Plex Systems helps over 400 manufacturers manage their inventory and shipping. In the last two years the company doubled in size, and moved from a PC-only business to one that welcomes all platforms.
But the rapid growth of their teams has led to new challenges: they needed to collaborate between distant offices, but relying on email left them stuck with multiple versions of the same Office files and documents. “We needed a better way to collaborate across multiple geographies and devices,” said Chris Pesola, Plex’s Senior Director of IT. The company had an Office 365 deployment in place, and wanted something that would best complement their existing tools.
As a cloud solution provider, Plex knows the cloud. And after evaluating a number of collaboration solutions, Plex chose Dropbox Business. “We wanted people to feel comfortable with the user interface, security, and deployment,” Pesola says. “It needed to work well with any mix of Macs, PCs, and smartphones, and all of the above. It brought us back to one answer, which was Dropbox.” The powerful features and integrations we’ve developed with Microsoft Office were a perfect fit. “Our users love being able to open native Microsoft Office documents from the web,” Pesola says.
Plex’s employees can open any Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file in a shared Dropbox folder directly into Office Online, and collaborate in real-time, thanks to co-authoring. The Dropbox badge brings that real-time collaboration to the desktop. An employee working on a PowerPoint presentation in a Dropbox shared folder will know when someone else is in the file, and can use the badge to update to the latest version whenever a change is made. And Dropbox and Office 365 work everywhere Plex’s employees do—across Macs, PCs, and smartphones.
“What tipped the scales in Dropbox’s favor was the platform neutrality,” Pesola says. “Having that integration down to the desktop level that people are comfortable with was huge for us.” With Dropbox and Office 365, Plex employees can use the tools they love to stay in sync, without changing the way they work.
To hear more from Chris Pesola about how Dropbox Business and Office 365 work better together for Plex, check out our on-demand webinar.
