MASCO Corp. designs, manufactures and distributes branded home improvement and building products worldwide. Its industry-leading brands include Delta® and Hansgrohe® faucets, Behr® paint, and Kichler® decorative and outdoor lighting. With about 10,000 associates throughout the company, IT is challenged to stay abreast of technology to digitally transform MASCO as a modern workplace.

The Situation

In 2005, MASCO targeted about 10 siloed business units each functioning with a decentralized structure. There was little-to-no communication with corporate IT. At the same time, fragmentation plagued other internal departments.

The concern in communications, for example, was broken intranet hubs, a lack of cohesive communications with associates causing confusion and a need for new tools to improve business services. Essentially, MASCO was in disarray requiring an infrastructure upgrade to stabilize the company’s technology stack.

Specifically, IT was challenged to:

• Upgrade old hardware
• Digitize the backend, and migrate from SharePoint 2003 and old Microsoft Access databases
• Streamline internal business processes and automate workflow with less paper
• Address antiquated intranet sites and improve vehicles for company-wide communication
• Analyze the plethora of old tools and apps to find better solutions and build company-wide collaboration

The Problem

Addressing tech issues throughout the extended company with its respective siloed brands included a hard look at the email situation. Rather than hosting one email platform, it turned out there were 17 different email solutions in use throughout the company. IT needed a more efficient solution.

When a new communications manager joined MASCO, reality set in. IT heard about fractured communications, inaccessible information and data, and an intranet with little emphasis on news, events, and employee information.

Corporate communications asked for microblogging and an improved intranet with new communities. A disconnect with IT, however, caused an abrupt stop to this path for a while. The intranet not only became exclusively owned by IT; it began to look like IT, which was not good for business users.

The Solution

To jumpstart its modern workplace journey, MASCO immediately rolled up the 17 different email solutions into Microsoft Exchange to unite 10,000 on-prem users into a single platform. Leveraging the full features of Exchange is ongoing; however, the migration to Exchange helped drastically reduce IT issues across multiple platforms.

The roll-out of Microsoft Teams at MASCO provided strengthened collaboration among disparate legs of the company and allowed for improved communications with corporate IT, as well.

In addition, MASCO began upgrading a variety of older versions of SharePoint by migrating seven SharePoint platforms into one on-prem environment with a hosted web app.  A new CIO helped implement the Microsoft stack with SharePoint designer and sequential workflows.

Red Level was invited by MASCO to examine the spider web of apps, systems and tools. Its task was to analyze the entire gamut of technology platforms and solutions, pare them down for usability, scalability and adoption, while achieving a higher purpose with streamlined processes throughout the enterprise.

Results

Office 365 is now on the leaderboard at MASCO as a modern workplace solution. IT is aligned with the business, and from a pure numbers standpoint, 10,000 active users across the enterprise tap into tech solutions at any given time. When MASCO’s new intranet launched, there was a 40 percent increase in users logging in.

Within each business unit, IT collaborated with the business to build an internal site to accommodate their communications requests.

Remote field reps with no central office now thrive with Microsoft Teams. Daily activity is posted in Teams, and everyone gets immediate news and information with 100 percent accessibility.

Red Level occasionally jumps in to help train users on SharePoint and OneDrive while scoping additional solutions to add when necessary.

Looking Ahead

MASCO IT looks at strategic projects and smaller pockets of teams in the organization that are a good fit to implement the myriad apps available in Microsoft Office 365. Using this approach as a beta test for larger rollouts helps IT improve the delivery of business value across the enterprise., which is a public relations success.