Business Requirement
CETSAT was approached by a large and rapidly growing construction company to migrate their on-premises data from servers into cloud based storage. With any migration project there are two elements to consider; the practical switchover of systems at a technical level, and the training of the teams to ensure a smooth transition on an operational level. If either falls short then the business disruption can be significant.
Practical Solution
As the client already had a Microsoft365 licence, the agreed solution was to move their data across to cloud-based SharePoint sites, which is included within that license. This provided the easiest and most cost effective transition to accommodate the rapid growth.
SharePoint would also allow the departments to be separated and data permissions to be granted for relevant people only.
Operational Solution
Training and knowledge sharing was identified at the outset as a significant element in this transition, to ensure it was developed alongside the switchover and not bolted on as an after-thought. It was managed in two stages to optimise speed and control.
CETSAT worked with the department leaders and managers to ensure they had the insight and knowledge of the applications and process, which was then cascaded to all employees within their own teams.
After this, technical training of the system was offered to all employees in smaller groups, to ensure their knowledge was up to date technically with the new ways of working on SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams that were being introduced to the business. This also allowed CETSAT to focus the training on how their specific team would be using these systems, rather than blanket demos to all.
Outcome
This migration process ensured a more controlled and coordinated transition, by streamlining the internal change-management processes and training in departments, ensuring relevance of training and no loss of data. The new system also meant the client became more compliant, by only granting security permissions for certain data to the relevant people, rather than blanket access to all. CETSAT also saved the client significant costs by using a system they were already paying for (Microsoft365) rather than developing any new or bespoke systems, which weren’t required.
Here’s what some of our customers have had to say about our migration processes:
Mark Taylor – Managing Director – Shipley Limited= “CETSAT have been instrumental in enabling our digital transformation over the past 18 months, both in terms of our client delivery and our back-office operations. CETSAT have provided practical technical assistance, strategic advice through an agreed IT RoadMap, and user training. A critical aspect has been enabling us to move quickly and in a measured, secure, and sustainable way.
Shipley Limited – https://www.shipleywins.co.uk/
