Challenge.

As one of the leading European manufacturers in the occupational health and safety sector, ELTEN stands for high quality safety and work shoes made in Germany. The family-run company has been located in Uedem,North Rhine-Westphalia since 1910 and has made the conscious decision to forego globalisation and outsourcing production. ELTEN offers its employees excellent working conditions and opportunities to develop. Always innovative, ELTEN has been at the cutting edge for decades—a fact that is also reflected in its drive towards digitalisation. Equipped with Microsoft Office 365, ELTEN works in a Microsoft tenant, which gives the employees access to a modern workplace that simplifies processes and is just as safe and secure as the company’s shoes.

However, licence management, optimisations and updates to Microsoft Office 365 are complex and time and resource intensive. The continuous changes and updates mean the IT department have to always be on the ball and keep an eye on the Microsoft tenant. Microsoft 365-level security can only be maintained through a constantly updated security level in the tenant. It became clear to ELTEN that doing so would be a full time job. For this reason, the company was on the look out for another solution that consistently installed updates and optimised licences and relieved the IT department of routine Microsoft tenant tasks.


We only wanted to implement Microsoft Teams for communication, but then we were overwhelmed by the complexity of Microsoft 365. The Microsoft environment changes quickly and we needed support and Bechtle’s SMART Workplace has taken a load of our IT department.

Ralf Görtz, Head of IT, ELTEN GmbH


Solution.

As Bechtle has already set up the tenant and Office 365 for ELTEN, the IT partner was able to offer the systematically structured Bechtle SMART Workplace as a managed service. The modules included can be mixed and matched and procured according to individual requirements. After two virtual meetings between Bechtle and ELTEN, the services required from the Bechtle’s managed service offering were clearly defined and responsibilities clarified. ELTEN chose a one-off Bechtle SMART Workplace Office 365 Tenant Check during which Bechtle checked and optimised the existing Office 365 licences. Through the Bechtle SMART Workplace M365 Enablement Service, ELTEN can access consulting services as and when they are needed, and the monthly Bechtle SMART Workplace Office 365 Managed Tenant provides support for the tenant,

Within the space of just a week, Bechtle had remotely set up all components of the managed service ELTEN needed, with responsibilities shared between the two companies. In this way, ELTEN is able to resource bottlenecks, but still has full access to its Microsoft cloud system. Bechtle uses its own automations for processes (core view) and manages many similar environments for its customers, giving the IT company unique knowledge and taking a weight off ELTEN’s shoulders. Bechtle also constantly optimises ELTEN’s Microsoft Office 365 environment using best practices. This boosts the security of data and the entire environment (secure score) while also optimising employee productivity.

Business benefits.

Thanks to Bechtle, ELTEN no longer has to take care of Microsoft Office 365 and its tenant itself. The Bechtle SMART Workplace package relieves the company’s IT department to such an extent that they can once again focus on their core tasks. Bechtle is now responsible for handling complex Microsoft 365 support and has also automated many of the previously manual processes, thus saving resources. Bechtle also fully leverages the potential of ELTEN’s Microsoft 365 licences leading to cost savings, and last but not least, the security of ELTEN’s cloud environment and therefore its data have been given a boost thanks to Bechtle’s continuous support.