A modern, fast-growing transport company handling almost 40,000 orders per year in Central and Western Europe. 7 stationary branches. Growing challenges around ensuring efficient work in such a demanding structure.
An increase in cyber threats reach not only stationary employees, but also mobile employees – drivers and employees in remote work. There is one answer to emerging challenges – Microsoft Business Premium. Learn how Visline organized its infrastructure and secured its IT environment with a cloud investment!
Since the beginning of its history in 2009 focuses on innovation, Visline has a rich and modern fleet of over 160 cars integrated with GPS monitoring. It covers the whole Europe, managing logistics from 7 branches – 5 in Poland, 1 in Germany and 1 in Ireland. Currently, it employs around 200 people globally who work together from various locations in Europe. At the turn of 14 years of its presence on the market, Visline has made a leap in development, reaching today over PLN 200 million in annual revenue. The organization invests in modern IT solutions that supported processes on a daily basis. It has an application for monitoring orders, which provides customers with information at every stage of the order and allows to track the course of delivery. Investments in modern and efficient process management areone of the pillars of the organization’s impressive development. Solutions from the Microsoft 365 portfolio have accompanied Visline from the very beginning, but this year the scale of cyber threats made the company decide to implement the Microsoft Business Premium suite of tools.
Dynamic business development in tandem with digital transformation
Visline decided to launch its first virtual machines in 2020, making its debut in the cloud. This was the beginning of the digital transformation process – all major systems were moved to the cloud. Year after year, the company’s needs for efficient management of infrastructure, data resources and business processes have increased. The Microsoft Business Basic and Standard plans quickly became insufficient, so the company made gradual upgrades. In 2022, emerging challenges made Visline invest in the highest package in terms of advanced tools and capabilities – Microsoft Business Premium. One of the sources of this decision is the high awareness of cyber threats and the need to fully secure the company’s distributed environment.
– For some time we have been observing a growing number of attacks on infrastructure in various companies, fortunately, in our case, unsuccessful – says Krzysztof Baranowski, IT Manager at Visline – Our priority is to build a secure IT environment. for this purpose we want to use technological innovations offered by Microsoft, m.in. Windows Autopliot, or the capabilities of Azure Active Directory in combination with the latest Windows. I hope that by the end of 2023 we will be able to fully migrate and implement all the tools from the Microsoft Business Premium portfolio – adds Krzysztof Baranowski.
The first solution from the Microsoft Business Premium package implemented in an organization on a global scale was Conditional Access – a functionality in Azure Active Directory that enables you to enforce application access controls in your organization’s environment, based on specific conditions and central management. Need of this solution initiated a quick migration to the Premium package. Thanks to Conditional Access, regional restrictions have been introduced in the company due to the geolocation of IP addresses.
In logistics companies, a significant part of employees makes up a stationary team – drivers. At Visline they use mobile devices on a daily basis, on which they use a dedicated application (also embedded in the Azure cloud environment). The answer to the need and necessity of additional security of all endpoints is the Intune solution from the Microsoft portfolio. Mobile devices are more likely to be lost, stolen, or damaged than stationary equipment, so the company has a plan to integrate all infrastructure elements with Intune. Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based endpoint management solution. It directs user access and simplifies application management across multiple devices, effectively protects access and data on devices owned by your organization, as well as on private user resources. In addition, Intune has compliance and reporting features that support the Zero Trust security model.
The company has also completed the process of implementing MFA (multi-factor authentication) and adapting employees to the absolute requirement to use these safeguards. MFA simply and effectively protects your organization and all its resources from breaches due to lost or stolen data. Provides additional identity verification and access control when you sign in. Microsoft 365 tools offer a wide selection of flexible multi-factor authentication methods, such as SMS, calls, biometrics, and one-time passwords, to meet your organization’s requirements and effectively protect your users.
A logistics company like a Swiss watch!
Solutions known from the Standard plan, such as Microsoft Teams, Office or One Drive have been a standard organization at Visline for a long time. What attracted Visline’s attention to the highest Microsoft 365 package is, in addition to the set of Security tools, also an unlimited online archive. It gives you the ability to configure rules for automatic archiving. Using this simple way, the company has ended problems with overflowing e-mail boxes, which measurably saves the time of the IT department and reduces the nerves of users while making th communication with partners smooth.
– We use the benefits of Office to improve your business. These are often simple and practical solutions that greatly facilitate everyday office work – says Krzysztof Baranowski – An example can be such simple functions as autosave or versioning documents in SharePoint. It helps a lot. Synchronization and sharing of documents is also very practical, as it simplifies the cooperation in a dispersed company structure such as ours. The use of Microsoft Teams as a communicator or aggregate of data on all employees is a great help, e.g. for new people. The way you share work across multiple integrated tools speeds up processes significantly. Microsoft 365 solutions give you the ability to work from any latitude, which is important for Visline. Importantly, these are intuitive tools, thanks to which the company’s adaptation to use them went very smoothly. Our employees are aware that it is in their interest to get to know these solutions, so they are happy to use them – emphasizes Krzysztof Baranowski.
Support from an experienced Microsoft partner
From the beginning of the road to the cloud, Visline is accompanied by Senetic – Microsoft Partner and expert in the field of solutions from the manufacturer’s portfolio. – I have been cooperating with Senetic for many years and I value the technical and sales support I receive at every stage – says Krzysztof Baranowski – I always get answers to my questions. When it comes to technical support, I have not found better specialists anywhere, so I am very happy that I can count on them – adds Krzysztof Baranowski.
– We are proud that we can accompany Visline in its digital development and that we can share our knowledge and experience during the next steps of expansion to the cloud – says Katarzyna Król, Business Development Manager at Senetic – Visline is a model example of great management and good choices in the area of implementation of modern IT products. As a Microsoft partner, we strongly focus on the competence of our team, we have unique knowledge that we have been supporting IT departments of companies around the world for many years. Only a well-configured IT environment allows you to fully use the potential of Microsoft 365 tools, as well as secure data at the highest level. Our mission is to implement these solutions in an effective, efficient way and with maximum benefits for our customers – adds Katarzyna Król.
Nowadays, business acceleration has no reason to exist without the support of modern technology and properly efficient IT facilities. Logistics companies need to optimize and automate their processes in order to operate in a centralized, orderly and well-coordinated manner. IT systems are not only the driving force of business, but also a shield protecting them against cyber threats. Nowadays, these values are priceless.
If you would like to talk to us about the possibilities of Microsoft 365 solutions for your company, please contact us. Our team of experts will be happy to answer your questions:
- Tel.: +44 (0) 20 3666 5846
- E-mail: micosoft@senetic.com
We also invite you to our website, where you will find more information about the solutions: https://microsoft365.senetic.co.uk/