Glassmaker glassybaby streamlines retail scheduling and fosters communication with Office 365

Today’s post was written by Lee Rhodes, founder of glassybaby in Seattle, Washington.

I launched glassybaby in 1998 after being diagnosed with cancer and finding hope in the light of a handmade votive. At first, I started making votives and giving them away, but that evolved into a business. We call our votive a glassybaby because of its small round shape.

I made giving foundational to the company’s mission, and today, glassybaby donates 10 percent of all sales to a variety of charities dedicated to healing. That’s important to the people who work here. They’re passionate, mission-focused individuals who want their work lives to make a difference. They want to spend their time at work evangelizing the glassybaby mission, not struggling with administrative chores.

Our basic manufacturing process is very artisanal—handblown glass—and we’re not about to bring in machines to do that. It’s a point of pride that every one of our products is touched by human hands. But in other areas of our business, we’re trying to modernize with technology and are using Office 365 to help us do that.

Office 365 is such a broad offering; we put the apps out there and let employees take a self-service approach to finding the tools that meet their needs. We’re a fast-growing company of 400 people, so we don’t have time for lengthy product rollouts and training. We need tools that our employees intuitively understand so they can get themselves up and running.

These tools have been life-changing for us at glassybaby. We’re all in different locations on different schedules; the glassblowers work two shifts a day, the stores open at overlapping times, the corporate staff works from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM. It’s changed our lives to have a place where we can all go and find information and communicate.

Not only do these tools help us be more efficient, but they’ve enabled more culture and community-building here at glassybaby, and that’s one of the byproducts that I’m really proud of.

I don’t think we could function without these tools; I can’t even imagine working today as we did three years ago. The Office 365 applications have really helped with the flow and the rhythm of glassybaby and alleviated a lot of stress.

—Lee Rhodes

Read the case study to learn more about how glassybaby is empowering its Firstline Workers with intuitive Office 365 scheduling.

The post Glassmaker glassybaby streamlines retail scheduling and fosters communication with Office 365 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Source: Microsoft Office Blog