Henkel Makes Bold Leap to the Cloud with Office 365

When global manufacturer Henkel found itself at a crossroads, dealing with aging IT infrastructure and disparate collaboration and productivity tools, the nearly 140-year-old company decided to leap to the cloud with Office 365.

Dial soap, Purex hand sanitizer, Persil laundry detergent, Loctite adhesive, Schwarzkopf haircare—Henkel has a broad stable of products and technologies used by consumers and industries in 75 countries. The world’s first glue stick? That was Henkel, too. Much of what the company creates plays a supporting role in people’s lives and businesses—behind-the-scenes, sometimes even virtually invisible, but always exceptional.

“Henkel always strives to be best-in-class. To achieve that goal we need to be proactive in adopting technology to deliver a modern workplace. The world is connected as never before, and we need to connect our people, our partners, and our customers to be successful,” said Joachim Jaeckle, Henkel’s senior corporate vice president of IT.

The company’s leadership team, headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany, started to worry about its aging IT infrastructure and productivity tools. Henkel’s 47,000 employees lacked a cohesive, fast-moving way to communicate, collaborate and work on-the-go.

“To simplify the environment we decided to take a huge leap forward and invest in the cloud rather than upgrading existing systems,” Jaeckle said.

“When you are delivering new technology like this, you have to go for it,” said Markus Petrak, Henkel’s corporate director of Integrated Business Solutions. “We had to move fast and communicate well to make the change as easy as possible.”

Office 365 has since ignited the productivity and connectivity of all of its departments, from accounting to marketing and packaging to research and development.

“A simplified, mobile way of working is a—it’s a must-have. We have employees who are working outside, who are working with our customers,” Petrak said. They want to use different channels to connect. They want to be able to see who they are talking to and they want to work from anywhere. These are the capabilities we need to deliver long-term success,” added Jaeckle.

A video series premiering today explores the 140-year-old company’s transformation to a thoroughly modern, connected workplace.