ultra-responsive service that customers demand in a digital business environment.

In the climate of fast-paced, widespread collaboration, Office 365 E5 increases transparency and keeps us communicative and competitive. For example, when we introduce a new product to the market, colleagues from R&D, marketing, sales, and other involved departments use Skype video calls to collaborate in real time to develop and implement ideal strategies that accelerate our business.

What I enjoy most about my role is helping to build the best workplace for our employees to work to their potential in this digital era. Office 365 E5 offers business tools and services that everyone uses to work intuitively, alone or in multi-generational teams. Microsoft Teams is a perfect addition to Outlook and Yammer and it helps round out our solution set, complementing traditional email and enterprise social solutions. Using Teams across the company, we’re more agile and responsive when we collaborate.

With Office 365 E5, our IT landscape continues to provide an important basis for Henkel’s future success, for serving our global customers and consumers with innovative, high-quality products, and for taking our next steps in a digitalized world.

—Markus Petrak