Customer Success Story

The Challenge:

The association was using on-prem Exchange plus multiple disparate on-prem systems for meetings, file storage, and collaboration tools but maintaining so many platforms led to high maintenance and licensing costs, so they knew it was time to move to the cloud with Microsoft 365.

Their leadership and small IT department recognized that unraveling the complexities of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem was a challenge and they knew they needed a trusted partner to help both their IT department and users make the most of the new investment. And when COVID-19 hit, they needed to accelerate their move to the cloud so their workforce could stay productive and secure while working remotely.

They turned to Xgility’s Strategy & Advisory Team because our strategic planning methodology is both technical and user-centric – fusing both technical solution decisions at the beginning of the process along with traditional change management and adoption activities – to ensure a successful Microsoft 365 rollout and adoption.

The Solution:

Rolling out Microsoft 365 is no easy task. That’s why our team takes a phased approach to Microsoft 365 initiatives that include the strategic planning engagement, rollout stages, and ongoing adoption activities.

Our Strategy & Advisory Team worked closely with their IT Team and key stakeholders to unravel the complexities of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem and align the right Microsoft 365 productivity, collaboration, teamwork, and file management tools with specific uses within the organization to eliminate roadblocks to adoption and achieve the organization’s business goals.

That was accomplished through a series of interactive Discovery and Planning workshops and activities with key stakeholders – including the IT Department and staff from different departments – to identify goals, explain the different Microsoft 365 applications and their features, identify use cases for the applications, select the right tools and usage that met their goals as well as perform technical, governance, and security assessments for the rollout to endpoint devices and end-users.

Next, our team focused on improving business processes to give staff a vested interest in the adoption of these tools.

Then they fused all the final decisions, findings, recommendations, and steps into an actionable strategic Microsoft 365 Roadmap & Implementation Plan.

As part of the process adoption process, our team set up a Knowledge Hub that provided self-service training and resources for the Ambassadors, end-users, and the IT team.

Using our unique rollout and onboarding methodology, our team then helped support the IT team, Ambassadors, and end-users with the rollout and adoption activities across the organization.

The Result:

Upfront planning was critical to the long-term success of the initiative and kept everyone – including the IT team, C-Suite, and employees – on the same page.

By taking a strategic and user-centric approach to Microsoft 365, it helped bring the association’s people, processes, and technology together to create a unified, cloud-based, secure digital workplace.

Their workforce is now on the same page to be more productive and engaged with the right tools, processes, and guidance to do their best work.

The IT department no longer had to maintain so many different systems – making it easier to keep their systems and data secure while reducing time spent patching and updating older systems so they can better meet the needs of their organization. And, by reducing the reliance on multiple disconnected software, the organization was able to realize substantial cost savings by eliminating licenses and resources to maintain the systems.