Guest blog from Robert Taylor, Director of IT, Hendrick Automotive Group

How can a multi-billion dollar company with a lean IT department relieve its overburdened staff while at the same time boosting employee productivity? That’s exactly the challenge we faced at Hendrick Automotive Group.

Let me explain. Our company offers new and pre-owned vehicles, financing, warranties, automobile parts, accessories, service, and body repair at 90 franchises in 12 states. Yet we have a small IT staff of 13 people, all based at our headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. Our staff serves 7,000 teammates that include everyone from mechanics to salespeople to accountants—all of whom have differing needs.

As our technology needs became more complex, our IT workers were spending more and more time maintaining hardware, upgrading software, and installing patches and updates, leaving little time to provide real solutions that help the business grow. At the same time, our IT workers were becoming increasingly burned out.

The truth is we had reached our limit. We were committed to technology as a way to improve efficiency and help us recruit the best talent. Yet we simply didn’t have the resources to provide this technology to 90 franchises with 90 different ways of running a business.

As we researched our options, we became increasingly convinced that a cloud-based model would provide the path to growth we were seeking.  We had already been using Microsoft Office applications for years and had been satisfied with the rich capabilities they offered. Microsoft had developed these products, and we figured the software company could manage them far better than we could.

After a successful pilot test, we decided to move all of our on-premises Microsoft productivity applications to Microsoft Office 365 including Exchange Server, Office Communications Server, and SharePoint Server.  Our goal is to complete the transition by the end of 2012.

So far, the results have been mind-blowing. With Office 365, we can provide the latest technology to our employees in a way that’s more scalable for the business. We essentially get an upgrade to all of our products, with the additional benefit of having everything centrally managed by Microsoft. By handing over management and maintenance to Microsoft, we’ve been able to transform our IT workers into business enablers—technology experts who help the dealerships use technology in a more meaningful way.

Most importantly, Office 365 is helping the company to operate more efficiently. Rather than only focusing on their own business, our dealerships are using SharePoint Online to share best practices that help improve sales across the company. Mechanics are using SharePoint Online to share diagnostic tools and manuals that improve service. And employees are using the presence and instant messaging capabilities available within Lync Online to communicate in real time and to obtain instant feedback to their questions.

The bottom line is that we can’t afford to have a giant data center with people monitoring servers 24 hours a day, so why not let Microsoft, which does have the resources, do it for us? Office 365 has opened up an important path to growth—one that previously lay out our reach.

Is your IT staff being asked to do more with less? In what ways has Office 365 helped? Please take a minute to share your thoughts. To learn more about our move to Office 365 and the results we’ve achieved, you can read a detailed case study.