Using Office 365 to support an international growth strategy

​Ross Roof is an innovative and dynamic manufacturer and supplier of stone-coated steel roofing tiles. Established in 1989, Ross Roof has spent the last quarter-century supplying architects, construction firms and homeowners with superior tiles which is both pleasing to the eye and designed to withstand the elements.

The Directors decided on a strategy of International expansion.

With the intention of significant export growth to support this strategy a multimillion upgrade of their manufacturing plant and investing in a number of Sales staff located all around the world was undertaken.

Ross Roof’s Challenge

​To help deliver Ross Roof’s export expansion plans they approached their IT partner to develop an IT roadmap that would allow Ross Roof to quickly roll-out multiple offices to the four corners of the world. This included delivering information to any device, anywhere, anytime.  Data anywhere was the key to the strategy as Ross Roof planned to evolve very quickly from a NZ orientated business to an export focused business with offices around the globe. Any new IT infrastructure would also need to assist when purchasing similar roofing organisations in other countries, making it quicker to integrate them onto the Ross Roof business.

The solution

To achieve Ross Roof’s globalisation strategy Ross Roof implemented a significant portfolio of Microsoft solutions.

Staff in multiple offices around the world including Poland, Dubai, USA and Japan can now work nimbly in a competitive international market across multiple time zones. Kambium’s SharePoint Igniter solution allowed Ross Roof staff to collaborate on stock levels, source up to date price lists and much more. Skype for Business assisted with instant messaging of foreign exchange updates. To reduce administration costs we built into their SharePoint a number of workflows to automate processes, reduce errors and save costs. These included leave processing, staff scheduling and IT help desk support.

Solutions Profile

Office 365 – enables anywhere access for what is now global workforce

  • SharePoint – workflow productivity to increase productivity for administration and their manufacturing processes. Better data-driven decisions.
  • Office 2016 – with a global workforce a real benefit has been ability to co-author document with other workforce colleagues across the globe. Also forecasting accuracy has improved with integrated Power Business Intelligence
  • Coaching – the  coaching team has been at the forefront of coaching Ross Roof staff on the Office 2016 productivity features. Also the executive team have all experienced  our “Surface, Windows 10 and One Note” course.