Microsoft Visio 2010Customer Solution Case Study

Toy Manufacturer Conducts More Efficient Meetings with Graphical Booking Application

OverviewCountry or Region: ItalyIndustry: Manufacturing

Customer ProfileFounded in 1978 in Cogliate, Italy, Giochi Preziosi is one of the largest toy companies in the world. In Italy, it operates more than 120 retail stores under the Toy Center brand.

Business SituationGiochi Preziosi employees used a manual, error-prone process to book meeting rooms. The company wanted to automate the process and reduce scheduling conflicts.

SolutionGiochi Preziosi deployed Microsoft Visio Professional 2010. Employees quickly adopted the solution, due to its graphical, intuitive interface and interoperability with a redesigned intranet based on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

Benefits Virtually eliminated meeting room

conflicts Improved employee satisfaction Increased productivity

“Microsoft Visio 2010 met all our criteria for a user-friendly, flexible, and low-maintenance solution… Today, we have almost completely eradicated meeting room conflicts.”

Alfredo Fabbri, IT Director, Giochi Preziosi

Giochi Preziosi employees used a manual process to book meeting rooms, which resulted in daily scheduling conflicts. It solved the problem by using Microsoft Visio Professional 2010 to create a data-linked diagram that shows available meeting rooms. The diagram is published on its intranet using Visio Services in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. Now employees at headquarters can reserve rooms in a few clicks, so business is more efficient overall.

SituationIn Italy, Giochi Preziosi— named after the founder Enrico Preziosi—is renowned for its Cicciobello dolls and Gormiti action figures. The company is also licensed to create toys based on familiar characters, such as SpongeBob SquarePants, Shrek, and Power Rangers. While 410 people work at headquarters in Cogliate, the company has five other facilities in Italy and maintains offices around the globe.

In 2010, Giochi Preziosi began working with Teorema Group, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network with Gold competencies, to upgrade its intranet. The company wanted a robust, flexible communication and collaboration platform to support a global workforce. It also needed to address a long-standing impediment to productivity: a poorly coordinated manual process for booking meeting rooms that resulted in daily scheduling conflicts. To book one of the 15 rooms available at the company’s headquarters, employees phoned or emailed the sole staff member responsible for tracking the bookings in a spreadsheet. The same staff member was also responsible for arranging requisite audiovisual equipment and catering.

“We have modular buildings on several campuses at headquarters,” says Alfredo Fabbri, IT Director at Giochi Preziosi. “The rooms available for meetings change frequently, as do the resources associated with them, such as audio-visual equipment or catering capabilities. Frequent changes to a manual process create opportunities for human error. Every day, we had double-bookings and awkward moments. For example, a manager who invited clients to a lunch meeting might arrive to find the room already occupied.”

The issue affected everyone at the office; booking and solving scheduling conflicts wasted employees' time. “When Teorema told us they had a way to solve the

problem that would interoperate with the newly built intranet, we wanted to hear more,” says Fabbri.

SolutionTeorema suggested using Microsoft Visio Professional 2010 drawing and diagramming software to create a web-based, intuitive, graphical application for employees to use when reserving a meeting room. In 2010, Teorema created a data-driven Visio Professional 2010 diagram that shows the floor plan at Giochi Preziosi headquarters with all the meeting rooms and their status: green for available and red for unavailable (see Figure 1). The also drawing illustrates which rooms are available for catered meetings and which have audio-visual resources. It links to CAD files stored on a list in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and to meeting room information also stored in a SharePoint database.

The Visio 2010 application is configured to depict the latest view of meeting room and resource availability at all times for the entire building. And thanks to a new feature, Microsoft Visio Services in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, the diagram representing the latest view of the underlying data can be published on the company’s new intranet and made available to the employees in the browser. That means Giochi Preziosi employees can use the application without having Visio 2010 installed on their computers.

“Visio Professional 2010 interoperates closely with SharePoint Server 2010, so it worked well with the new intranet we were building for Giochi Preziosi,” says Gianpaolo Centuori, Business Manager and Chief Executive Officer at Teorema Engineering. “With Visio 2010, we can create a user-friendly application, easily upload the CAD drawings into a custom SharePoint list, and link them to deliver a dynamic graphical application that’s always

“The rooms available for meetings change frequently, as do the resources associated with them, such as audio-visual equipment or catering capabilities… Every day, we had double bookings…”

Alfredo Fabbri, IT Director,Giochi Preziosi

current. These capabilities generate a great advantage in terms of time savings and,

consequently, a cost saving for the client. For that reason, we recommended Visio 2010 for Giochi Preziosi.”

“Visio 2010 is a perfect fit for the dynamic nature of business at Giochi Preziosi,” adds Fabbri. “It doesn’t matter that the meeting rooms keep changing, because the diagram is always up to date.”

Teorema completed the Visio 2010 application in less than two months, and Giochi Preziosi introduced the new application to staff at the intranet launch party in April 2011. Today, the solution is used by all 410 people at headquarters, and the company has plans to distribute it to global offices in 2012. BenefitsGiochi Preziosi turned to Microsoft Visio 2010 to remove a significant impediment to business efficiency among its employees at headquarters, without requiring a lot of IT involvement and user training. “Microsoft Visio 2010 met all our criteria for a user-

friendly, flexible, and low-maintenance solution,” says Fabbri. “It interoperated with

our existing technology so we could fit it into our major intranet project. Today, we have almost completely eradicated meeting room conflicts.”

And Teorema was able to use Visio 2010 simplify the quick resolution of an ongoing problem at Giochi Preziosi. “It was fast and easy to learn how to work with Visio Services, and we saved more than a month in development time, instead of proceeding with a custom development that would have taken twice as long,” says Centuori.

Collectively, employees at headquarters are saving more than an hour a week by scheduling meetings for themselves. The employee who used to handle the meetings calendar is now able to focus on work other than booking rooms, reserving audio-visual equipment, or finding a venue capable of handling catering. With just a few clicks, every employee can access the diagram in their browser and select an available room that meets their needs.

Figure 1. Giochi Preziosi employees use a Microsoft Visio 2010 diagram to book meeting rooms and eliminate scheduling conflicts. The dynamic, data-linked diagram connects to CAD drawings in a SharePoint list on the company’s intranet.

“Visio 2010 turned out to be a quick solution to a problem that had compromised employee satisfaction,” says Fabbri. “Today, we are all confident that we won't be surprised when it comes to meeting room reservations. It might seem like a small part of the work week, but it has far-reaching consequences. Now we are managing our meetings with colleagues and clients more efficiently to get business done on schedule. That’s good for everyone’s productivity!”

Microsoft Visio 2010Microsoft Visio 2010 takes diagramming to a new level with dynamic, data-driven visualization tools and templates, enhanced process management capabilities, and advanced web sharing. Combine real-time data from multiple sources, including Microsoft SharePoint lists, Microsoft Excel 2010, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008, into one powerful diagram using vibrant graphics like icons and data bars. Use subprocesses to manage processes and to validate rules and logic to ensure accuracy and consistency across the organization. Design workflows in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and, without using code, export them to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for real-time execution and monitoring. Share refreshable, data-linked diagrams over the web with anyone, even those who don't have Visio 2010.

For more information about Microsoft Visio 2010, go to:visio.microsoft.com

For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Giochi Preziosi, call (39) 02 964751 or visit the website at: www.giochipreziosi.com

For more information about Teorema, call (39) 02 890 78 389 or visit the website at:www.teorema.net

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published April 2012

Software and Services Microsoft Visio− Microsoft Visio Professional 2010

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

Technologies− Microsoft Visio Services in Microsoft

SharePoint Server 2010