Microsoft Office 365
Customer Solution Case Study
Aviation Company Launches Jetpack into the
Global Market Using Online Business Tools
Customer: Martin Aircraft Company
Website: www.martinjetpack.com
Customer Size: 12 employees
Country or Region: New Zealand
Industry: Aviation—Engineering
Partner: the I.T. team
Partner Website: www.theitteam.co.nz
Customer Profile
Based in Christchurch, New Zealand,
Martin Aircraft Company developed and
manufactures the Martin Jetpack, a
personal jetpack able to be flown by a
pilot or via remote control.
Software and Services
 Microsoft Office 365
− Microsoft Exchange Online
− Microsoft Lync Online
− Microsoft SharePoint Online
− Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus
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“Now that the Martin Jetpack is ready for commercial
production, we’ll be using Office 365 to work
productively as a virtual team and take advantage of
global sales opportunities.”
Peter Coker, Chief Executive Officer, Martin Aircraft Company
After 30 years of development, Martin Aircraft Company is ready
to launch the world’s first practical jetpack into the global
market place. It replaced outdated business IT with Microsoft
Office 365. Now its expanding workforce can communicate and
collaborate efficiently as a virtual team to successfully sell the
jetpack to life-saving first responders, military organizations,
tourist operators, and individuals around the world.
When Peter Coker joined Martin Aircraft
Company in April 2013 as Chief Executive
Officer, his goal was to take a small
company with a unique product—the
world’s first practical jetpack—and launch
it into the global marketplace. “Glenn
Martin initially worked on his dream in his
garage in Christchurch on his own and
now, 30 years later, Glenn and our team of
aviation experts have made the jetpack a
reality,” says Coker. “Yet, when I joined
Martin Aircraft, it was still running on very
basic IT systems.”
To commercialize the company, Coker
needed to address the poor quality of its
IT systems. “We can’t be successfully
selling to government agencies and civilian
customers around the world without
reliable email, easy access to corporate
data and sales materials, and real-time
collaboration tools,” he says.
Antiquated Systems
From the outset, Coker was determined to
find the same level of enterprise-quality
business productivity tools for Martin
Aircraft employees that he used during his
previous tenure at a large US aviation
company. “We are a small group of seven
full-time employees and five contractors:
visionary engineers, designers, and some
of the best experts in aviation,” he says.
“Yet we were trying to function with a
rudimentary hosted email solution and a
web mail service that didn’t allow us to use
our @martinaircraft.co.nz email addresses.
Out of the office, our email service wasn’t
reliable, so we phoned around trying to find
each other to get our questions answered.”
The company kept its business documents
and intellectual property—technical
drawings and engineering designs—on a
server at the office. When they were out of
the office, staffers had difficulty accessing
information on the server because the
search function didn’t work and documents
weren’t properly organized. “I worried about
security because we couldn’t allocate
permissions to documents,” says Coker.
Coker plans to hire up to 40 people in the
next 18 months, so it was imperative that he
find the right business productivity tools to
support his objectives for global expansion.
Cloud-Based Global Productivity
It was Martin Aircraft’s new IT partner, the
I.T. team, that suggested a solution to
Coker’s problem—Microsoft Office 365.
“The Office 365 suite of cloud-based
communication and collaboration tools is
flexible, intuitive, and cost-effective;
everything we need for our rapidly growing
company. Office 365 allows us to stay
connected and responsive as we market the
jetpack to customers around the world,”
says Coker. “It’s also a great disaster
recovery solution. When the earthquake hit
Christchurch in 2011, it brought home the
whole business continuity issue. With Office
365, I don’t have to worry about that
anymore.”
Martin Aircraft is migrating documents to
the cloud so that sales representatives and
engineers can easily access information
regardless of their location. At the same
time, the company is better organizing
corporate data so that it is easily
searchable, promoting individual
productivity and better virtual teamwork.
Engineers can use Lync Online to share
screens during videoconferences to
brainstorm design ideas, and SharePoint
Online to collaborate simultaneously on
design documents without being in the
same room. Sales representatives can
access promotional videos on their tablets
or mobile phones and show them to
prospective customers at a moment’s
notice. “We could even take a tablet into
the field and capture a video of a test
flight and relay the video back to the office
in real time—the possibilities are endless,”
says Coker.
Staff uses Office 365 ProPlus, the version
of Microsoft Office that comes with many
Office 365 plans. Everyone can achieve the
same high level of productivity working
with the latest Microsoft Office programs.
Coker doesn’t have to worry about
updating Microsoft Office applications
because everyone is automatically updated
to the latest version. “Microsoft
PowerPoint will be great for our sales reps;
we do complex calculations in Excel; we’ll
use Publisher for marketing materials; and
we’ll replace some of our databases with
Access,” says Coker.
Professional Reliable Messaging
With Exchange Online, when engineers
and sales representatives are on the road,
they can reliably access their email using
their @martinaircraft.co.nz accounts, a first
for the company.
“I really like the email and calendaring
tools that are available in Office 365; it
gives us a more professional appearance,”
says Coker. “When I’m out of the office
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Document published April 2014
meeting with prospective customers, I can
rely on my email messages always getting
through. Office 365 is effective and
uncomplicated: we get the outcomes we
need without worrying about technology.”
Better Control over Intellectual Property
Martin Aircraft can safeguard its
intellectual property as the company
launches into the global marketplace
through better management of user
credentials and permission to access
documents and drawings. “More control
over our directory system means that
when I’m working on a project in another
country and I need my contractors to
access documents that are only related to
that program, I can do that,” says Coker.
“It’s a big bonus.”
Builds Partnerships
When expanding a business, it is essential
to make connections and build
relationships, and Coker plans to use the
communication and collaboration tools in
Office 365 to do just that. He will be
adding his board members to the
company’s Office 365 subscription so that
he can stay in touch when traveling, and
he plans to use the videoconferencing
features of Lync Online to communicate
with Martin Aircraft’s legal counsel.
“Providing great service means staying in
touch with customers no matter where
they are, and that’s where we’ll derive the
most value out Office 365,” concludes
Coker. “When I think of taking the Martin
Jetpack into commercial production in the
global marketplace, we have the
enterprise-level, professional
communication and collaboration tools
that our teams can use to increase the
value of our business relationships, every
day.”