Digital Transformation
U.S. Chamber of Commerce digitally enables operations to lower costs and improves member services.
Challenge
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the world’s largest business organization representing the interests of more than 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions. Our members range from mom-and-pop shops and local chambers to leading industry associations and large corporations. They all share one thing—they count on the Chamber to be their voice in Washington, D.C.
The Challenge:
Legacy Messaging and Collaboration Tools
Struggling Exchange and File Servers.
The existing Exchange email server hardware being used by the Chamber was overworked due to long term growth and an increased reliance on email communications over the past 7 years.
Additionally, the client’s existing file server was becoming outdated and therefore had very limited capabilities. This was placing an extra burden on the already overworked Exchange server because employees were relying on email to accomplish daily productivity tasks and collaboration with other colleagues on files and documents.
Our responsibility was to replace the client’s antiquated Exchange and file servers with a more efficient cost-effective email and document management solution.
Lack of Mobility
Employee mobility is an issue that has taken on a whole new meaning as more and more businesses have gone global. Employees today are commonly asked to take assignments in company locations away from home — either in another state or in another country. These kinds of opportunities are seen as benefits by many employees who enjoy both experiencing new cultures and the multi-cultural exposure, which is more people than ever before.
Effectively managing employee mobility is important. Without the right planning and access to business applications, Chamber was not prepared to meet the challenges these requirements present. They were faced with loss of productivity, or worse, loss of its best employees because of lack of preparation.
Strategy and Solution
Anchor IT helped Chamber bolster business operations by building out new processes, a Hybrid Office 365 and Azure environment.
The implementation of Office 365 and Azure services in a hybrid manner to existing systems meant that Anchor IT could control the speed of the move to the new platform after the implementation and initial migration with Chamber. The IT team were quickly able to focus on the advantages of an “as a Service” platform, meaning they were able to realize the business case benefits without being hindered by technical challenges. Microsoft Teams was used as a wide-ranging communication and collaboration platform throughout the organization and third parties during the adoption and beyond. Hybrid Exchange Online ensured communications on a single platform with integration to SharePoint Online coming in future phases. Anchor worked with Chamber to quickly design the Azure infrastructure networking and environment, using preferred practices. Chamber approached this with a view to building a long term, secure and scalable infrastructure in which to provision IT services for immediate and future business requirements.
Anchor IT was keen to address an historic lack of investment in IT by leveraging off premises opportunities for their IT provision. Many users of the IT systems were either remote, temporary or in third party organizations. Therefore, having a stable IT platform for collaboration and productivity without a huge investment in remote access solutions was key. Anchor saw an opportunity to leverage Microsoft Cloud technology to enable agile provisioning of IT in a secure manner and reduce ongoing management and maintenance, including system upgrades. Having stability and enhanced user experience were vital to the success of the project. Anchor IT, supported by Chamber, were able to successfully provide a platform for in-flight business projects to adopt new IT services.
And so, Chamber worked with Anchor IT to standardize, digitize and crate a more mobile workforce so they could empower its employees to work from anywhere, securely.
