Case Study: Marks & Spencer achieves smarter, more agile working with Avanade’s Skype for Business and Cloud PBX

Marks & Spencer breaks through barriers to smarter working

Marks & Spencer, a major British retailer with more than 1,400 stores, launched a company-wide "Smarter Working" program to boost flexibility and collaboration. Although M&S had adopted Office 365, Skype for Business was underused and the legacy fixed-line telephony estate was costly to maintain—employees relied on mobiles and a third‑party conferencing service—so M&S sought a partner with strong change‑management skills, speed and Cloud PBX expertise.

Avanade implemented Microsoft Cloud PBX and a tailored Skype for Business rollout, redesigning the telephony architecture and delivering a people‑first change program with use cases, 100+ training sessions, 20+ user guides and on‑site launch support. The result: nearly 5,000 employees can make and receive external calls anywhere on any device, desk phones and multiple conferencing vendors were removed, office moves were simplified, costs reduced and collaboration (IM and conferencing) significantly increased, with strong positive user feedback.

Marks & Spencer

Steven Collier

Lead Technical Architect