Microsoft Office System

Customer Solution Case Study

Monsanto Turns to Unified Communications

Software to Give Employees Flexibility

Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Agriculture
Customer Profile
Monsanto, based in St. Louis, Missouri,
is a leading agricultural technology
company, providing seeds and other
agricultural products. It has nearly
19,000 employees worldwide.
Business Situation
The company was evaluating unified
communications technology as a way to
minimize disruptions due to highway
construction around its corporate
headquarters.
Solution
Monsanto became an early adopter of
Microsoft Office Communications
Server 2007, which it is using to
implement telecommuting and other
home-based scenarios for corporate
employees.
Benefits
Communications flexibility
Potential cost savings
Rich development platform for unified
communications

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 is a

key part of the IT architecture that will help to unify
different kinds of communications so that people
can work together faster and more effectively.
Dwight Wheeler, Network Architect, Monsanto

Monsanto is one of the worlds largest agricultural companies.

The companys St. Louis, Missouri, headquarters is located in the
midst of a major highway renovation project. The company knew
that, to mitigate the impact on headquarters employees, it
needed to facilitate more telecommuting. At the same time, the IT
department was evaluating how the company could use unified
communications technologies to enhance business processes
and to cut costs. The two issues were addressed when Monsanto
became an early adopter of Microsoft Office Communications
Server 2007. It is now using the software to help telecommuting
employees to communicate more effectively with colleagues at
headquarters. It is also viewing Office Communications Server
2007 as a significant part of its IT architecture for long-term
development of a comprehensive unified communications
infrastructure.

When they are logged

on to our virtual private
network, remote
employees can see who
is online and available
through Office
Communications Server
2007, and they can use
instant messaging to
have quick
conversations.
Dwight Wheeler, Network Architect, Monsanto

Situation

Solution

Monsanto is a major agricultural company,

producing seeds for both large-acre crops
such as corn, cotton, and soybeans, and
small-acre crops such as vegetables.
Monsanto also provides other agricultural
products such as herbicides, and conducts
biotechnology and genomics research.

Monsanto became an early adopter of

Microsoft Office Communications Server
2007, using it to expand the use of instant
messaging (IM) and presence technology
across the enterprise, and for the potential
use of Internet-based telephony.

Monsanto is headquartered in St. Louis,

Missouri, where about 4,000 of the
companys nearly 19,000 employees work.
The 28-building Monsanto headquarters
campus is situated near U.S. Interstate
Highway 64, which began undergoing a major
renovation in 2006. As a result, Monsanto
needed to institute new work scenarios to
give employees greater flexibility in where
and when they did their jobs.
We knew that the highway construction was
coming, and that in January 2008 an entire
section of I-64 in St. Louis will be shut down,
says Dwight Wheeler, Network Architect in the
Monsanto Information Technology
department.
We had a diverse team developing a work-athome program and significant processes for
dealing with flexible hours, and knew that we
had an opportunity to provide
communications technologies to help teams
work more effectively in this new
environment.
At the same time, the Monsanto IT
department was evaluating how unified
communications technologies could help to
improve communications and collaboration
throughout the global enterprise. This
included finding technology that could help to
enhance the functionality of Microsoft
Exchange Server 2003, which the company
used for its messaging infrastructure.

The company is testing the voice capabilities

of Office Communications Server 2007, the
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 client
software, and two different IP phones made
by LG-Nortel, the LG-Nortel USB Phone 8501
handset and the LG-Nortel IP Phone 8540, a
desktop model. A pilot group of employees
are currently testing the IP phones.
Calls that employees make by using Office
Communications Server 2007 go through a
mediation server, which is connected to Cisco
Unified Communications Manager; that, in
turn, is connected to the Public Switched
Telephone Network gateway. The company
has configured the LG-Nortel phones with
simultaneous ring, which puts a call through
to both a desk phone and to Office
Communicator 2007 at the same time,
regardless of location.
Monsanto deployed Office Communications
Server 2007 to pilot groups in April 2007.
The companys IT department planned a
phased rollout, with 300 employees to be
using the solution by September 2007, and
up to about 1,000 users scheduled to be
connected to the server software by the end
of the year.

Benefits
By deploying Office Communications Server
2007, Monsanto is helping its headquarters
employees to work more efficiently during a
period of physical upheaval. They can now
work from home more easily or can adopt
flexible hours, some of which can be spent
telecommuting. The company also expects to
save money by using the Internet and Office

The instant messaging

and presence
technologies in Office
Communications Server
2007 increase our
efficiency and
productivity by cutting
down response times for
quick feedback and
resolutions to issues.
Aarti Shah, Supply Chain Generalist,
Monsanto

Communications Server 2007 for voice over

IP (VoIP) communications that traditionally
have been carried over standard telephone
lines. The Monsanto IT department also
anticipates that Office Communications
Server 2007 will serve as a significant part of
its IT architecture for creating a
comprehensive unified communications
infrastructure.

Wheeler says that as the company continues

its testing and evaluation of Office
Communications Server 2007, it anticipates
significant benefits by rolling the solution out
to remote offices. Being able to use
presence, IM, and VoIP in remote locations
with Office Communications Server 2007 will
give us a lot of flexibility in how we configure
remote offices, he says.

Communications Flexibility
With the availability of presence and instant
messaging through Office Communications
Server 2007, Monsanto headquarters
employees can stay in close contact with
colleagues while telecommuting from home
or other remote locations.

Potential Cost Savings

Wheeler says that as Monsanto tests the
voice capabilities of Office Communications
Server 2007, he expects that the company
can achieve significant cost savings by
moving a large portion of company calls to a
software-based voice client that employees
can use on their workstations or portable
computers.

Office Communications Server 2007 is going

to help company employees continue to do
their jobs without having to navigate through
highway construction zones, says Wheeler.
When they are logged on to our virtual
private network, remote employees can see
who is online and available through Office
Communications Server 2007, and they can
use instant messaging to have quick
conversations.
Enhanced presence and IM are already
delivering strong results throughout the
company. They make internal
communication more agile and our lives
much easier, says Aarti Shah, a Supply
Chain Generalist based in India. The instant
messaging and presence technologies in
Office Communications Server 2007 increase
our efficiency and productivity by cutting
down response times for quick feedback and
resolutions to issues. I already see a
difference in the way I work, because they
help me to multitask and to discuss current
activities with various team members, so that
I can get better results and make smarter
decisions.

He says that this is especially true for

employees who face commuting problems
due to the highway construction project.
Some of our people may be facing two to
three hours a day in extra commute time due
to the road construction, he says. If these
people can work successfully from home by
using the Office Communications Server
2007 telephony, IM, and presence, its
possible that they will save as much as one
day every week by not having to face the
commute.
He adds that Monsanto has many
international sites and a lot of collaboration
going on between those sites. The Office
Communications Server 2007 technology
may help the company to cut the costs that
are related to this collaboration.
Rich Development Platform
Wheeler says that Office Communications
Server 2007 will provide a rich development
platform for building a unified
communications infrastructure.

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 4269400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 5682495. Customers who are deaf or hard-ofhearing can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in
the United States or (905) 568-9641 in
Canada. Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary. To access information
by using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about Monsanto
products and services, call (314) 6941000 or visit the Web site at:
www.monsanto.com

Document published December 2007

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worlds chosen environment for information
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For more information about the Microsoft
Office system, go to:
www.microsoft.com/office

It may take several years for this to happen,

but these technologies are going to transform
the way our company and other businesses
communicate, he says. Microsoft Office
Communications Server 2007 is a key part of
the IT architecture that will help to unify
different kinds of communications so that
people can work together faster and more
effectively.

Software and Services

Hardware

Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office Communications
Server 2007
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007
Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT

MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.

Microsoft Office System

We expect enormous value to come out of

our deployment of Office Communications
Server 2007 over time, he says. Instant
messaging and presence are great tools, and
by working together in other applications,
they will streamline and change business
processes. By using this technology with
Office Communications Server 2007,
Microsoft will continue to open up more
opportunities, bringing many developers on
board to provide further integration of
communications and business applications.

LG-Nortel IP Phone 8540

LG-Nortel USB Phone 8501