Collaboration at scale: How Ford unifies 170,000 employees on Microsoft Teams

At Ford Motor Company, collaboration is key—but it was fragmented. Across various teams, employees relied on a mix of communication solutions to get work done. Each tool had its champions, but as Ford accelerated its digital workplace transformation, this patchwork of platforms began to show strain.

“We had several collaboration tools, and each group was deeply invested in their own. So, the challenge wasn’t just migrating. With developers in one tool and business teams in another, plus a third solution for meetings, unification required a fundamental change to the way people work,” says Justin Hamilton, Executive Director of Digital Workplace Technology at Ford Motor Company.

Ford’s leadership recognized that to drive innovation across its global footprint, it needed a unified, secure, and extensible collaboration platform—one that could support hybrid work in a smarter way using AI, connect with internal tools, and scale across nearly 170,000 employees.

But the journey would require more than a technology rollout. It would demand automation, empathy, and a deep understanding of how work happens across Ford’s ecosystem.

Preparing for the move from fragmentation to unification

Ford’s migration began with a clear objective: consolidate users of multiple collaboration offerings onto a single platform that could best serve every employee, from engineers designing next-generation vehicles to plant managers coordinating production schedules. The solution was Microsoft Teams with Teams Premium.

Deployment began with Ford’s IT organization in October, followed by business teams in November and December. By mid-December, tens of thousands of employees had already made the switch—many more than planned due to early, positive word of mouth and peer influence.

“We didn’t arbitrarily force the change. We evaluated Teams and collected data to show why it made the most sense for everyone. Then we drove awareness early, built tools that made it easy, and encouraged adoption with ongoing education,” says Eric Williams, Director of Collaboration at Ford Motor Company.

The custom tools that Ford built included connectors to help employees migrate channels, meetings, and chat histories into Teams. Users could choose how much content to bring over: 30 days, 90 days, or a full year. 

Delivering real benefits to users across the organization

The ability in Teams to host Power Apps, tie to SharePoint and OneDrive, and support custom workflows proved critical.

“Many of the existing tools were deeply embedded in departmental or organizational workflows. But once they saw how Teams threading worked, and how their apps could live inside Teams, they started to embrace switching,” says Andreas Demetriou, Product Group Manager at Ford Motor Company.

This extensibility was a factor in Ford’s decision to choose Microsoft. The company’s existing infrastructure meant Teams could be deployed with minimal disruption in a highly secure environment.

“Security and identity were nonnegotiable. Teams gave us the controls we needed without compromising usability,” adds Hamilton.

Teams Premium elevated collaboration, delivering further value. AI-powered meeting notes automatically generate structured summaries, action items, and speaker-attributed insights, all within the highly secure Microsoft 365 environment. Ford also uses intelligent recap, which surfaces key decisions and tasks without replaying entire meetings. This offering provides advanced meeting protection features like watermarking and end-to-end encryption for sensitive discussions. Together, these capabilities help employees stay aligned and act faster, reinforcing Ford’s commitment to efficiency and clarity in a hybrid work environment.

Impact beyond the interface

The migration to Teams was a technical and organizational success. Employees began using Teams as their default hub for meetings, chat, file sharing, channels, and app access. Using Teams channels, Ford has achieved transparent, organized collaboration, making project work, cross-functional initiatives, and communications more visible and efficient for everyone. Silos are being broken down, cross-functional collaboration has accelerated, and satisfaction scores with the technology that employees use have improved.

“Teams became the place where work happens. We’ve doubled our satisfaction scores for collaboration and are saving millions by using a single tool,” says Hamilton.

Ford’s internal help desk is seeing fewer tickets related to collaboration, and onboarding is smoother. The shift to Teams is also standardizing training and support, reducing complexity for IT, and improving the employee experience.

The migration unlocked new capabilities. With Power Apps accessible inside Teams, employees can automate tasks, track projects, and manage data without leaving the platform. Ford employees using Teams find collaboration with its external partners easier. With Teams federation, Ford is engaging external partners in shared channels, reducing email volume and improving responsiveness. This is especially impactful where real-time coordination is essential.

“We’re seeing an increase in external engagement. It’s easier to get things done when everyone’s in the same space,” says Williams.

The migration also fostered a sense of unity across the organization. Employees who had previously operated in tool-specific silos began to collaborate more freely. The shift to Teams created a common language for communication, facilitating faster decision-making and more agile execution.

Paving the road ahead

Ford was able to use existing conferencing hardware and is moving it to Microsoft Teams Rooms software.

Low-code and no-code development is another priority. Using Power Platform and Teams, employees can build custom solutions for their teams, without waiting for IT. This democratization of development supports innovation at every level, empowering employees to solve problems and simplify processes on their own.

As agentic AI matures, Ford is preparing to embed intelligent agents into its workflows. From summarizing documents to managing tasks, agents will help employees work smarter, faster, and more securely.

In choosing Microsoft Teams, the company did more than consolidate platforms. It reimagined how work gets done. With a clear roadmap for AI, hybrid work, and intelligent collaboration, Ford is driving toward a future where every employee is empowered to do their best work—together.

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