“The low price of Office 365 is compelling for a small virtual business. It gives us about 95 percent of the benefits available to a Fortune 500 company at a fraction of the cost.”
—Sean Johnson, Chief Financial Officer, FLO Wine
3 employees
FLO Wine is a division of FLO Brands, a lifestyle company created by Marcus Johnson, a jazz musician who has released 15 CDs. The company produces a Chardonnay and a Red Blend, and is expanding its product line.
United States
Business Productivity
Cloud Services
English
Confronted with an aging communication and collaboration solution that had reached the end of its supported life cycle, Georgia State University (GSU) decided not to update its existing on-premises Novell GroupWise software.
Instead, it switched to cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 to better support mobile and remote workers using PCs, Macs, and various mobile devices and to better interoperate with already-planned deployments, including Active Directory and Microsoft Office applications. Soon, students will be upgraded to Office 365 for education from Microsoft Live@edu. Now, GSU has trimmed its annual email-related infrastructure cost by 50 percent, and a simplified IT environment is freeing up the equivalent of 2.5 employees who can be repurposed for other IT tasks. The university is seeing improved employee productivity and expects a five-year savings of about US$1 million.
FLO Wine sells wine as one of the lifestyle offerings of its renowned founder, musician and entrepreneur Marcus Johnson. In 2012, the company launched its first two offerings—a Red Blend and a Chardonnay. “Marcus has a passion for wine,” says Sean Johnson, Chief Financial Officer at FLO Wine. “The synergy of music and wine really resonates with fans.”
The virtual company wanted a cost-effective and efficient productivity solution that featured a shared calendar. “Marcus is our brand ambassador,” says Johnson. “We needed to be able to coordinate his music and wine activities with a single calendar.”
In January 2012, FLO Wine hired C3 Integrated Solutions, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network, to implement Microsoft Office 365, an online service that unites familiar Microsoft applications with the power of email, calendaring, collaboration, and communications.
FLO Wine uses Microsoft Exchange Online, a component of Office 365, to send email and share files. It uses Microsoft SharePoint Online to organize corporate information, track store sales, and create task lists, as well as host a shared calendar where it can track wine and music events around the world.
Since it implemented Office 365, FLO Wine has realized many benefits. Says Johnson, “With Office 365, I use the same interface I’ve used for years—from anywhere.”
Microsoft Case Study: FLO Wine
Partner(s): C3 Integrated Solutions :
