The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company implemented Microsoft Office 365 to improve collaboration across its global workforce of 66,000 associates. Office 365 allows associates to easily connect via Skype, SharePoint, Yammer, and OneDrive from any device. This has increased the exchange of ideas and helped Goodyear develop new products and services faster. The rollout was successful due to change management training and support from Microsoft Services consultants. Associates now have more flexible work options and streamlined processes have increased efficiency.

1. The Goodyear Tire
& Rubber Company
66,000 associates
www.goodyear.com
United States
Manufacturing
Company Profile
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company is one
of the world’s largest tire manufacturers. The
company was founded in 1898 and is based
in Akron, Ohio.
“Our heightened level of connection through
Office 365 helps speed the exchange of
ideas—that’s enabling the development of
new products and services for our customers
and consumers.”
—Sherry Neubert, Chief Information Officer,
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company
Tire manufacturer uses Office 365
to drive innovation for maximum
business impact
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company believes in bringing the best
new products to market as quickly as possible. The company recently
adopted Microsoft Office 365 to support its drive for innovation, taking
advantage of cloud-based services to unite dispersed teams, streamline
processes, and improve mobile productivity. Today, Goodyear associates
reach across geographical boundaries and time zones to share
knowledge with colleagues regardless of location, speeding up every
facet of the business.

2. Strength in numbers
The name Goodyear is synonymous with quality. As a leader in the global tire industry,
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company delivers top-rated tires to consumers around the
world. Although many organizations find it challenging to maintain a global presence,
Goodyear considers its wide reach one of its strong suits. “Certainly there are cultural and
language differences to address when you maintain a global workforce the way we do,
but we consider that diversity a strength,” says Sherry Neubert, Chief Information Officer
at The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. “Our diversity not only helps us deliver better
products, but it also makes Goodyear a better place to work.”
The company prides itself on hiring and retaining a talented workforce so that it has the
expertise to lead the industry in innovation. Ensuring that its associates get what they
need to be effective is a priority at Goodyear. “We want all our associates—from the
plant floor to the boardroom—to be able to be productive,” says Neubert. “In the past,
we received feedback from associates who wanted a more integrated, modern set of
technology capabilities, and we wanted to honor that request because it would make for
a more efficient work environment in which associates were better supported.”
Expanded opportunities
Goodyear embraces new technology to ensure that its associates have the capacity
to promote collaboration across internal and geographical boundaries and to support
productivity from anywhere. “Goodyear chose Microsoft Office 365 because it’s both
modern and stable,” says Neubert. “We looked at other services, and although they
had modern capabilities, we questioned their maturity. With Office 365, we got a
tried-and-true offering that we knew would be stable yet also deliver advanced
technology capabilities.”
Data privacy, security, and compliance were also critical to the company’s decision.
“Our legal department, risk management group, and human resources organization
thoroughly reviewed our options to make sure the one we chose would support
continuous adherence to all our requirements,” says Neubert. “Like other global
companies, we must comply with all local regulations. Office 365 gives us confidence
that we can remain in compliance from a data privacy and security standpoint.”
An efficient rollout
To implement Office 365, Goodyear took advantage of its project management expertise.
The effort began with executive sponsorship and the identification of one associate
as the change enabler for each department. The company then conducted a phased
deployment. “We predetermined the criteria that each department needed to meet, such
as having more than 70 percent of the department’s associates trained or converting a
certain percentage of its mail files,” says Neubert. “Only if all the criteria were met would
that department go live.”
The company also created a live support network of about 100 IT professionals who
provided online Office 365 support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. From anywhere in
the world, Goodyear associates could ask a question online via live chat, and a colleague
“With Office 365, we
got a tried-and-true
offering that we knew
would be stable yet
also deliver advanced
technology capabilities.”
—Sherry Neubert, Chief
Information Officer, The Goodyear
Tire & Rubber Company

3. “We’re excited
about using Sway to
augment our existing
communications and
make even more
people want to
click through and
read them.”
—Jennie Bledsoe, Global Director
of Internal Communications, The
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company
would pop up to answer it. The company’s deployment was also aided by consultants
from Microsoft Services. “The strong, clear communications through our change network,
coupled with our partnership with Microsoft Services consultants, enabled us to have a
successful launch,” says Neubert.
Goodyear rolled out the first wave of Office 365 services in January 2014 and completed
migration of its 32,000 Lotus Notes email users a year later. Today, associates all over
the company use Office 365 to stay better connected, including plant floor associates
who use a mix of kiosks and mobile devices to access information and services through
Office 365.
The right tools for the job
Goodyear associates now benefit from a range of communication and collaboration
options. The company moved away from Lotus Notes email messaging and now uses
Microsoft Exchange Online instead. Associates also use a combination of Microsoft Office
365 ProPlus and Office Online as a productivity suite, based on their personal preferences.
The company employs the Click-to-Run feature in Office 365 ProPlus to ensure that the
latest release is deployed across the enterprise.
Goodyear is migrating the majority of its team sites to Microsoft SharePoint Online.
“Rather than having static team sites, we’re creating dynamic, highly collaborative spaces,”
says Neubert. “Providing our project teams with an integrated, real-time experience saves
time, avoids version-control issues, and helps streamline business processes.”
Associates also switched from Cisco WebEx to Skype for Business Online for everything
from instant messaging to Skype Meetings, and team members rely on the Yammer
enterprise social network for knowledge sharing across the company. “Now that our
environment offers powerful choices, we want associates to consider what they want from
“Our heightened level of connection through Office 365 helps speed the exchange of ideas—
that’s enabling the development of new products and services for our customers and consumers.”
—Sherry Neubert, CIO
Global footprint
66K employees
49 manufacturing facilities
22 countries
Fast Office 365 multilingual
deployment
Goodyear migrated about 1,500
worldwide users a week over
4 months.
Collaboration across geographical
boundaries drives productivity from
anywhere, anytime.

4. a particular communication and channel and use the best Office 365 service to meet that
need,” says Jennie Bledsoe, Global Director of Internal Communications at The Goodyear
Tire & Rubber Company. “They may share an update via email or a team site, conduct a
brainstorming session in a Skype Meeting, or engage in a broader discussion on Yammer.”
Greater level of connection
Since adopting Office 365, Goodyear has noticed that associates work more effectively
with their colleagues across the globe. “I spoke recently with an engineer who told me
that he’s talking more and emailing less since we made the transition to Office 365,” says
Neubert. “He uses presence information to see who’s available around the world, and
when he sees that a colleague is online, it takes him two clicks to initiate a Skype for
Business call. Those real-time conversations help build the relationships and trust needed
to sustain global virtual teams.”
One of the most significant Office 365 developments for the company has been its
grassroots adoption of Yammer, which Goodyear uses to share news and give a boost to
its existing communications channels. “We see Yammer as tailor-made for connecting
associates in different regions at different levels of the organization,” says Bledsoe.
“We’ve always encouraged associates to share best practices, but Yammer is really the first
mechanism that makes it almost effortless. Associates don’t have to go through special
systems and processes—they can simply put their questions out there and let the right
internal expert answer them.”
Mobile productivity
Whether Goodyear associates are traveling for business or meeting with customers, they
must be able to stay connected. With Office 365, they can use any device they want
to access their files and collaborate with colleagues from anywhere. The company has
augmented its network drives, which require a virtual private network for remote access,
with Microsoft OneDrive for Business cloud-based document storage. “OneDrive for
Business has been a game changer for us,” says Neubert. “Associates tell us how much they
like being able to access their documents from their phones and from home.”
In addition, Goodyear associates appreciate having flexible mobile access to each other
through Skype for Business Online. “The ability to connect so easily from a hotel room or
a cab has been one of the most significant changes for us,” says Neubert. “Using Skype
Meetings and shared screens, geographically dispersed teams can look at information at
the same time and talk about it without all the steps involved before.”
Enhanced efficiency
The company’s associates are streamlining a variety of processes thanks to Office 365
services. “It’s not a revolution, but all the incremental improvements we’re making add
up to saved time and greater efficiency,” says Neubert. “We’re helping associates solve
problems more quickly than in the past.”
Goodyear also becomes more efficient as associates extend their knowledge across the
company. “Through Office 365, our associates’ personal networks have expanded,” says
Neubert. “Not only do they know more colleagues who can weigh in via instant message
“Services like
SharePoint Online
and Yammer help us
transform who’s having
the conversation and
how they choose to
connect with each
other and with leaders,
all of which feeds the
innovation process and
fosters organizational
intelligence.”
— Sherry Neubert, Chief
Information Officer, The Goodyear
Tire & Rubber Company

5. or join an impromptu meeting, but they can also see who’s available around the world to
work together to develop new products and services.”
The company expects to increase the impact of Office 365 even further as it continues to
adopt new services, such as Microsoft Office Delve and Microsoft Sway. “I installed Delve
on my iPhone, and it searches everything I have access to—whether it’s my Outlook inbox
or a OneDrive for Business folder that someone shared with me,” says Neubert.
“I absolutely save time by searching in one place, instead of multiple locations.”
Adds Bledsoe, “We’re excited about using Sway to augment our existing communications
and make even more people want to click through and read them.”
Support for innovation
With the move to Office 365, Goodyear gained even greater support for its ongoing push
to innovate companywide. “We’re experiencing a more open exchange of ideas,” says
Neubert. “Services like SharePoint Online and Yammer help us transform who’s having
the conversation and how they choose to connect with each other and with leaders, all of
which feeds the innovation process and fosters organizational intelligence.”
All these efforts are helping Goodyear bring new ideas to market more quickly, which
is particularly important in its competitive industry. “The frequency and breadth of our
collaboration have improved, along with diversity of thought and of the population that
associates can access,” says Neubert. “Our heightened level of connection through Office
365 helps speed the exchange of ideas—that’s enabling the development of new products
and services for our customers and consumers.”
For More Information
For 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
Microsoft Office 365
The new Office provides anywhere access to your familiar Office applications—plus email,
calendar, video conferencing, and your most current documents—on almost any device, from
PCs to smartphones to tablets.
For more information about Microsoft Office 365, go to:
www.office365.com
Software and Services
Microsoft Office 365
Microsoft Exchange Online
Microsoft Office Online
Microsoft OneDrive for Business
Microsoft SharePoint Online
Microsoft Services
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published Februaury 2016