Sogei transforms its culture and achieves 1,100 return on investment with Microsoft Adoption and Change Management services

Empowering culture change and adoption

While Sogei employees’ transition to working from home during the pandemic was aided by technologies from Microsoft, low adoption of these tools was preventing workers from maintaining high productivity. Sogei needed a true partner to help it not only adopt new tools but also change its working culture. The company commissioned Microsoft to lead the way with its Adoption and Change Management (ACM) services team.

To Veronica Tino, Head of Employee Experience and Communications at Sogei, the partnership was vital: “This journey has intrinsically boosted our internal competencies, creating long-term value for Sogei. The continual and consistent knowledge transfer from the Microsoft ACM team enabled us to build our own change capability, which we can now capitalize on and apply to other key initiatives of our customers in the central public administration.”

At Microsoft, the goal is to explore all aspects of what a customer like Sogei needs, and then go beyond that. For Sharom Shojaey, Microsoft Adoption and Change Management Lead, that meant building a strong partnership, taking on challenges, and achieving every goal set.

Synergic collaboration and people centricity

To start, Shojaey helped Sogei consolidate a vision and create an identity not just for the Microsoft 365 adoption program, but rather for the whole digital transformation. “The key to success was the highly transparent and trustful relationship established with the customer. Inspired by Microsoft corporate values, we maintained an open and inclusive environment that fostered a ‘one-team’ effort with a shared purpose and a common vision,” says Shojaey. “With this mindset, we successfully empowered the customer with a blend of methodology and creativity, adapting to their unique culture and needs.”

A custom-made adoption plan was key, but Microsoft also executed changes beyond traditional communications and training with sponsorship, coaching, change network implementation, resistance management, measurements, rewards, and recognition.

“The collaboration with Microsoft has been nothing short of seamless, with clearly defined roles and a common goal. We highly value the holistic change approach brought by Microsoft ACM, as opposed to the traditional ‘communications and training’ effort we have been exposed to by other providers,” says Chiara Acquaviva, Technical and Change Leader at Sogei.

Return on Investment, well-being and productivity gains

The solution has brought long-term value by ramping up an internal adoption Center of Excellence with a governance structure complete with clear roles and responsibilities. Sogei can now use qualitative and quantitative measures to track adoption and identify areas of intervention. Microsoft also helped Sogei recruit, empower, and engage a network of advocates to champion Microsoft 365 adoption and influence their peers to work in new ways, emphasizing that the people are the real asset of the program.

Within six months, thanks to the adoption of these new ways of working, typical users were saving an average of 4.5 hours per week from efficient collaboration and information sharing. Forty percent of this saved time was reinvested in productive time, and 34 percent was spent on personal well-being and upskilling. In only half a year, Sogei achieved a 194 percent increase in collaboration with Microsoft Teams and 60 percent reduction of email volume. What’s more, almost 100 percent of Sogei users now actively use Teams. Even accounting for the annual cost for Microsoft 365 E3 licenses and Microsoft ACM consulting services, Sogei achieved a 1,100 percent return on investment and saw millions of dollars in annual efficiency reinvested in productive time.

Creating trailblazers 

Overall, the program has brought increased work satisfaction, well-being, and productivity to Sogei all at the same time. “This strategic partnership has been pivotal for the fulfillment of our vision and objectives. Experiencing this change program at Sogei enabled us to scale the same program, with Microsoft’s trusted guidance, for our own customers within the Ministry of Economy and Finance,” says Monica Gabrielli, Head of Strategy and New Business Development at Sogei.

“Our digital transformation exceeded expectations and positioned us as trailblazers in the Italian public sector. By investing in people-centric technology adoption, we successfully shifted to a new culture of collaboration and agility. added Fabrizio Rauso, Director of People, Organization, and Digital Experience at Sogei. “We could not have achieved these transformational results without hands-on guidance and support from Microsoft Adoption and Change Management.”

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