Organizational Background

VINCI Energies, formed from the merger between VINCI Energies and Cegelec, provides high value added solutions to address customers’ demands for efficiency, reliability and safety in the areas of electrical power, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), mechanical engineering, and information and communication technologies. VINCI has 64,000 employees working in 45 countries across 1,500 business units and 8 brands. VINCI Energies generated $9B Euros in 2012, 37% which came from outside France.

The Initiative

In 2011, the Central IT Dept. of VINCI Energies embarked on a SharePoint-based Enterprise Content Management (ECM) initiative to accurately classify and retain important business documents.

The Solution

harmon.ie was selected a key part of a SharePoint 2010 enterprise rollout by VINCI Energies after a 3 month user pilot, that was completed in October 2012.

VINCI Energies’ employees access SharePoint document via harmon.ie from within Outlook is smooth, intuitive, and most importantly, it does not require a training program because harmon.ie focuses on the needs of the business user. For example, harmon.ie’s Properties Editor makes it easy for business users to accurately classify their documents according to the corporate policy when uploading to SharePoint, which makes them easy to find later on.

The rollout began with a group of account managers. The implementation was rapid, because harmon.ie is seen by employees as a product that makes it easy for them to do their jobs, and because we implemented a folksonomy, which simplified the classification process. As such, there was a strong ‘word of mouth’ distribution within the Commercial group. Of course, distribution works much better when workers are advised to use a product by colleagues, rather than having it imposed upon them by IT Management.

The Rollout

With an external partner, VINCI Energies developed a short training video. The video includes a message from VINCI’s executive business sponsor explaining the goal of the ECM project, highlighting harmon.ie’s. contribution. The video ends with a wrap-up quiz and the offer to download a quick reference card.

This video allows the user to become completely independent for content uploading, with just a few minutes of attention.
“Our users are very happy. Using harmon.ie from within Outlook is smooth, intuitive, and most importantly, it does not require a training program. harmon.ie focuses on the needs of the business user."
- Deborah Beury, Director of Collaboration and Specific Application, VINCI Energies

What's Next?

VINCI Energies is exploring the use of harmon.ie Mobile to allow mobile ‘on-site’ users to access to information stored on SharePoint.

Using Office 365’s cloud approach used in conjunction with harmon.ie, which uses Office Web Apps, will enable VINCI Energies to avoid storing confidential data on mobile devices.

About VINCI Energies

As a multinational supplier of solutions for electrical power, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), mechanical engineering, and information and communication technologies, VINCI Energies has 64,000 employees working in 45 countries across 1,500 business units and 8 brands. VINCI Energies generated $9B Euros in 2012.