In a constantly changing landscape, teamwork has never been more important. Accenture is empowering its more than 620,000+ digital workforce by not only bringing the data, insights and services to where our people work, but also putting the tools in their hands to live a truly cloud-native life.

To make this happen, we have undertaken a digital worker journey that involves foundational technology, productivity and collaboration. In particular, we have improved collaboration and productivity company-wide, using tools such as Microsoft Office 365, Windows 10 and OneDrive for Business. Now, we are making the best use of Microsoft Teams’ versatility to bring together technology and human ingenuity and make our business more agile.

Using Microsoft Teams, Accenture people can communicate, collaborate and interact effectively wherever and whenever and take advantage of a secure, next-generation approach that helps them to enjoy an elastic, digital workplace.

Accenture investments in digital technologies, infrastructure and a collaborative culture have positioned us well to manage the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, our earlier move to scalable public cloud has meant that we could move swiftly to remote working and take advantage of the versatile Teams capabilities.

Microsoft Teams is a chat-centered collaboration platform that brings together collections of people, content and tools to get things done. While Microsoft Teams was still in the concept stage, Accenture collaborated with Microsoft on the early technical preview, providing input on the types of use cases relevant in a large, multinational organization and what was needed for resilient scale and security. Accenture also participated in the product pilot, along with other customers and partners, to keep pace with changing demands and push the envelope with Microsoft on Teams’ capabilities.

As a company highly tuned to change, Accenture’s approach was to use Teams while continuing to work with Microsoft to adapt the product and prepare migration steps. Accenture people were being empowered—and encouraged—to use Teams if they desired, with caution expressed around the newness of the tool and a clear indication that our company-wide adoption was still pending.

When Accenture deployed Teams, we did so in stages to transition from organic growth to large-scale access and adoption. Yet, the adoption of Teams was made easier given that Teams is woven into the Microsoft Office 365 fabric and brought a familiar platform into Accenture’s workplace. Today, all Accenture employees have transitioned to Teams and, accelerated by the move to remote working due to COVID-19, we have seen a massive increase in its usage—a 257% increase in audio usage and a 642% increase in video usage immediately following the pandemic.

Alongside a rigorous change and adoption program that uses multiple mediums and channels, we engaged leadership ambassadors, Teams champions and key stakeholder groups from the outset.

A 24/7 Operations team helps to meet Accenture’s needs when it comes to Teams support, along with monitoring of key network devices and local office capacity using standard tools. Reporting consists of a combination of Microsoft-provided data with Accenture organization data, which enables us to custom slice the data. New reporting enables us to support Teams from the Accenture office perspective to the end-user device level. An emphasis on the Accenture office quality helps us to focus on sites and devices that are at the root of any issues.