CSN deploys Company Communicator and reaches 35,000 users with its corporate communication using Microsoft 365

With more than eight decades of history, Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN) is a Brazilian multinational company that supports one of the most efficient integrated steel complexes in the world, with operations in five segments: steel, mining, logistics, cements, and energy.

The company combines tradition with an attentive look at innovation and has recently gone through a process of implementing Microsoft 365 suite and Microsoft Azure tools.

CSN Digital—the name of the project—was a transformation that reduced server costs, increased storage capacity, and improved the company's internal communication. The next step was taken with an authentication system for company security and a chatbot in Microsoft Teams, where users can request IT service.

A new license with new features and for more users

Reaping the benefits of the implemented solution and experiencing a moment of contractual renewal, CSN chose to expand the resources used for employees licensed with the Microsoft 365 E3 license—which still met the company's security demands—and include non-licensed employees in the Microsoft communication, with the Microsoft 365 F1 license, as is the case for the company's frontline workers.

"We achieved an improvement in the contract on several fronts, such as security, we expanded the use of collaboration resources, and the number of users with better resources," says Flavio Santos de Oliveira, Specialist of the Infrastructure Team at CSN.

The expansion of this contract took E3 licensing from 5,000 to approximately 10,000 users. The total licensed audience also experienced a significant increase; what previously was around 12,000 was expanded to 35,000 users.

In every contract renewal, CSN, as an internal rule, seeks several alternatives, and Microsoft was chosen for a series of reasons. "CSN users are familiar with the Microsoft 365 platform, with security items unified into a single platform that brought financial benefit and quality. Furthermore, it is an already established tool and there was financial negotiation," explains Flavio.

CSNews: Customized, monitored, and constantly updated communication

Microsoft Teams began to play an important role in corporate communication and the inclusion of new users took place in parallel with the implementation of a new tool, Company Communicator—an application that organizes the sending of messages to teams, employees, and other divisions of the internal public, via chat or in a Teams channel. The implementation was carried out with TOP365, a Microsoft partner company.

The new project was named CSNews. "The Microsoft team introduced us to the platform, and the tracking of metrics, the different formats of communication interested us, but even more so, the fact that it is a product that is constantly updated," says Jaqueline Leite, Corporate Communication Specialist at CSN.

In addition to the metrics, message customization, and constant transformation, the company saw great value in implementing push notifications, which notify the employees with a red icon to attract attention with each received message.

In less than a year on the platform, CSN has already sent more than 7.6 million messages and more than 1.3 million communications. In the last 30 days alone, 128 communications were sent to specific areas, and 915,600 messages were sent.

"We were able to launch a new means of communication with more innovation and agility, we were able to make a more dynamic and efficient communication, take it out of the norm, do something more eye-catching for the employee, and monitor it all," adds Jaqueline.

Thus, with the inclusion of many employees in Microsoft Teams, such as the company's frontline workers, the company also expanded its communication through this channel, in addition to all those that already existed, such as: intranet, corporate TV, internal news information, and email, for example. CSNews is a channel that can send messages to the entire CSN or to specific teams.

Innovation, agility, and efficiency

"The solution is technologically appropriate and enables rapid, comprehensive, and effective message dissemination, in addition to being able to measure communications access and click rates," evaluates Luiz Paulo Barreto, Corporate Institutional Director of CSN. "In a world of rapid and great transformations, communication tools need to be agile and innovative. In a world with a lot of fake news, communication needs to be accurate and reliable. The tools too," he adds.

Luiz assesses that the partnership was crucial to connecting CSN's 35,000 employees, whether through the computer or not, but united in Microsoft Teams. "Microsoft was able to be quick to adapt its universal use tool to the company's concrete needs. It was also very good to have all the support from Microsoft partner Top365, which helped with the implementation of this communication project for CSN," he says.

After elevating the company's internal communication potential with CSN Digital, adding a large volume of employees to the Microsoft Teams platform, and creating a company-wide communication channel through CSNews, the partnership between CSN and Microsoft continues. With a large volume of users on the platform, the next step aims to include security functionalities in this environment, further elevating the potential of CSN's digital transformation.