“With Office 365, the good team that we’ve built will be able to do more. Having all our work on one cloud- based platform will be fantastic. All of us can work and be productive from anywhere.” Robert Richard, Owner and President, Southern Valve & Fitting USA Southern Valve & Fitting USA wanted simpler, more integrated technology and fewer vendors. It is subscribing to Microsoft Office 365 to gain multiple communications programs in one online service. By moving to this cloud offering, Southern Valve aims to streamline business processes from weeks to days; redirect up to three people from administrative work to sales; and save U.S.$20,000 or more in servers, software, and support. Business Needs Since 1971, Southern Valve & Fitting USA (SVF) has been providing wholesalers with plumbing, irrigation, and utility valves and fittings. Robert Richard bought the company in 1991 and in 1993 founded Asia Factory Direct, a company that sources products in China for distribution through SVF. Richard manages about 25 employees between the two companies, six in Miami, Florida, and the rest in Hong Kong and China. What appealed to Richard about owning SVF was the opportunity to build an efficient, innovative, and automated supply chain. “When I took over the company, everything was done manually,” says Richard, Owner and President of Southern Valve & Fitting. “The most sophisticated piece of technology was a fax machine. There was a lot of manual work in the way the business was run.” In 1991, Richard installed the MYOB enterprise resource planning system, implemented an email program, and eventually upgraded to Microsoft Exchange Server for email, collaboration, tasking, and calendaring. This technology enabled SVF to work more efficiently with customers and vendors and also created a more efficient supply chain. Richard later added EMC Documentum eRoom and Google Docs for document sharing, but encountered integration problems. Eventually, SVF installed Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for more sophisticated collaboration. In early 2011, the company subscribed to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online for customer relationship management. While he had succeeded in automating and simplifying many business processes, Richard felt that he had ended up with a complex, inefficient IT infrastructure. “We had a disparate platform whose pieces didn’t always connect,” he says. “I wanted one platform from one vendor, if possible, and a software and hardware platform we could take care of ourselves.” Solution Richard learned about Microsoft Office 365 and in late in 2010 and signed up to test the beta version. Microsoft Office 365 for professionals and small businesses is a group of cloud-based email, calendaring, collaboration, and conferencing services combined with web-based versions of the popular Microsoft Office programs. The service is protected by industry-leading antivirus and antispam software. Richard and five employees tested the service for several months in early 2011. The company switched its email from a third-party hosting provider to Microsoft Exchange Online. SVF also migrated existing documents and team sites from eRoom, Google Docs, and Office SharePoint Server to Microsoft SharePoint Customer: Southern Valve & Fitting USA Website: www.soval.com Customer Size: 25 employees Country or Region: United States Industry: Manufacturing—Construction Customer Profile Southern Valve & Fitting USA provides plumbing, irrigation, and utility valves and fittings. Based in Miami, Florida, Southern Valve and a sister company jointly employ 25 people in the United States and China. Software and Services Microsoft Office 365 − Microsoft Exchange Online − Microsoft Office Web Apps − Microsoft SharePoint Online Microsoft Office − Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 For more information about Microsoft Office, go to: www.office.com Microsoft Office 365 Customer Solution Case Study Manufacturer Simplifies Processes, Saves $20,000, Trims Vendors with Move to Cloud