As a wholly owned subsidiary of Olympus Corporation in Tokyo, Japan, Olympus Corporation of the Americas (OCA) today employs more than 5,200 people across locations throughout North and South America.
The Corporate Communications team at OCA is a centralized source for distributing many types of communications to different audiences across the organization. For that reason, the needs when it comes to the creation of appropriate distribution lists are rather complex. In the past, a solution developed internally did the trick for OCA. However, the switch to Microsoft 365 meant that this could not be used anymore.
Consequently, the team set out to find a solution on the market that would be able to fulfill their sophisticated requirements. During this search various options were considered with none of them being able to really meet OCA’s needs – except one: Ingentis distribution.list.
The Challenge
OCA’s Corporate Communications team is responsible for the distribution of a variety of communication throughout the organization. It is, therefore, not surprising that the requirements when it comes to distribution lists are rather complex. For one thing, the team needs to be able to create dynamic distribution lists, using various types of criteria in an employee’s profile. This could be, for instance, their legal entity, business unit, functional area, location, and many more. Furthermore, it has to be ensured that the lists maintain their accuracy by syncing daily with OCA’s HR data.
Up until the company’s switch to Microsoft 365, they used an internally developed solution that was able to meet the complex needs. However, once the transition was completed, this tool was no longer usable. Distribution lists had to be synced with both M365 Active Directory and Azure Active Directory. Additionally, they were to be made available in Outlook for other teams to also use them.
A comprehensive search for a solution that included the full breadth of necessary functionalities proved difficult at first – until they found Ingentis distribution.list that finally made Stephanie Fabrizio, Director of Corporate Communications and MarCom, say: “No way, we can do that? I love it.”
In our very first demonstration of Ingentis distribution.list, I remember being very excited that we had found a solution for our unmet needs. (…) We hadn’t seen this breadth of functionality in other similar tools.
Stephanie Fabrizio Director of Corporate Communications and MarCom
The Solution
Ingentis distribution.list offers the flexibility needed by OCA and helps them create lists tailored exactly to their sophisticated requirements. Key functionalities include “and/or” capabilities, the “add on” ability to add individual people or email addresses to a list, and the “operator” functionality that enables OCA to be more granular with the selection of attributes, including the possibility to extract certain criteria from a list.
The “and/or” operator allows to combine various attributes when creating distribution lists.
It was no surprise to anyone involved at OCA that the implementation of Ingentis distribution.list turned out somewhat complex. However, the Ingentis team was able to ensure the solution was configured to best meet the customer’s needs. In doing so, it even added a new functionality to the software that was critical to OCA – the creation of hierarchy lists which are built based on leaders of a certain area and encompass all employees in that person’s reporting line. “The attention to this core need, and timely delivery of a solution was hugely appreciated because of how many people rely on these types of lists,” Stephanie explains.
Now that Ingentis distribution.list is up and running, it tremendously eases the life of Corporate Communications at OCA in various ways. On the one hand, it allows them to accurately target their communication to the right audience. On the other, it hugely decreases the number of lists that need to be maintained manually, saving many other employees and admins valuable time. Knowing that distribution lists created with the Ingentis solution are always up to date, largely contributes to peace of mind among the Corporate Communications team.
With Ingentis distribution.list it is easy to create a distribution list including, for instance, all employees working at a certain location. Updates to the lists are made automatically.
But it is not only Corporate Communications that benefits from Ingentis distribution.list. By making the lists available in the Outlook address book, they can also be used by other groups throughout the organization such as Sales, Sales Support, Marketing, HR, or IT. Today, many employees at OCA rely on distribution lists created with the Ingentis solution.
Overall, Ingentis distribution list is saving time, effort – and some headaches too – across the organization!
Alex Onushco Manager, Corporate Communications
Future Plans
In the past years, Olympus has been undergoing a global transformation, with the goal of streamlining and aligning functional areas, tools, systems, and processes across the world. Once HR data is more centralized globally, the company may consider Ingentis distribution.list for additional global needs.
The Ingentis team has truly been a pleasure to work with; from the time we started the implementation through current day troubleshooting.
Stephanie Fabrizio Director of Corporate Communications and MarCom
The Success Story in a Nutshell
Goals and Requirements
Creating dynamic distribution lists, using multiple types of criteria from employee profiles
Maintaining accuracy of these lists by syncing daily with HR data
Syncing distribution lists to Azure Active Directory and making them available in Outlook
Convincing Results
Up-to-date distribution lists to effectively reach target audiences with communications
Saved time and resources by decreasing duplication and manual effort
Distribution lists available in Outlook to be used by various groups across the organization
The Corporate Communications team at OCA is a centralized source for distributing many types of communications to different audiences across the organization. For that reason, the needs when it comes to the creation of appropriate distribution lists are rather complex. In the past, a solution developed internally did the trick for OCA. However, the switch to Microsoft 365 meant that this could not be used anymore.
