ITWire

With the adoption of Microsoft’s SharePoint Online solution, the national food, liquor and convenience retailer says it will allow it to provide its 100,000 employees with “anytime, anywhere access to the Coles portal through any web-enabled device,” and increase employee engagement by removing communication barriers across its large team member base – “delivering on Coles’ vision to be the retail employer of choice.”

According to Coles Australia’s IT Group Manager, Conrad Harvey, Office 365 will provide the company’s employees with a digital identity with security protection that gives them the ability to “create and share ideas and learnings in a less structured way wherever they choose.”

“For Coles, the Microsoft Cloud was the only choice for such a progressive project of this scale. It integrates with our existing on premise environment and its familiar interface will ensure our team members can interact easily with the new platform.”

The Director of Microsoft Office Division, Oscar Trimboli, said the Coles portal would be able to automate many functions that previously required team members to be on-site such as holiday requests and approvals. “The Coles portal can be personalised to encourage interaction across the workforce while giving everyone 24/7 access to pay slips, rosters, holiday calendars, team member special offers, training, blogs and corporate social networking”

Trimboli said Coles joined Qantas, Coca-Cola Amital, Spotless Group, Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), Origin Energy and Fortescue Metals Group moving to the cloud using Office 365.