As a leading technology provider in the industrial 3D printing of metals and plastics, EOS GmbH, founded in 1989, is an internationally active company with over 1,250 employees spread across seven technology centres worldwide.
With now 15 locations and a growing number of partners and customers, collaboration posed an increasingly significant challenge. A unified structure with clearly defined responsibilities and global networking was essential.
The introduction of Microsoft Teams provided a central platform for meetings, chats, notes, file sharing, and task planning across locations, promoting communication and collaboration internally and externally.
The rapid and agile introduction of Microsoft Teams is noteworthy. The conceptualization and development phase took about two months, followed by a pilot phase of another two months. The Go Live happened at the perfect time for everyone, just before the long-term phase of working from home caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This greatly supported the rapid acceptance of MS Teams.
Teams was introduced just in time before the COVID-19 crisis, and it greatly supported virtual work from home. The employees from various departments involved in the project were highly motivated to adopt new tools.
Alexander Kinast
Director Global Information Technology at EOS
At the beginning of the project, pilot key users were defined, consisting of pilot groups and contacts. Training sessions were the foundation for gathering requirements and creating a functional concept. Subsequently, around 20 pilot team rooms (150 pilot users) were created. For example, the IT department transitioned from manual boards to using IT portfolio boards and Kanban boards with Planner. Status meetings are now conducted via Teams with the support of Planner, where the checklists correspond to a “Definition of Done.”
The technical core of the solution is a central SharePoint site for processing requests in Microsoft Teams and supporting users with any questions. Lists, Teams, and Planner were designed together, with a PowerShell job used to generate Teams and Planner. The custom generation of MS Teams was disabled to ensure quality and clarity.
For the automated creation of Microsoft Teams using the Graph API, a standardized structure was defined. Integration of MS OneNote as a separate tab, creation of a linked MS Planner per team, and the generation of standardized buckets and tasks, together with MS Teams, form the basis of a holistic process. The corporate identity and the design of the SharePoint pages were customized to match EOS, enabling a unified appearance. Through agile methodology, MS Teams was continuously expanded, allowing for ongoing process optimization.
As part of the technical implementation of the Teams rollout, the Azure AD profiles of employees were extended with additional information (e.g., a photo). Security settings for Azure AD, MS Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, as well as for collaboration with external parties, were revised and secured through multi-factor authentication. Each step was closely coordinated with data protection, information security, and the works council.
Alight and EOS tackled numerous other tasks and initiatives together: A training concept as well as support for key users and end users were designed. Additionally, a platform for FAQs, a discussion forum, as well as how-to videos and presentations were provided to users to ensure sustainable usage.
A concept for the operation and handling of the Teams was developed. In a communication concept, blog articles, news, regular mailings, and other materials were jointly prepared.
It is worth highlighting the excellent teamwork among all EOS colleagues and Alight. Only together could the project be implemented so efficiently, successfully, and quickly.