Challenges

GESCO SE is a strategic industrial holding that unites multiple independently operating mid-sized companies across Materials Refinement and Distribution, Health Care and Life Science, and Industrial Assets and Infrastructure. While each subsidiary operates autonomously, collaboration across the group steadily increased and with it the complexity of managing collaboration spaces in a shared Microsoft 365 environment. With 164 Teams workspaces and 470 users, keeping structures consistent and secure became increasingly difficult. Teams sprawl, inconsistent permissions and redundant workspaces created governance and compliance risks and added significant effort for IT.

Key challenges included:

• Balancing autonomy and consistency for independent subsidiaries within a shared Microsoft 365 environment
• Enabling secure self-service for creating and managing Teams in Microsoft Teams without sacrificing oversight
• Ensuring secure access, permission clarity and standardized governance across all collaboration spaces
• Managing growing numbers of Teams, SharePoint sites and guest accounts without manual workload
• Reducing complexity and security exposure caused by inconsistent collaboration structures

Solutions

To address these challenges, GESCO SE partnered with bitery GmbH & Co. KG and implemented EasyLife 365 Collaboration. The solution brought transparency, structure and governance into their entire Microsoft 365 environment while balancing autonomy for subsidiaries with central control for the holding company.

Key capabilities included:

• Centrally defined governance rules that apply to all collaboration spaces while allowing subsidiaries to create and manage their own Teams
• Standardized templates that ensure structured and consistent Teams creation across 164 workspaces
• Regulated and auditable access for internal and external collaboration, including around 60 guest accounts
• Automated governance with regular reviews, identification of unused Teams and cleanup without manual effort
• Seamless integration with Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive

Result

With EasyLife 365 Collaboration, GESCO SE established a secure, scalable and efficient collaboration model across the entire group. Key results included:

• Higher Microsoft Teams adoption, with Teams evolving from a niche tool to the primary communication platform
• A structured team lifecycle, with a review showing that 70% of legacy Teams were no longer in use and new Teams governed from day one
• Secure collaboration between subsidiaries and with external guest accounts under consistent governance rules
• More structured, transparent and efficient communication between the holding company and its subsidiaries