REGENESIS uses Microsoft Teams to connect technical experts globally, providing innovative solutions to clean up polluted groundwater

For its annual company meeting in San Clemente, California, REGENESIS brings colleagues from across its global organization together for four days of trainings, presentations, and the rare opportunity to mingle face-to-face. REGENESIS, a leader in advanced environmental technologies and services for cleaning up contaminated brownfield sites, operates in over 30 countries, with offices in North America and Europe. “The annual company meeting is an important chance for REGENESIS to come together, exchange ideas, and develop new solutions,” says Rick Gillespie, Senior Vice President for North America at REGENESIS.

“The R&D arm of REGENESIS uses Teams for interdepartmental collaboration crucial to quickly bring highly effective environmental solutions to market.”

– Rick Gillespie: Senior Vice President for North America, REGENESIS

However, for this year’s meeting, COVID-19 travel restrictions meant that those face-to-face interactions had to occur digitally. “We used Microsoft Teams live events to keep the annual company meeting moving forward and saved $150,000 in travel and other expenses in the process,” says Tricia Rodewald, Vice President of Marketing at REGENESIS.

“We were searching for a motto for this year’s meeting,” says Gareth Leonard, Managing Director for Europe at REGENESIS. “People have been cut off from each other because of COVID-19, so we decided to call the meeting ‘Forward Together.’” Today, REGENESIS is embracing that motto for more than just its annual meeting. In connecting remote technical experts to the scientific field team, reaching out to prospective clients worldwide, or supporting employee wellness through digital training sessions, the company uses Teams to support collaboration and productivity in all aspects of its business.

Teams live events inspire better engagement and more productive meetings

At the recent annual company meeting held in Teams, participants were pleasantly surprised by the tool’s ease of use and the level of engagement that the meeting inspired. “I was concerned that my team might find a digital company meeting hard to engage with, but we found that the opposite was true,” says Leonard. “People felt they had more of a voice thanks to Teams.”

All aspects of the event took place in Teams, from the planning stage when technical leaders came together in private Teams channels to coordinate it to post-event surveys. Participants took part in specialized training sessions using breakout rooms and joined Teams live events for corporate updates. And to keep the event organized, topics were arranged in content channels where presenters uploaded their content for participants to follow along. Because no one had to leave home to attend the event, everyone could remain productive during the week and avoid the stress of traveling long distances. “Normally, attending these meetings in the United States means that the European side of the business has to basically be put on hold,” says Leonard. “Using Teams live events, we were able to attend the event and still be productive dealing with clients and contributing to our projects.”

Participants in the annual company meeting took advantage of the cohesive nature of Teams, using OneNote to take notes during sessions and Microsoft Planner to follow through on action items. “We used Teams live events to host the meeting and give presentations directly where the content was stored, which was an advantage over Zoom or some other platform,” says Gillespie. “The event ran very smoothly.”

Bringing environmental experts from around the world together for real-time decision making

For REGENESIS, the combination of leading-edge technology and outstanding service is a defining characteristic of the organization. “We don’t just sell a product and walk away,” says Leonard. “We have the best people onsite helping our clients clean up contaminated land using our innovative soil and groundwater remediation solutions.” Project managers and field scientists use the Teams mobile app onsite to communicate with colleagues in real time, bringing REGENESIS technical experts into the field no matter where they are. “With Teams meetings, we can bring our environmental experts from all over the world to a site at the same time and offer that high-quality value to our clients,” says Leonard.

Company employees often find themselves working in remote sites for long periods. “When you’re in the field, things can change rapidly,” says William Clogan, East Region Remediation Services Project Manager at REGENESIS. “That’s where Teams comes into play. In the past, if a project manager encountered an unexpected issue, they might have had to wait hours to consult with an expert for insight to resolve the issue.” In some cases, an expert might have had to travel to the site for an in-person consultation. And project managers often had to send relevant photos or related site data in emails or describe the scenario in phone calls.

“Teams has been an absolute game-changer,” says Leonard. “Now, we can bring key REGENESIS specialists from Europe and the United States together for consultations in real time.” Project managers use Teams meetings to share soil samples or real-time views from a site. “We use Teams chat to collaborate instantly and be much more efficient onsite,” says Mat Wilson, Remediation Services Manager for Europe at REGENESIS. “And clients are more confident that the right decisions are being made because they know that our onsite employees are always in contact with technical experts.”

After a workday is over, project managers use Teams to cut down on the time it takes to draft daily reports. “Prior to Teams, I’d work a full day and then spend another two hours compiling information to send to various parties,” says Andrew Kavanagh, Central Region Remediation Services Project Manager at REGENESIS. “Now, because all our communications and observations are already logged in Teams, it only takes 15 minutes to compile the information I need to share. Teams saves me almost two hours a day.”

“We used Microsoft Teams live events to keep the annual company meeting moving forward and saved $150,000 in travel and other expenses in the process.”

– Tricia Rodewald: Vice President of Marketing, REGENESIS

Strengthening connections and engaging new clients in Teams

REGENESIS employees also use Teams meetings to connect with clients in project meetings before mobilizing to the site. “In the past, we would have met with new clients in a dial-in conference call,” says Clogan. “Everyone would have opened up the same document on their screens and tried to stay on the same page, but with Teams, we can share screens and even go to Google Earth and zoom in on a site. We’re much better prepared when we start a project because we’ve already visited the site remotely.”

When project managers begin work on location, they use Teams to keep customers informed as work progresses. “We recently worked on a project that turned out to be more challenging than we expected,” says Clogan. “We used Teams for multiple meetings a week with the client, making sure they signed off on adjustments and were always up to date. Teams made the process of communicating much smoother.” REGENESIS employees also appreciate the level of security inherent in the Teams platform when communicating with external parties. “In the past, we had multiple platforms for sharing documents,” says Gillespie. “It always felt like there was a backdoor open to our entire organization. With Teams, we now have a much better handle on what data is out there and where it’s located.”

REGENESIS employees use Teams to stay connected with existing customers and engage with new ones. For Marcello Carboni, Regional Manager for Europe at REGENESIS, Teams has become a go-to tool for technical discussions and sales meetings alike. “We use Teams to take advantage of sales opportunities we wouldn’t have been able to pursue before,” he says. “For example, we brought high-level REGENESIS PFAS experts together at a recent client meeting to discuss how PFAS, also known as ‘forever chemicals,’ can be treated using PlumeStop®. Even though we were on different continents, the meeting was relatively seamless. Without Teams, we wouldn’t have made the same impression—or justified the cost of flying so many top people out for a single meeting. With the right people now in the Teams meeting, we were able to effectively present the success we have had on sites globally with those directly involved.”

The REGENESIS sales team recently implemented Teams Phone to answer calls to landline numbers directly in the Teams app. The move, which will replace the company’s existing phone systems, is expected to provide significant savings annually. Carboni also found other advantages in using Teams for sales meetings. One benefit is the ability to record meetings so that REGENESIS employees can easily share crucial client information from the meetings with their colleagues. In parallel, clients can internally circulate the technical information provided in meetings. And for clients in areas of the world that REGENESIS rarely visits, Teams helps open lines of communication that might otherwise have remained unexplored. “Teams is very helpful for business development,” says Carboni. “In the past, I would rarely travel to certain parts of the world because it was hard to gather enough clients to make the trip worthwhile. Now, I can have a Teams meeting with a client in Israel one day and speak to a client in Nigeria the next as if we’re together in the same office.”

Developing new products with global input from across the organization

To ensure that projects are as successful as possible, REGENESIS combines customer service with leading-edge remediation technologies. “Our DNA is built on technological innovation,” says Gillespie. “The R&D arm of REGENESIS uses Teams for interdepartmental collaboration crucial to quickly bring highly effective environmental solutions to market.” By using Teams to connect the R&D group with the project management and field groups, REGENESIS can now quickly respond to new challenges by rapidly innovating and deploying solutions such as PlumeStop, a colloidal activated carbon that’s proven to eliminate the risk of PFAS contamination.

When the R&D group invents a new product, it must collaborate with the sales, marketing, and technical teams. Before embracing Teams for organization-wide collaboration, however, the R&D group worked in isolation from other areas of the business. “With Teams, we can now provide real-time market intelligence from Europe in order to play a larger part in the development of new products,” says Leonard. “We learn important things from our experiences in the field, and now we use Teams to share that knowledge with colleagues throughout our organization, giving everyone a voice in new product development.”

Greater alignment among various departments and regions means that every new REGENESIS product responds directly to the real-world needs of customers and employees working in the field. “Without Teams, this level of collaboration is just not possible,” agrees Gillespie.

Finding more efficient ways to connect and supporting employee wellness with apps in Teams

REGENESIS employees also use Teams to support the company’s culture. “Teams is a natural progression for us,” says Gillespie. “We have always valued efficient collaboration, and to that end, Teams is now our platform of choice for stand-up meetings and health and safety training.” REGENESIS employees have integrated the AgilePolly app into Teams to gather feedback and facilitate more streamlined meetings. “We use AgilePolly to follow up on action items and automatically formulate agendas for upcoming meetings,” adds Clogan. “Having that information front and center allows us to get straight to the discussion.” And to work more efficiently and make sure that REGENESIS employees are always up to speed, the company has started to embrace Power Automate. “We have a Power Automate workflow in Teams that automatically alerts the executive team when a new monthly report is uploaded,” says Gillespie.

REGENESIS also uses Teams to host ongoing technical trainings for employees on topics such as geology, chemistry, application methods, and hydrology. “Effective field training and consistency across the organization are key selling points when we pitch our company to customers and help ensure that we deliver the best outcomes for our clients,” says Rodewald. New employees also use Teams to get up to speed quickly on crucial training materials and upcoming projects. “We have a fantastic technical remediation library on Microsoft Stream of different webinars for new hires to watch,” says Clogan. “It’s a great way for new employees to learn on their own time.”

And for project managers and other REGENESIS employees who are working in the field, Teams provides a much-needed place to connect with colleagues at the end of a long day. “Isolation is a huge challenge in the field,” says Kavanagh. “Teams has a lot of value as a place to banter back and forth with colleagues. It makes REGENESIS a more welcoming place to work.”

By embracing Teams, REGENESIS was able to preserve, and in many ways, improve its annual meeting experience during COVID-19. The company was also able move new projects forward with clearer lines of communication and improve the overall efficiency of site remediation efforts across the globe. Even when travel restrictions begin to subside and the company’s employees can meet in person again, the Teams collaboration experience will have a lasting effect. “Collaboration in Teams is going to become the norm, not just at REGENESIS, but across the environmental industry,” says Gillespie.

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“Prior to Teams, I’d work a full day and then spend another two hours compiling information to send to various parties. Now, because all our communications and observations are already logged in Teams, it only takes 15 minutes to compile the information I need to share. Teams saves me almost two hours a day.”