QIC transitions to Microsoft Teams to thrive during COVID-19 and beyond

QIC is a long-term specialist manager in alternatives offering infrastructure, real estate, private capital, liquid strategies, and multi-asset investments. It is one of the largest institutional investment managers in Australia, with A$79bn (US$54 bn) in funds under management (as of 30 June 2020). QIC has more than 110 clients and over 1400 employees. Headquartered in Brisbane, Australia, QIC also has offices in Sydney, Melbourne, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, and Copenhagen.

As part of a company-wide transformation, QIC turned to Insync to aid in a smooth migration to Microsoft Teams from Skype for Business.

As part of a broad investment mix, global reach, and changing tailwinds with investment markets, QIC conducts a LOT of meetings. Meetings about investment priorities or decisions through to internal compliance, HR, or client meetings. QIC already operated a distributed meeting and conferencing environment, based on Cisco videoconferencing equipment, utilising the Pexip interoperability platform to allow Cisco equipment to join Microsoft Skype for Business Meetings. QIC turned to Insync when migrating to Microsoft Teams from Skype for Business, and in the process wanted to decommission their legacy Cisco environment for both calling and meetings.

Insync moved rapidly to build out a program of work, aligned to a refresh of the QIC Windows 10 modern operating environment – to roll out Teams globally and provide a superior meeting and calling experience to employees.

Insync conducted a behavioural analysis survey for QIC with over 180 employees across all departments to obtain a clear understanding of current usage, perception, and the potential misuse of the Microsoft 365 platform.

The analysis identified seven problematic areas, which were consistent across all departments (though ranking of importance varied). This data was used to shape the 16 deep-dive workshops which Insync ran as part of the adoption program of work. QIC had a firm grasp of Microsoft Teams basic skills, and as a result, the workshops focussed more on upskilling QIC employees with more advanced skills around running more effective and inclusive meetings and working productively and effectively in a new hybrid environment.

• Challenges with engaging staff over video, especially while being recorded
• Upskilling in OneDrive and Teams for recordings/meetings
• Review of meeting etiquette and best practices for effective meetings
• Opportunity to update the QIC ways of working and guidance on tools/structures as it related to Teams and other Microsoft 365 products
• Targeted material for people using physical meeting spaces and how to best utilise these

Insync engaged QIC employees initially by discussing the survey results and patterns of behaviour before reviewing best practices and discussing how they work. In having these key discussions, we were able to show how the ‘next level’ skills we were training them would add value to their roles.

QIC employees saw value in additional engagement to reinforce skills and success. As part of the process, a key theme was “rethinking how we communicate – in Teams and elsewhere as appropriate.”