IT Support Company Boosts Productivity by 20% with Microsoft® Office 2010

Since 2001, eMazzanti Technologies has provided IT consulting services to small and medium-sized businesses in the New York metropolitan area and internationally. As a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, the company offers a wide range of services, including security, network design, disaster recovery, and ongoing support.

Renowned for their innovative approach to network services, eMazzanti is focused on serving customers with the utmost efficiency to help them work better and faster. To meet this goal, they needed a more efficient Office solution to reduce the time spent working in applications and increase the time spent servicing clients.

After receiving a high volume of requests from customers interested in Microsoft Office 2010, eMazzanti deployed it internally and then began implementing the latest Office Suite for clients. The new software has allowed the company to serve customers quicker and communicate more effectively.

 

Situation

For eMazzanti, premium customer service is always the core focus. To maintain its high service standards on every project, the company must deliver three critical content pieces to each customer.

The first piece is the  project plan which conveys the scope and detailed specifications of the work to be done. eMazzanti submits between 3-6 project plans per week. Multiple engineers would take turns accessing and modifying the files, a sequential process that impaired productivity.

Network diagrams are another critical focus, providing engineers with the complex data infrastructure records for implementations and support. Engineers were spending at least 25 hours per month on these diagrams.

eMazzanti also provides all customers with technical documentation of network systems and procedures. In addition to assisting with ongoing tasks and cutting down on support calls, this documentation illustrates the value of the eMazzanti’s services. To complete these documents, eMazzanti had to use a third-party application to manipulate the screen shots and graphics included in the materials.

Email management posed another challenge. With up to 300 new messages to field each day, Jennifer Mazzanti, President of eMazzanti Technologies, desired a more efficient, robust mail solution to streamline communications.

Solution

To achieve more efficient collaboration, cut down on the amount of time spent on diagrams and documentation, and streamline email management, eMazzanti Technologies upgraded to Office 2010. Office 2010 helped deliver a significant boost in productivity, saving up to 300 hours per year in diagram creation, and expediting project deliverables by up to 20%.

“Our customers see a higher return on investment if they use a firm that works faster,” notes Jennifer Mazzanti. “By using Office 2010 internally and implementing it for our customers, we get more done for them in less time.”

Smoother, Smarter Diagramming Capabilities

Microsoft Visio® 2010 offers a more intuitive and organized interface, making it easier for users to access common functions and complete diagrams more quickly. There is also more support for process diagrams and full integration with Microsoft SharePoint® 2010 encourages cross-application collaboration.

With the new Visio, eMazzanti has enjoyed a significant efficiency gains in its network diagramming capabilities. It has reduced its time investment by 20%, saving a total of 300 hours per year. This means that engineers now have more availability to focus on optimizing the customer experience.

“Our network diagrams are a critical part of our business. The new Visio lets us present accurate, complex visual presentations much faster and with less margin of error,” says Mazzanti.

A More Robust Graphical Experience

The new version of Microsoft Word® offers new efficiencies, including built-in co-authoring*, sleeker navigation, and richer image editing features. These new capabilities have been especially appreciated by the eMazzanti team.

“It’s the little things that make a document from eMazzanti stand out from the competition, and those things take a good amount of time,” says Mazzanti. “Customizing those steps in Word makes the process far more intuitive, and lets us focus on the actual data instead of the application.”

Word’s image tools have enabled the eMazzanti team to produce more polished documentation faster by keeping all editing functions in one place. “When it comes to formatting images, performing as many tasks as possible within one application results in a huge productivity gain, both for our customers and for the engineers supporting them,” notes Mazzanti.

The expanded SharePoint integration has also allowed eMazzanti engineers to collaborate more efficiently when creating documentation. The ability to access and modify documents simultaneously has reduced project plan creation time by 20%, saving roughly one full day per week in productivity.

More Organized Communications

For Jennifer Mazzanti, maintaining her daily flow of up to 300 emails was a huge challenge. Just days after implementing Microsoft Outlook 2010, she was amazed by the application’s speed and intuitiveness. “The new Outlook has greatly improved the entire company’s workflow,” Mazzanti notes.

The Conversation View has allowed Jennifer to save up to 20% of daily email management time. “Now, I can click two buttons and move an entire thread at once—no more time spent filing multiple messages. Additionally, by synchronizing Office 2010 with my Windows Mobile® Smart phone, I can clean up email conversations when I am away from the office. It’s changed the way we work and helped us become more efficient.”

 

Big Savings Equates to Better Service

For eMazzanti, the benefits of Office 2010 are best reflected by the level of their customers’ satisfaction. “In our business, time is money,” notes Jennifer. “Wherever we can be more efficient internally, we can pass on the savings to our customers and our bottom line. And by demonstrating how Office 2010 is working for us, we can boost sales and help our customers become just as efficient.”

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