Lenzen Gruppe – Into the cloud with the Bechtle M365 Readiness Package

Lenzen Gruppe – Into the cloud with the Bechtle M365 Readiness Package.

The Lenzen Group is a leading corporate group in the strapping industry, offering tailored solutions for the engineering and packaging industries. The Group’s companies include P.W. Lenzen and TITAN Strapping Systems offering a broad-ranging portfolio of consumables and their technological components. As the Group was looking to make the switch to the cloud, Bechtle was on hand during the migration with a standardised, automated and customised Microsoft 365 Readiness Package, rolling out Microsoft 365 with Exchange Online or Teams in accordance with best practices.

Project details.

Services

Professional Services
Modern Workplace
Cloud

Industry

Manufacturing

Manufacturer

Microsoft

Company size

250 – 1,500 employees

Challenge.

The Lenzen Group’s success story began over 175 years ago when Peter W. Lenzen founded a cooperage in Hohenlimburg in 1842. These days, the manufacturer of strapping devices and systems, P.W. Lenzen, is flanked in the Lenzen Group by TITAN Strapping Systems and BINATEC Systemtechnik GmbH, which handles project planning, commissioning and supervising installations in plant construction. With the financial clout of the Lenzen Group behind them, these companies are able to collaborate strategically, but to further optimise inter-company communication, the strapping specialist was looking to modernise its IT infrastructure. Each individual company already had Exchange and Microsoft Office solutions installed locally, but the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a demand for video conferencing solutions to be implemented on the hop and the Lenzen Group seized the opportunity to introduce mobile working. The Group’s IT department knew that the only way that would be possible was by switching to Microsoft 365. As a long-standing IT service provider, Bechtle presented the Lenzen Group with its highly automated and standardised M365 Readiness Package developed in-house. For a flat-rate, this package allows Bechtle to offer fast and transparent migrations alongside the company’s own IT team and its expertise. In this way, the IT department gains practical experience in managing cloud applications such as Exchange Online, Teams, OneDrive and Intune during the implementation phase. What’s more, the price also includes implementation to defined minimum standards that go far beyond standard M365 installations.

Every step of this project went very smoothly as Bechtle is a reliable partner we can collaborate extremely well with. Bechtle met all deadlines even though they were quite tight and trained 70 of our employees, who gave us extremely good feedback. The company is very well positioned and operates in a manner that allows us to get the information we need quickly and easily from a dedicated contact, which was incredibly important when it came to time management.

Christian Ney, Head of Microsoft 365 Project Rollout, Lenzen Group

Solution.

In close collaboration with the Lenzen Group, Bechtle initially installed Microsoft 365 with the help of the M365 Readiness Package for a handful of IT employees on a trial basis. Bechtle was able to complete this very quickly as everything was fully automated, shortening lead times to a matter of weeks instead of months. The trial phase was the perfect opportunity to provide the Lenzen Group with all the migration team’s contact details, suggested dates and a custom-branded tenant page for which Bechtle provisioned a suitable hybrid basic infrastructure and set up the tenant in Microsoft Azure. As this specialist knowledge was only required once, the Lenzen Group handed responsibility for the task over to Bechtle, contributing as and when required. The trial period was an overwhelming success, particularly the optimised communication options M365 afforded even among the small group of IT staff. A large number of external field service staff work for the Lenzen Group and have to be able to communicate with the locations. Another critical aspect to consider was security. The M365 Readiness Package significantly improved the security of the Lenzen Group’s Exchange server, implemented access rights and boosted compliance in the Group. After reviewing the Group’s specific requirements, the package also included the roll out of all M365 features such as Exchange Online, Teams, OneDrive and Intune for centralised and secure device management. The Lenzen Group’s own IT team handled the integration of Power Automate workflows, Microsoft 365 collaboration tools, project planning tools and security, configuring all necessary authorisation workflows and leveraging embedded endpoint protection in M365 for security. What’s more, Bechtle showed the Group’s IT team how to actively manage, control and develop the cloud environment itself. Now, thanks to the documentation put together by Bechtle, the Lenzen Group is able to operate its cloud environment independently.

Business benefits.

By rolling out Microsoft 365 with the standardised and largely automated Bechtle Microsoft 365 Readiness Package, the Lenzen Group’s communication has seen considerable and fast change thanks to Bechtle’s streamlined processes. Video conferences are now the norm for all employees, collaboration among teams has improved, information is more easily shared and employees are better able to work on the road. The close collaboration and knowledge transfer with and by Bechtle were as beneficial as the M365 Readiness Package itself, as the Lenzen Group doesn’t book services based on time and expense, but pays according to packages and content. This not only takes the Group’s in-house expertise to the next level, but has created a sustainable and secure working environment.