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March 11, 2022

Jardine Engineering Corporation replaces legacy phone system with Teams Phone, reduces implementation cost by 60 percent

Yiu and her colleagues identified Microsoft Teams Phone as the ideal solution for a highly dispersed organization with an outdated legacy phone system. Today, JEC employees make and receive calls right from Teams, bringing many of their most-used collaboration tools together in one place. Eliminating a standalone phone system helped JEC achieve significant cost savings.

Jardine Engineering Corporation

After nearly 100 years in business, Jardine Engineering Corporation (JEC) has established a presence throughout Asia, with headquarters in Hong Kong and operations in Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines. JEC’s diverse teams handle a variety of E&M engineering solutions, and the organization relies on efficient, effective communication to deliver great results for customers. However, a legacy phone system and a dependence on paper-based processes created inefficiencies, causing Annie Yiu, Group IT Director at JEC, to explore ways to digitize the company’s core back-office systems. “There were a lot of things we wanted to modernize,” she says. “Starting with our phone system.” Shelley Ng, Group Communications Manager at JEC, agrees that the time was right for an upgrade. “These past two years have been challenging,” she says. “Especially for communications, because we have to stay connected to our team members in different areas that have been affected differently by the pandemic.” 

Yiu and her colleagues identified Microsoft Teams Phone as the ideal solution for a highly dispersed organization with an outdated legacy phone system. “Moving to Teams Phone was an easy choice,” says Yiu. “We could eliminate our previous phone system, save costs, and improve the user experience, all with one move.” Today, JEC employees make and receive calls right from Teams, bringing many of their most-used collaboration tools together in one place.

“Moving to Teams Phone was an easy choice. We could eliminate our previous phone system, save costs, and improve the user experience.”

Annie Yiu, Group IT Director, JEC

JEC revamps the user experience and consolidates on a single platform

In the days before Teams Phone, employees at JEC turned to a variety of communication platforms to stay in touch. “Before we had Teams Phone, most of the communication was done through phone calls to desk phones and personal cell phones,” says Yiu. The situation had its drawbacks, mainly a lack of efficiency due to multiple platforms and inconsistent audio quality. “The quality of our old phone system was not good,” remembers Yiu. “You would sometimes hear interference on the calls. The user experience was not ideal.”

In addition, the cost of maintaining the out-of-date phone system was high, something Yiu knew JEC could address with a move to Teams Phone. “We researched different alternatives,” she remembers. “When we decided to upgrade to another phone system, we looked at the cloud phone options. We ended up choosing Teams Phone.” JEC cites many reasons for selecting Teams Phone, including significant cost savings and a widespread familiarity with Teams. “Most of us already used Teams for daily communications,” says Ng. “So, we had a smooth transition to Teams Phone.”

“If you have a headset and a laptop, you can access Teams from anywhere and stay connected to the people you work with.”

Shelley Ng, Group Communications Manager, JEC

Supporting work-life balance and productivity with a modern phone system

That upgrade proved easier than Yiu and Ng anticipated. “Initially, we had concerns about how employees would feel about losing their desk phones,” admits Yiu. “We used to have a desk phone for every desk. But now with Teams Phone, our desks look a lot more professional without the old phones.”

JEC employees also use Teams Phone to facilitate a more flexible work life, explains Yiu. “People can now use their cell phones to access the Teams Mobile app and receive calls to their office number from anywhere—it’s been very useful.” As part of the move to Teams Phone, employees received a new headset, further supporting work-from-home capabilities. “If you have a headset and a laptop, you can access Teams from anywhere and stay connected to the people you work with,” says Ng.

The move also helped save costs. “We already had Office 365 E3,” explains Yiu. “We only needed to upgrade to E5 in order to get the Teams Phone feature. That is an ongoing savings for us.” In addition to unlocking Teams Phone capabilities, the move to E5 came with other benefits, like Power BI analytics capabilities. “Power BI is another tool we see the benefit in and plan to use more,” says Yiu.

“We only needed to upgrade to E5 in order to get the Teams Phone feature. That is an ongoing savings for us.”

Annie Yiu, Group IT Director, JEC

Saving millions and helping connect colleagues across the organization

Eliminating a standalone phone system helped JEC achieve significant cost savings. “The cost of running Teams Phone was far lower than if we had to implement a separate phone system in our main office,” says Yiu. “We reduced implementation costs by 60 percent .”

The move to Teams Phone had other benefits too. Today, the presence of a single, unified platform for communication helps create efficiencies and foster a culture of connection—especially important given the ongoing restrictions. “When we move to a work-from-home arrangement, we use Teams and Teams Phone to stay connected from anywhere,” says Ng. “If we didn’t have the Teams platform, supervisors would have to gather mobile phone numbers for everyone on their team. With Teams, that’s not necessary because we know we can reach everyone easily.” Yiu adds that the ability to easily pull colleagues into a Teams Phone call makes the new phone solution popular. “It’s very convenient,” she says. “These are the productivity gains I hear people talk about. Having everything in one place saves time.”

The use of Teams has even improved processes like annual code of conduct acknowledgments. Previously, this required every JEC employee to sign a document and someone to track their responses. Employees now register their acknowledgment in Teams, saving time and streamlining a complicated process. “We implemented a very easy Power Automate workflow in Teams and now, when people acknowledge the code of conduct form, the responses automatically update to a Power BI dashboard so we can track them in real time. It’s a huge productivity gain,” says Yiu.

JEC employees use features designed to encourage work-life balance, including the user presence feature to show availability and the ability to block calls after work hours. “That was one of the things we heard early on from users: ‘I don't want to get phone calls from my boss after work hours’,” says Yiu. “So, we showed everyone how to block calls at certain hours.” Ng adds that, with Teams Phone and the user presence feature, it’s easy to make quick calls to colleagues and get questions answered on the fly, rather than having to set up meetings or track down colleagues. “It helps a lot with our daily work,” she says.

JEC employees have also managed to cut down on the use of WhatsApp and other extraneous solutions for communication. “Our employees know when to communicate in Teams versus something else,” says Yiu. “For example, everyone knows that important company information should stay in the proper Teams channel.”

Choosing the right tools to support a journey toward more modern work

Today, more than 750 employees use Teams Phone across offices in Hong Kong and Thailand and feel better connected to the business. “Currently, almost all the engineers and back-office employees use Teams Phone,” says Yiu. Next, the organization hopes to extend Teams Phone capabilities to engineers who work in remote offices along with employees at recently acquired companies. “When it's time to upgrade their phones, we will also move them to Teams Phone as much as possible,” says Yiu.

In addition to Teams Phone for voice and video calling, JEC makes the most of Teams as a platform. Most recently, the organization deployed a custom-built app created in Microsoft Power Apps to help field technicians receive dispatch jobs and submit their timesheets. “We now have 900 technicians using Power Apps as part of our big initiative to eliminate paper forms,” says Yiu. In the past, jobs were dispatched via face-to-face briefings or phone calls. Frontline technicians would report their job status via a paper-based process, too—leading to inefficiencies and a lack of insight for the central office. “If we wanted to communicate with employees on the front line, we had to rely on memos and circulars being distributed,” remembers Ng. “The response time was slower; information could take up to a day or two to reach everyone.” The custom Power Apps application, used by frontline employees at JEC to report time sheets and receive dispatch jobs, is supported by Dynamics 365 Field Service. Supervisors approve expenses and review task completion from within Dynamics 365. “The combination of Power Apps and Dynamics 365 Field Service has helped improve visibility into what’s happening in the field, boosted efficiency, and helped in our ongoing efforts to reduce our reliance on paper-based processes,” says Yiu. “Connecting the business across a unified platform is a powerful way to support improved productivity.”

For Ng, implementing Teams Phone is just the latest in a journey towards a more streamlined, modern way of working. “We’ve used Microsoft Office solutions for years,” she says. “I see the progress from the core applications like Excel and Word to Teams and now Teams Phone—all these features come together to create one solution. It’s very powerful.” Digital transformation, however, is about more than just the latest tools. “It’s about changing how people work for the better,” says Ng. “Teams and Teams Phone have certainly helped us do that.”

“The cost of running Teams Phone was far lower than if we had to implement a separate phone system in our main office. We reduced implementation costs by 60 percent.”

Annie Yiu, Group IT Director, JEC

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