Mom Corps

Staffing Firm Uses Online Tools to Boost Productivity for New Hires by 50 Percent

Allison O’Kelly needed cost-effective and flexible technologies to support Mom Corps, her “virtual workforce” business. She subscribed to Microsoft Office 365 to deliver productivity-enhancing, cloud-based tools to her 40 employees and franchise owners. They use the suite of communication and collaboration tools—without changing their lifestyles—so O’Kelly can achieve her goal of helping companies to implement flexible staffing solutions.

Business Needs:

When Allison O’Kelly had her first child, she was a top manager with Toys”R”Us. Balancing motherhood with a full-time job was a challenge, so as a Certified Public Accountant, O’Kelly opted for contract work. “As I got more work than I could handle alone, I began to introduce my friends to my clients. Many of my friends were looking for flexible work and companies didn’t know where to find this untapped pool of experienced talent that had opted out of the traditional workforce,” says O’Kelly. “I changed my contract business into a flexible-staffing company to fill that need. Mom Corps started out with just five moms. It has since become a nationwide company, with 18 franchises and thousands of placements to date.”

O’Kelly’s company has redefined the way people work. “We like to think of flexibility in the workplace in terms of time, duration, and place,” says O’Kelly. “It can mean working from home full-time working full-time at the office but not in the summer, or working from another area code. My staff and I are people who might need to go to soccer practice at 3 P.M. but will work at the computer until 1 A.M.”

Mom Corps is an innovator of that kind of flexibility: All 40 users are employees or franchise owners who work from home, and the company functions 100 percent virtually. Balancing work and family while expanding a dynamic new business requires effective coordination among a diffuse team of busy professionals. After five years of growth, O’Kelly felt the need to move Mom Corps beyond Skype phone calls and email-based document collaboration.

Mom Corps helps employers see the advantages of a flexible workplace. By pairing a creative business model with Office 365, we prove that people can work on their own terms and still get the job done.

– Allison O’Kelly
Chief Executive Officer, Mom Corps

“We needed a cloud-based communications and collaboration framework to broadcast information from corporate employees out to franchise owners, to facilitate local collaboration, and to build a sense of community,” says Trista Wearing, Director of Special Projects at Mom Corps. “Everyone had different versions of Microsoft Office, so it was a challenge to open and share documents. With no IT staff, we needed easy-to-use tools that everyone could fit into their everyday lives to stay productive.”

Solution:

O’Kelly found the right solution for Mom Corps with Microsoft Office 365, a suite of collaboration and productivity tools delivered through a cloud environment. O’Kelly is a member of 85 Broads, a global network of working women, and was nominated by that organization to participate in a joint project with Microsoft called “Your Office Your Terms,” an initiative to educate women about technologies that support working remotely.

O’Kelly saw how the connected, familiar Microsoft Office 365 applications, including Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Lync Online—and the latest version of the Microsoft Office Professional Plus desktop suite that comes with Office 365 subscriptions—would boost productivity. She and Wearing were attracted to real-time communications using Lync Online, which offers instant messaging and screen-sharing. They also saw the value of building a collaboration framework for Mom Corps using Office 365 intranet sites powered by SharePoint Online. “Office 365 came at just the right time for us,” says O’Kelly. “It provides a flexible IT foundation that our employees can use to collaborate from virtually anywhere. With Office 365, we can expand Mom Corps without asking anyone to change how they work.”

In 2011, Mom Corps subscribed to 72 seats of Office 365 and installed the Office Professional Plus desktop suite. Now, all employees use the latest Microsoft Office 2010 applications. O’Kelly engaged Cloud Strategies, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network (with Gold competencies), to provide training on Lync Online and to help Wearing design SharePoint templates for easily customizable corporate and franchise sites. “Cloud Strategies was great in helping me learn about setting up sites to meet corporate and franchise needs and to assign user permissions,” says Wearing.

Benefits:

By using Office 365, Mom Corps is taking advantage of the agility of cloud-based productivity services to reinforce the idea driving the company’s success: give people the opportunity—and the tools—to balance work and life, and tap into resources that you might not have realized were there. “Mom Corps helps employers see the advantages of a flexible workplace,” says O’Kelly. “By pairing a creative business model with Office 365, we prove that people can work on their own terms and still get the job done.”

Built a Corporate Community
O’Kelly is excited about how quickly Mom Corps staff has adopted Lync Online to connect across long distances, using instant messaging to stay in touch with colleagues and help new franchises feel at home. “Everyone is using Lync Online to build a sense of community,” she says. “It’s so easy to keep in touch, casually and professionally. I’m in Pennsylvania and my CFO is in Atlanta, but we use Lync Online to review financial reports by sharing screens and talk from PC to PC. When our SharePoint Online sites are finished, we’ll be able to significantly improve corporate and franchise communications.”

Streamlined Training by 50 Percent
Wearing uses Lync Online to share computers with new employees or franchise owners to help them understand the company’s recruiting software and corporate policies more quickly. “With Lync Online, we share screens and they learn by doing,” says Wearing. “It makes a huge difference. Our new employees and franchise owners get up to speed with our systems 50 percent faster.”

Improved Productivity
Now that all Mom Corps staffers use the latest version of Office Professional Plus desktop software, everyone can open and share documents and spreadsheets. “It’s a real productivity benefit to seamlessly share documents and spreadsheets,” says O’Kelly. “When our SharePoint Online sites are ready, we’ll store contracts and documents in one place for easy access and version control. We’ll be more accurate, cohesive, and efficient. I can hardly wait!”

Source:

Microsoft Case Study: Mom Corps

Partner(s): CloudStrategies