Raízen deploys Microsoft Teams and trains more than a thousand employees in 30 days

Raízen is an energy company specializing in the production and marketing of fuels, lubricants, and other specialties in Argentina. It is a licensee of the Shell brand in Argentina and Brazil. It is also the world's largest individual sugar producer and the world's leading ethanol producer, with a strong vocation for clean and renewable energy. The company was created in Brazil in 2011 and arrived in Argentina in 2018, when it purchased Shell's downstream business. In Argentina, it has a network of more than 760 service stations, one of the three largest refineries in the country, a model lubricants plant in technology, and four land fuel terminals and bases of operations in Ezeiza and Aeroparque.

In August 2019, the company initiated a project to increase the adoption of Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Phone System with the aim of improving communication between personnel in Brazil and those located in Argentina. "We were in the process of developing the project, and it wasn't easy because we had a particular telephone exchange system which doesn't have an extensive support team in Argentina,” said Raízen's operations and technology manager in Argentina, Pablo Salguero. “We also had to think about integrating it with a video conferencing system, especially because our parent company in Brazil was still using Skype Premium."

Raízen and Prisma deploy Teams in 30 days

During the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, management had the urgent need to create a collaborative environment among staff members. The company initiated a Skype for Business migration to Microsoft Teams, including the telephone system feature. Its main challenge was to deploy the Microsoft Phone System that enables call control and cloud PBX (switchboard) capabilities with Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business Online. Since then, Microsoft technology has been the best match for the communication and collaboration needs of Raízen staff.

Prisma, a Microsoft partner and FastTrack Partners member (a program that allows customers to transition from some solutions, such as Office 365, to the cloud in a seamless and reliable way), collaborated with Raízen on this important step toward digital transformation. "After the lockdown measures, Raízen thought it was a great idea to move from Skype to a collaborative environment,” said Juan Scafu, Prisma account executive. “One of the things they asked us to do was to migrate their telephone service from a third-party company to Microsoft. The service they had worked like a black box to handle all connectivity. The challenge was to make that black box work with Teams.” The Prisma team deployed the Microsoft tool and achieved telephone system compatibility with Teams and Skype.

Another challenge that Raízen and Prisma successfully met was the implementation of Teams in a short time. After achieving that, 80% of its 1,500 employees adopted the solution, and the company initiated a training plan for its staff through a series of training sessions framed in its "Raízen University" in alliance with the staff of the Systems, Internal Communications, and Human Resources departments. Both Teams implementation and training occurred within 30 days. "There were nine training sessions with approximately 200 people in attendance explaining the key features of Microsoft Teams,” explained Juan Scafu. “The sessions were two hours long during which participants navigated the tool and were able to clear all their concerns with the specialist.” For his part, Pablo Salguero explained that the organizational issue was a challenge: "The most difficult thing was to organize a large number of people in such a short time. The project was accelerated and Prisma was the right partner."

Implementation of SAP in Teams

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Raízen had a goal of deploying a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, SAP on premises. However, at that time, the company did not even have Microsoft Teams in place. According to Scafu, this system would be impossible to run without a collaborative work platform that allows staff to maintain a smooth exchange of information. "The implementation of SAP in 2020 was of great value because it was leveraged fully in Teams just after we started using this tool,” said Pablo Salguero. “We work with Prisma in an exceptional way. Prisma adapted to the pace and speed we needed.”

To implement SAP remotely via Teams, activities were tracked across the platform channels with each team of 50 communicating with each other in a fluid and organized manner. In addition, people training was conducted using Microsoft's communication and collaboration tool. Another solution that helped with this process was Microsoft Planner, which made it easy to manage and track tasks. Also, Microsoft Project, the software used by companies to manage projects, reinforced this implementation in Raízen.

Culture change in Raízen after remote work

Based on the remote working modality arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, Raízen successfully faced this challenge by generating cultural change within the company. "It was a paradigm shift as the traditional way of supporting changed. Quarantine accelerated this digital transformation, and this is a positive aspect because it means a better balance between personal and professional life, which in turn results in greater added value to the company," added Pablo Salguero. "Thanks to Microsoft Teams, we were able to debunk the myth that said that it was impossible to do large implementations if we were not all together locked in the same office, configuring and testing side by side," added Eduardo Martinez, CIO of Raízen.

The alliance between Raízen, Microsoft, and Prisma is, in Pablo's judgment, "the perfect definition of technology partners." Raízen seeks to maintain its collaboration with Prisma to continue to advance its digital transformation. They are challenged to deploy the Microsoft System Center platform at Raízen and to automate some important workflows with Power Automate.