Cloud technology supports Coty in drive to celebrate beauty
Today’s post was written by George Katsouris, Global IT VP, Operations & Services at Coty.
Coty is a leading global beauty company making cosmetic, skincare, fragrance, hair color and styling brands loved by many. We want to positively disrupt the cosmetics industry to promote a radically inclusive world of beauty. We believe passionately that the beauty of humanity lies in the individuality and authenticity of people. Coty exists to celebrate the diversity of beauty.
Microsoft 365 plays a part in our vision, providing technology that amplifies our strengths and helps drive innovation. In an increasingly complex multichannel environment, Coty saw moving to the cloud as a means to stay ahead of the curve. We use Microsoft Cloud services to focus our energy on creating engaging and innovative products that drive authentic beauty experiences, rather than spending time on supporting IT infrastructure. We were searching for a scalable, agile solution for our business, and we realized that Microsoft 365 allows us to add resources quickly. It also decreases our reliance on local hardware because our users can easily access the rich tools they need to be productive anywhere, anytime.
A recent acquisition of the Procter & Gamble Specialty Beauty business presented us with a unique opportunity: we had six months to deliver an environment for 12,000 employees who would join our company. It was the perfect time to move to the cloud as the new foundation for our growing enterprise. We achieved a global migration to Office 365 in four months, first moving Coty employees’ mailboxes to the cloud and then creating new accounts in Office 365 for the Procter & Gamble employees who became part of the Coty global team. We mapped out the global geographies of employee groups and reporting hierarchies and considered the legislation around privacy in different countries—something that Microsoft is addressing today with the Multi-Geo Capabilities in Office 365.
Enabling highly secure modern work environments is part of our overall vision to create an effortless end-user experience for our employees. The interoperability and similar look and feel across Office 365 creates a sense of familiarity, so we can work productively in all the apps and services. Today, 65 percent of Coty employees enjoy a new laptop provisioned with Windows 10. We are updating the rest of our employees’ laptops as part of our ongoing hardware refresh. We are using Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection and Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics to improve the depth and breadth of our security capabilities, and we will use Microsoft Azure Multi-Factor Authentication for all Office apps and services.
As the organization grows, standardizing our branding across all 150 countries where we operate is essential. One way we are doing this is via an app that uses OneDrive to distribute presentation material to our entire Wella sales force. These presentations are available in close to 60 languages. The goal was to make it easy and intuitive for sales reps to give the same powerful presentations to customers and win business in China, the United States, and Germany. Global sales teams also use SharePoint Online to access sales and marketing materials they need quickly, so they can focus on engaging with the customer.
After more than a century in the beauty business, we know that industry-changing ideas come from a collaborative, creative workforce. Our employees are embracing the power of Microsoft Cloud technologies and other compatible tools to ensure our total suite can help us keep the iconic brands in the Coty portfolio on the leading edge of beauty.
—George Katsouris