Aventis achieves significant benefits by building a single collaborative architecture after its creation through merger.

Nucleus Research analysts independently examined the global deployment of Microsoft Exchange at Aventis and found the company achieved a 415% return on its investment (ROI) with a payback period of just 9 months. By creating a single messaging and collaboration architecture that reaches across the nearly 100 countries where Aventis has a presence, the company was able to increase the quality of company-wide communication. The result was both an increase in group productivity and a decrease in travel costs. Aventis believes it gained benefit from this communication both in the product development effort and in a greater sense of community for the employees of this global company.

The full Microsoft Exchange ROI case study is available at no charge from the Nucleus Research Web site (NucleusResearch.com).

"Aventis is an example of the benefits that can be achieved with a company-wide collaborative infrastructure," said Ian Campbell, vice president of research for Nucleus Research. "Nucleus undertook this independent evaluation of Microsoft Exchange to fairly assess the benefits of Exchange in a large-scale distributed environment. The results clearly show that collaborative tools can have a direct impact on productivity as well as unify disparate groups."

"A key factor in ROI is often the breadth of the application, for example, how many people are affected," said Rebecca Wettemann, research director for Nucleus Research. "Even after correcting for inefficient transfer of time, the small productivity increase of each Aventis employee, multiplied by more than 50,000 employees, produced significant benefits to the company."

The Nucleus Research case study examines a single Microsoft Exchange customer and evaluates the costs and benefit from the deployment. The case study was undertaken independently and not commissioned by Microsoft.

About Nucleus Research

Nucleus Research is the leader in return on investment research. Headquartered in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with European operations in Paris, France, Nucleus provides expert advice, analysis, and financial modeling tools to help companies measure the actual return technology brings to the corporate bottom line.

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