Customer Story
Going digital: How Office 365 helps Crystal Jade break down geographical barriers
Running a business across multiple countries presents a unique set of challenges. By subscribing to a digital platform that employees can access at any time and from anywhere, Singapore-based restaurant chain Crystal Jade Culinary Concepts Holding is better equipped to streamline operations.
With its headquarters in Singapore, food and beverage company Crystal Jade Culinary Concepts Holding (or simply, Crystal Jade) opened the doors of its first restaurant more than 25 years ago. Today, the group operates over 120 outlets across 30 major cities and has received numerous culinary accolades for its Chinese cuisine, including a Michelin star and multiple Bib Gourmand awards.
Making the move to Business Essentials
To support communication and collaboration between managers who are always on the move, Crystal Jade recently upgraded to Office 365 Business Essentials plan to roll out collaboration tools such as Sharepoint and OneDrive throughout the company.
Describing the transition from email-only service Exchange Online to Office 365 Business Essentials, Senior Regional Manager (Finance and Information Systems) Hoe Ziqian says the process was made easy with Singtel as a key partner throughout the process. He believes that access to essential collaboration tools can help Crystal Jade bring the business closer even as it grows bigger.
“The Office 365 platform provides a comprehensive suite of collaboration tools– including positive externalities such as OneDrive, SharePoint and Skype for Business. Our key management team needs mobility, as they regularly travel across the Asia-Pacific region to all our various points of presence. It did not take long before we were convinced of the advantages that the Office 365 platform affords, and we gradually on-boarded all our users within a year,” said Ziqian.
Finding unity across multiple venues
With more than 4,500 employees worldwide, Ziqian hopes communication between the company’s three biggest operating regions –Singapore, Hong Kong and China – will improve.
“The biggest challenge for me is breaking down regional silos,” said Ziqian. “We are using Singapore as a launchpad, and would gradually deploy in China and Hong Kong.”
Employees can now share documents through the OneDrive cloud instead of using the conventional method of sending via email. In addition, potentially sensitive and confidential documents are securely stored in a central repository, as opposed to laptops and PCs.
“I have close to 30 different sites in Singapore, but a team of only three. In order to function with a lean team, I need the systems to be cloud-based, as this means availability and accessibility at our fingertips, literally,” explained Ziqian.
The company also needed to safeguard the emails of the leadership team in the event of litigation or a dispute. This is something they are now able to do with the Litigation Hold function that is available on the Enterprise E3 plan, which allows Ziqian and his team to keep a record of sent and received messages without having to make demands on local storage.
Encouraging adoption among the operations team
“Our restaurant, area and operations managers were asking for quicker, better ways to improve their work efficiency. It made sense to enable more managers to access the platform and, in doing so, to boost their productivity,” said Ziqian.
The challenge now is to increase education around the platform and increase usage of the services available, for example encouraging users to share files via OneDrive and SharePoint.
“Many of our users are employees who have been with the company for 10 to 20 years, so it might take longer to convince them to accept new processes and practices online. But I trust that they will embrace it once they see how it can improve their work,” commented Ziqian.
Having the right support is essential
Ziqian pointed out that the access to always-on support by Singtel has been a huge benefit.
“Most importantly, Singtel provided an avenue for me to discuss my business needs, and they always manage to find a way to meet my business requirements,” he said.
This support extends to keeping the company updated on the latest Microsoft updates. “This is where good customer support from Singtel helped – there might be features that could benefit our business that we are not aware of. Not only that, the fact that support is just a phone call or an email away affords us great peace of mind,” shared Ziqian.
“I believe in building deep ties with my partners, and so we have entered into a whole business arrangement with Singtel. With my network and ICT needs taken care of by Singtel, it was an easy decision to trust them with my Office 365 tenancy,” he said.
As Crystal Jade’s managers increasingly embrace the opportunity to communicate and collaborate efficiently with their international counterparts, more streamlined and sophisticated operations will only be a matter of time. As a trusted partner, Singtel will also likely play a critical role in the company’s growth in the future.
A piece of Do Different advice from Ziqian
“This is where good customer support from Singtel helped – there might be features that could benefit our business that we are not aware of. Not only that, the fact that support is just a phone call or an email away affords us great peace of mind.”
- Hoe Ziqian,Senior Regional Manager
(Finance and Information Systems)
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