How ENRA Group elevates productivity by adopting Microsoft 365 Secured Hybrid Workplace with Maxis

In the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, seamlessly transitioning everyone’s working environment from office to home was anything but easy. Yet, for the ENRA Group, the transition was quick, smooth, cost-effective and more importantly, secure.

When opting for the Microsoft 365 Business Basic, ENRA’s first points of consideration were familiarity and scalability. Knowing how everybody was already using tools such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel, choosing Microsoft Office 365 was a natural fit.

Operating in sync 24/7
Upon adopting Microsoft Office 365 Business Basic, the company has since seen a huge increase in terms of productivity and efficiency. According to ENRA, it was largely thanks to the ability to stay connected to mail servers and collaborative files and folders from anywhere at any time. With Microsoft’s enterprise-level cloud infrastructure, reliable uptime for those services have also significantly improved.

“We wanted to ensure everyone could work from home but with our mail and storage servers being on-premise and connected through a single 100Mbps line, it was very limiting for all our employees to have to log on to the company VPN to access their webmail and shared drive.”

Various ENRA employees shared their positive experience. “Now, we can actually just log on from any device remotely and have access to the data we need because everything has been synchronised. From the company’s point of view, employee productivity has increased exponentially across the board.”

 Small features, big difference
"Beyond streamlining internal communications, the smaller features within Microsoft 365 Business Basic have proven to make a world of difference for ENRA’s day-to-day operations; addressing concerns related to data storage and even cost-efficiency.
 
“We have a practice of archiving past mailboxes, which makes our internal storage requirement quite exorbitant,” Mohd Zulkarnain from Group IT explains. “Being able to store everything on the Cloud with Microsoft 365 immediately resolves that issue.”

As an added value, ENRA states that Microsoft 365’s various functionalities not only minimises administrative problems, it also enables company personnel to configure an easier approach for in-house survey forms – from running data and analytics to circulating monthly questionnaires – set by internal audit. This, in turn, further solidifies the company’s ability to effectively work remotely."

Focusing less on fixing, more on improving
"Like many corporations, safekeeping company data and productivity remains one of ENRA Group’s top priorities. Since implementing the Microsoft 365 Business Basic, complaints and queries about email problems have dropped to almost zero.
 
This, in turn, allows the group’s internal IT department more capacity to focus on improving workflow processes rather than attending to everyday technical issues such as email access and missing files.

Traditionally, the company has relied on Whatsapp for instant communication and file sharing. However, the transition into working on Microsoft Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint has allowed group-wide employees to upload, collaborate and edit files together – without worrying about losing track of document versions. This is especially important because it helps relieve security concerns by allowing the company to have full administrative control instead of relying on third party apps.

“Sometimes, we can’t help but worry: what if somebody in the company loses their laptop? What would happen to all the files on their machines? With the Microsoft 365 Business Basic, we will not need to worry because users can store their data on OneDrive and have it always backed up. We can easily issue a replacement laptop as the employee’s Microsoft 365 login is enough to give them full access to all their data.”
 
Ultimately, having company data and files travel through the same channels simply puts control back in the hands of the company.

Choosing the right partner
Beyond addressing the company’s existing concerns, ENRA also wanted a service that was future-forward. Its deciding factor was naturally the prospect of eventually integrating Maxis lines into the company’s communication structure.

Though the ENRA Group is currently utilising Maxis’ traditional landlines for the office, continuing a partnership with Maxis can give them the assurance that they would be able to innovate the Group’s communications infrastructure in the future.
 
“Say, for example, we want to start assigning some of our existing numbers to key users who are always on the go. It would be extremely convenient to call Maxis, request for a line to be integrated into our mobile phones and have Maxis set up our Microsoft Teams function to behave like a Malaysian phone number so we can receive and make calls as though it were a landline. This is a feature that a communications company like Maxis can naturally provide.”
 
Working with Maxis also gave them the advantage of a more holistic customer management resource. “It all boils down to attentiveness. Software migrations are always tedious but Maxis has really helped with providing us the information we needed especially when it came to troubleshooting any technical issues.”
 
For the ENRA Group, the decision to take up Microsoft Office 365 Business Basic with Maxis ticked all the boxes in terms of collaboration, productivity, cost-efficiency as well as security. ENRA believes that when integrated with the right communications partner, using Microsoft Office 365 – even in its most basic configuration – can be a powerful tool for companies of any size and location.