Century 21Alliance
Challenge:
Accomplish usability and productivity goals
Industry: Real-Estate
Products: Plus Pack
CENTURY 21 Alliance Launches Company-Wide Email Solution using Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access Enhanced by Messageware
Situation
When a group of CENTURY 21 owners in the Philadelphia area consolidated their businesses to become the Century 21 Alliance, one of their top priorities was a company-wide email system. The management team wanted to ease communication between all 250 employees as well as to present a unified front to the public. To keep the cost of maintaining their large network of public computers to a minimum as well as to meet the needs of considerable mobile contractors and part-time employees, the company selected Microsoft Exchange Server and Outlook Web Access (OWA) as their email platform for its ability to provide them with access to email anytime, anywhere.
Upon implementation, Chad Sauerbry, CENTURY 21 Alliance’s Director of IT and his team were ecstatic and eager to see their hard work pay off, but their enthusiasm quickly turned to disappointment. Weeks and weeks went by and OWA’s usage remained extremely low. Upon further investigation, the team pinpointed that the solution was quickly dismissed by virtually all of their users because of missing functionality, such as Spell check, difficulty emailing fellow colleagues and auto signature. Their project was failing so the team regrouped to investigate how to cost-effectively add these features so that they could increase the solution’s usability. After a lengthy search that including investigating expensive programming, they elected to use Messageware’s Plus Pack.
Solution
PlusPack makes OWA look and operate more like desktop Outlook thereby improving user productivity and reducing complaints. It seamlessly integrates key features such as access to multiple contact lists, the ability to address to multiple recipients at once, spell checking, a built-in thesaurus, adding personal signatures to emails, private distribution lists, and much more, transforming OWA into Outlook.
Within just a month of their PlusPack implementation, CENTURY 21 Alliance’s email usage skyrocketed to 95% of their users utilizing it on a regular basis.
Results
Within just a month of their PlusPack implementation, CENTURY 21 Alliance’s email usage skyrocketed to 95% of their users utilizing it on a regular basis. “Immediately we started getting feedback from everyone that using the system was so much easier,” said Sauerbry. Since the initial deployment of OWA enhanced by Messageware, Century 21 has grown to be the #1 ranked CENTURY 21 Real Estate Company in the Northeast. Even with an upgrade in their Exchange Server environment, they still prefer to use Outlook Web Access with the enhanced functionality and usability that PlusPack provides. Sauerbry remarked, “The two owners of our company have a dedicated Outlook client, but travel a lot to other offices and actually prefer using OWA over Outlook thanks to Messageware and Plus Pack.”
About Messageware
Founded in 1993, Messageware develops and markets solutions that secure, enhance, and customize Outlook Web App. A trusted Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and a Global Exchange ISV for over 15 years, our applications give com-panies of all sizes a greater return on Microsoft Exchange. Messageware products are used by over 2,500 enterprises and 4 million users worldwide, from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses, in every industry including banking, education, financial services, government, healthcare, and legal services.
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