Coles Advances Collaboration with Microsoft Office 365

Sydney, Australia – 23 July, 2012 – Coles, a leading national food, liquor and convenience retailer in Australia has today announced that it is adopting Microsoft Office 365 for its 100,000 Australia wide team members.  Under the terms of this new agreement, Coles will deploy Microsoft SharePoint Online throughout the company helping to deliver on its goal to give the people of Australia a shop they trust, delivering quality, service and value.

Development this year will aim to provide the 100,000 strong team members with anytime, anywhere access to the Coles portal through any web-enabled device. The Coles portal will increase employee engagement by removing communication barriers across its large team member base delivering on Coles’ vision to be the retail employer of choice.

“Office 365 will provide our employees with a digital identity with security protection that gives them the ability to create and share ideas and learnings in a less structured way wherever they choose”, said Conrad Harvey, IT Group General Manager, Coles Australia.  “For Coles, the Microsoft Cloud was the only choice for such a progressive project of this scale. It integrates with our existing on premise environment and its familiar interface will ensure our team members can interact easily with the new platform.”

The Coles portal will be able to automate many functions that previously required team members to be on-site such as holiday requests and approvals. The Coles portal can be personalised to encourage interaction across the workforce while giving everyone 24/7 access to pay slips, rosters, holiday calendars, team member special offers, training, blogs and corporate social networking .

“Coles joins Qantas, Coca-Cola Amital, Spotless Group, Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), Origin Energy and Fortescue Metals Group moving to the cloud using Office 365.” said Oscar Trimboli, Director of Microsoft Office Division, Microsoft Australia. “Customer service is at the centre of what Coles does and with Office 365 it will ensure that Coles customers enjoy an even better shopping experience everyday”. 

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Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realise their full potential. More information can be found: www.microsoft.com.au

For further information or interviews please contact:

Rudolf Wagenaar

Howorth

02 8281 3879

rudolf@howorth.com.au