If you’ve spent time scrolling social media channels lately, you may have seen the question: “Who’s responsible for digital transformation in your company? Is it the CEO, CIO or COVID-19?” This silly pun shows that the global pandemic has pushed businesses everywhere into an accelerated state of digitalization.
That is also valid for BESIX. The crisis has seen the need to reaffirm the importance of a robust digital infrastructure and widespread digitization of services. A concrete step at BESIX has been the successful global roll-out of TEAMS in no time in all entities.
Another crucial step to safeguard our business is to improve our IT productivity and make sure our IT-platforms are future-proof, especially for safety reasons. Therefore BESIX has decided to speed-up the adoption of cloud technologies, and gradually decommission legacy infrastructure. Concretely this means that we are embarking on a full migration of our IT environment to “Office 365 (O365)”. O365 refers to the cloud-based Microsoft Office suite. In very simple terms, with O365, your Word or Outlook application is no longer running on a server in the basement of BESIX HQ, necessitating frequent updates and license renewals – but running in the cloud, permanently available and automatically updated.
What does this mean for you?
As from begin of July, you are all going to be invited to a mandatory in-person meeting in the BESIX Academy for a 3-hour session during which
- our IT operators will physically migrate your laptop, smartphone and tablet
- and you will receive a class-room training on how to work efficiently with O365.
The BESIX Academy has been adapted to allow gatherings while respecting safety distance rules. 15 colleagues will be invited each morning and 15 others each afternoon. Schedules will be made together with Department Heads and Department Assistants. Once schedules have been made, you will receive an Outlook invitation. It is paramount that these appointments are respected as the IT tools will at some time no longer work if you do not join one of the migration sessions.
We acknowledge that being off the grid without lap-top or phone for 3 hours can be seen as a hassle but the pain is minimal compared to the enormous productivity and safety gains that BESIX will benefit after the migration to O365. A handful of teams or entities have already made the jump successfully, paving the way for a Group-wide adoption.
Rest assured that a lot of resources will be put at your disposal to make sure you embark into this new environment with the right knowledge and tools. For a preview, don’t hesitate to visit our specific Sharepoint website (add url) and the reference materials on eAcademy (add url).
For users outside Belgium
- For the users in the Netherlands, France and Luxemburg similar sessions will be organized. Details will be communicated separately.
- For users working outside of Europe, IT will make appointments as well and foresee a plan site per site.
Thank you for your active participation!
✉ Message to all staff members of BESIX SA, BESIX Group & BESIX RED in Belgium.