REDMOND, Wash. — June 29, 2012 — In an effort to take control of a paper-filing system that generated approximately 1 million pages per year, the San Diego County Juvenile Justice stakeholders — probation department, district attorney and public defender —adopted a custom content management and workflow solution using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

The juvenile court’s four courtrooms each preside over 25 to 30 calendar matters, including short hearings on detentions, dispositions, arraignments and similar matters, in rapid succession each morning — a total of approximately 25,000 hearings a year. Most of those hearings require a report from the probation office, which typically printed a 10-page report four times, once each for the judge, district attorney, defense attorney and court officer. In addition to the expenses and environmental waste associated with the county’s dependency on paper, it imposed inefficiencies on the attorneys, support staff, and their processes of preparing for and going to hearings.

“We’ve eliminated our share of the 1 million pieces of paper a year with e-files and SharePoint Server 2010,” said Jack Bucci, deputy district attorney and former chief of the juvenile division of the Office of the District Attorney. “That delivers a powerful green message to our own employees and to everyone who does business with our office. It also eliminates the time and cost involved in moving all that paper through the office. It’s a very elegant result of using Microsoft SharePoint.”

The county’s solution included development of the Justice Electronic Library System (JELS), a robust SharePoint Server 2010 site for the juvenile justice system’s 15,000 cases. JELS is organized into three highly secured business centers, one each for district attorneys, probation officers and separate public defender agencies, while a fourth center for the court is planned. Each business center holds its own set of 15,000 electronic case files — each an automatically created SharePoint subsite — for its stakeholders, making 45,000 electronic case (e-case) files in all. With JELS, the county is achieving its primary goals of eliminating paperwork and the often unproductive distribution processes associated with physical files.

Along with greater productivity, attorneys gained more effectiveness and flexibility, a benefit of JELS’ remote access capabilities. Case review can now be conducted any place at any time where SharePoint Server 2010 and the Internet are accessible. Bucci estimates that this added flexibility he and his attorneys get from JELS makes the professional staff 14 percent more productive, while the government benefits from a 50 percent increase in the productivity of its support staff.

Financially, the county incurred about $175,000 in initial system development and implementation costs. It estimates that during the county’s first full year of using JELS, it could decrease the staff (which it expects to do without any layoffs) that it needs to handle physical case files and other paper by the equivalent of roughly six full-time positions, avoiding about $360,000 in costs annually. Given its expected cost avoidance for the first full year of implementation, the county anticipates an initial ROI of about 100 percent.

“Some people think government can’t be as effective as business,” said Harold Tuck, chief information officer. “But we’re using SharePoint Server 2010 to avoid about $360,000 in costs, which results in a significant ROI. A lot of businesses out there would be happy to see that kind of return.”

Read more about San Diego County’s implementation of SharePoint Server 2010 in the Microsoft case study. More information about how organizations are turning to Microsoft technology is available on the Microsoft Customer Spotlight newsroom.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

REDMOND, Wash. — June 27, 2012 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that Lowe’s Companies Inc. has signed an agreement to implement Microsoft Office 365 across more than 1,745 stores, 200,000 employees and its corporate offices in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Office 365 will help the home improvement retailer improve customer service by providing collaboration tools to increase communication among its stores and employees. The technology will be available for Lowe’s employees soon and will help customers enjoy even more expertise and consistency as they shop at Lowe’s.

“Office 365 is another tool we’re using to help redefine customers’ home improvement experiences,” said Paul Ramsay, senior vice president, IT Solutions at Lowe’s. “We’re giving our employees the tools to connect quickly and easily, with one goal in mind: to make home improvement simple.”

As Lowe’s strives to help its employees seamlessly communicate, collaborate and connect with other employees, Office 365 offers the ability to grow with Lowe’s users and provides simple interoperability and familiarity with Microsoft programs.

“What’s inspiring about the plans Lowe’s has for Office 365 is it really shows the power of the cloud by giving its employees the ability to deliver what they need to best help their customers, the very moment they need it,” said Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president, Microsoft Office Division.

More information about Office 365 is available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/office, and more customer success stories can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/customerspotlight.

About Lowe’s

With fiscal year 2011 sales of $50.2 billion, Lowe’s Companies, Inc. is a FORTUNE® 100 company that serves approximately 15 million customers a week at more than 1,745 home improvement stores in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Founded in 1946 and based in Mooresville, N.C., Lowe’s is the second-largest home improvement retailer in the world. For more information, visit Lowes.com.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.