GLOBAL BUSINESS
Global business
BORDERLESS TEAMWORK

"These tools are essential for our company’s success. They make up the whole of our framework and without them we wouldn’t be able to do business”
Bill Law, Head of Corporate Communications,
VOLVO 3P

by: Tobias Hammar
photography: Niklas Bernstone and Christer Ehrling

VOLVO 3P'S HEADQUARTERS may be located in well-known “Volvo country”, just north of Göteborg, but its 3,000 employees are spread over four continents. As the joint function for product planning, product development, purchasing and product range management for Mack, Renault Trucks and Volvo Trucks, Volvo 3p combines structures and systems from three extremely different corporate cultures to create a single global organisation.
“This is probably one of the most common companies in the entire Volvo Group. To make things work, we were obliged to develop tools to enable people to talk to their colleagues in Sweden as if they were sitting in the next office, even if they were actually based in Shanghai or Bangalore,” explains Bill Law.
 

IMPORTANT TOOL
With Volvo IT’s assistance, Volvo 3P has adopted a raft of applications within collaborative tools, or groupware, as they are also known – software that makes it possible to share information and documents between the people and groups in a network, regardless of physical location.
“These tools are essential for our company’s success. They make up the whole of our framework and without them we wouldn’t be able to do business,” says Bill Law and the company’s cio, Guy de la Servette, agrees.
“Using these tools, we can collaborate both internally and with our customers and suppliers. They make us attractive as a workplace and business partner,” he says and goes on to mention that the company has, for example, succeeded in totally eliminating the exchange of paper in its contacts with the more than 3,000 suppliers with which it conducts business at global level. All communication instead takes place electronically.
“At the same time, many of the tools we use in our day-to-day work are collaborative tools, without actually being recognised as such. You don’t need a special tool to work together!” he adds.
Well-known applications such as Netmeeting, tdm, Teamplace, Messenger and webcast are some of the groupware tools that are used most frequently at Volvo 3P. They enable the widespread organisation to function as a unit, swiftly organise meetings and conferences and gradually establish a ‘global team spirit’ among the employees.
“Netmeeting is a must; it’s used at half of all our meetings. It’s so straightforward; you simply log on, lift the receiver and start, no matter where you are. All the documents that are open on your screen are also open to the people you are talking to and your changes are immediately passed on to everyone. Nowadays, Netmeeting is such a natural part of our daily life that we don’t even think about it,” continues Bill Law.


BORDERS DISAPPEAR
The use of webcast has also helped to erase the borders between the company’s various offices. For the past year, Volvo 3P’s management has been using the internet as a means of communicating the company’s quarterly results to all the employees – simultaneously.
“This is an easy way of involving all the employees. If you can get the company president to present the results to you from Göteborg and all you need to do is go to a conference room to see and hear him, as though he was in the same room, then you have an application that really works”, says Bill Law.
There are, however, plans to do even more. Web cameras can be used to show all the employees how activities within the company follow the sun. What is more, meeting technology can be refined still further.
“I would like to have a tool that automatically shows my colleagues on the other side of the world when I’m back in my office, whether I’m busy or free, so that we can contact one another without disturbing. Some tools of this kind are already available, but they need to be taken one step further,” says Guy de la Servette.
Furthermore, the company is looking into ways of extending webcast to include employees at every level of the organisation, so that it is not simply a tool for the management to pass on information. In the near future, webcast will be used on the “road show” the management regularly runs to meet managers and co-workers at the different offices.
“We usually visit every single office. This time, however, central management will be participating via webcast, while the local management teams will appear ‘live’. All Volvo 3p’s employees will be contacted on the same day, by the same people, with the same message. Everyone will have a unique opportunity to interact and put questions to the management – at a fraction of the cost we would normally incur for an event of this kind,” explains Bill Law.


NO MAJOR DISADVANTAGES
Neither of them appears to see any major disadvantages when it comes to collaborative tools.
This does not mean that there are no challenges, however.
“Security is incredibly important. The advantage of these tools is that they give everyone access to our operations, both internally and externally, at every level. The disadvantage is that they risk destroying the Volvo Group’s competitive advantage if we fail to take account of the security aspects when we use them,” Guy de La Servette adds.
“They also need to be really user friendly, so that people like using them. If it takes more than three minutes to start using a new program, you can forget it. Tools and software have to be straightforward, effective and give the company an obvious value. They then introduce themselves,” Guy continues.
“In actual fact, we are not talking about it. Collaborative tools are not a fantastic new gadget. They are instead a natural way of conducting business and, in the future, they will simply be taken for granted.”
 

 

  

Greenland, New York, the Amazon – it makes no difference where you are. With the Internet, web cameras and collaborative software, you can work with your colleagues as if they were sitting in the room next door.
This is something Volvo 3P has been quick to realise. As Bill Law, head of corporate communications at Volvo 3P, and Guy de la Servette, CIO, see it, these tools enable them and their 3,000 co-workers in different parts of the world to work together as a global team.

“Netmeeting is a must; it’s used at half of all our meetings,” says Bill Law.

“Collaborative tools are not a fantastic new gadget. They are instead a natural way of conducting business,” says Guy de La Servette.


FACTS
Volvo 3P
Volvo 3P is a business unit within the Volvo Group responsible for product planning, product development, purchasing and product range management for the three truck companies, Mack, Renault Trucks and Volvo Trucks.
Volvo 3P has 3,000 employees worldwide. Its headquarters are in Göteborg. In addition, the company is represented in eight places on four continents.
 

 

WHAT VOLVO IT IS DOING
Volvo IT is offering a number of services known as Collaborative Tools, within the framework of End User Services. Here are some examples.
Mail & messaging, chat and mail applications of different kinds.
Audioconferencing, a Volvo-unique service that enables functional telephone conferences at a low cost.
Netmeeting, a program for on-line meetings, which is available to all Volvo users.
Monaco, on-line meetings for participants who also work outside Volvo.
Video-GMS, an application that simplifies the use of video conferences.
Teamplace, an application for collaboration and the storage of information in a team, a group, a department or a project.
PM Place, a Volvo-adapted Microsoft Enterprise Project solution for project and time reports.
Document handling tools, for more specific needs related to document handling and storage.

Contacts: Pernilla Arnell, Solution Service Manager, Göteborg, pernilla.arnell@volvo.com,
phone +46 31 32 22 639
Ludovic Gazzola, Customer Service Manager, Lyon, ludovic.gazzola@renault-trucks.com, phone +33 472 92 23 63