A Business Agility e-Book

Office 365: What to do post-migration

Business Agility is expert in the delivery of solutions built on Office 365 and SharePoint.

We build solutions to both the common and the uncommon. This can be anything from:

• Intranets, Document Management Systems, workflow processes

• Migrating you to a new version of SharePoint

• Planning your information architecture around SharePoint

• Hosted SharePoint, SharePoint Online and Office 365

• Building industry-specific solutions

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We help our clients everyday with Office 365, and a big discussion topic is around ‘what to do next’. When we say ‘big’, we mean ‘enormous’, because Microsoft’s cloud-based platform has extensive capabilities. It can be a huge enabler, both in terms of value (productivity, efficiency) and decreased risk (information governance, availability, etc).

Some of Office 365’s advantages will be known prior to migration and some will be discovered post-migration, when you discover new capability offered by the cloud. However, to realise these advantages and to discover if future ambitions can be met, you need to have a solid understanding of several things;

So, you’ve migrated to Office 365 – what happens next?

• Capability• Limitations • Cost • Governance • Support

So, firstly, let’s presume that your migration to Office 365 was as smooth as butter (it will have been if we helped!). Let’s also presume that you selected Office 365 as the platform for you (although we do know of many organisations that have it ‘hoisted upon them’!).

Explore the platform before you use it

Knowing the full capabilities and, importantly, the limitations of Office 365 is key to using the platform successfully. If you have expertise to hand, then use it. Gather all stakeholders (eg, heads of department) and document everything on their wish lists. Then with the aid of an expert, see what can be achieved through the platform, what effort is involved and the length of time it will take to deliver. It’s important to prioritise the list of requirements, as it’ll soon turn into a mammoth and unachievable beast. Use MoSCoW for this (Must have, Should have, Could have, Would like but won’t get).

So, now you have it, what do you do next? Here is our 9-step plan of what we’d recommend you do next.

Office 365 is about bringing enterprise-grade services to

organisations of all sizes, from online meetings to sharing

documents to business-class email. All in the cloud, all to aid

mobility and productivity.

• Get work done from anywhere • Improve collaboration

• Reduce Capital Expenditure• Cut hardware and energy costs

• Scale your business effectively • Always have the latest version

• Only licence what you need

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Identify platform functionality and scope

Following on from the exploration workshop/s, you’ll find you have a long list of solutions ideas. If the session was run correctly and all the key stakeholders got their requirements noted and explored, then during the same session you should have explored how Office 365’s functionality could meet those requirements.

Choose your first project

This is very important! The first project that your organisation delivers will set the tone for how the new platform is received. However, when you know you’re getting (or have already selected) Office 365, you may have some initial ideas of what kind of applications you’d like to deliver. Following your migration to the platform and the exploration workshops, these ideas may change.

Our recommendation is to select a business critical system that’s also a ‘quick win’. E.g, introduce some business process automation:

• Timesheet approval• Holiday approval• Document approval

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Identify Proof of Concept possibilities

If you want to successfully implement technology a Proof of Concept (PoC) is highly recommended. A PoC is a small exercise to test an idea, solution or assumption. We tend to perform them instinctively when designing systems. Results need to be measurable so that they can be fed into the decision making process. Your decision should be based on thresholds like performance levels, user acceptance and scalability. However, it may not be enough for someone to just say “yeah, we tested that and it works.” You want the results to show how well it works.

Ensure you factor in the often overlooked elements of Security, Compliance and high-trust Add-ins.

Once explored and proved, you can either roll out or refine/amend and roll out.

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Offer knowledge transfer sessions and training

Usability of a new system is critical. If users aren’t comfortable with the proposed changes, or unfamiliar with the new capabilities (i.e, on how it can help them perform their tasks better, quicker and more reliably), then it’s unlikely to succeed!

Although Office 365 will have a great deal of familiarity, it’s also going to have many differences and new approaches to working. Training is important.

To aid knowledge transfer and augment training programmes, we recommend the following:

• Give users early visibility of the platform • Explain the business benefits• If you design a new system (eg, intranet), give users a say in how it

will look • Ensure there is a good level of communication to all key stakeholders• Run staged knowledge transfer sessions • Compile a video library of short ‘easy to digest’ learning videos

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Ensure you have a user-adoption programme

User-adoption is key. To help your organisation realise business value quickly, it helps to ‘gather the right team;’

In addition to the quick win techniques, Microsoft offer services such as FastTrack (for those with 50 seats or more) to utilise. These types of services help create and augment any ‘user adoption programmes’ that your organisation may wish.

Your wish list for applications and systems to roll out on Office 365 may be business process heavy (for good reason), but think about giving end-users access to non-business orientated apps – eg, ‘watercooler ’ areas (blogs), bidding sites (selling/swapping items internally).

Create a Management Plan

A well thought-out and clear Management Plan provides Users (and Managers) with the opportunity to explain the objectives, goals, and planned procedures of their proposed projects. It should include:

• An outline of the project’s objectives and goals• A list of actions to achieve the goals and objectives• Descriptions of the roles and time commitments of personnel and

participants involved in the project, as well as how these roles might change throughout the project

• Procedures to recruit and train participants, if applicable• Procedures to acquire new budget and/or maintain the system• A timeline for the various stages of the project• A process to handle possible project modifications• Consideration of the project’s broader impacts

Plans should focus on keeping the deployment up and running.

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Ensure a governance plan is in place

Make sure the correct permissions and security profiles are assigned. For an easy life it’s tempting to let everyone do their own thing with super admin rights. However, giving too many people too much is a recipe for disaster! Don’t be too strict, remember to balance trust and control with system and process training. 8. 10

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Embrace the full suite of new apps

Office 365 isn’t just Email, Doc Storage and Collaboration tools. There are so many productivity apps in the cloud that it can be difficult to keep up. If you held a platform exploration workshop to go through what’s available, then we’d hope your imagination will have been fired with something you’ve seen already. 9.

• Calendar• CRM• Delve• Groups

• Newsfeed• OneDrive• OneNote• People

• Planner• Power BI• SharePoint• Sway

• Tasks• Video• Word• Yammer

And then there’s more, you can extend Office 365 with a multitude of web apps. These cover business areas such as:

• Communication• CRM add-ons• Data Analytics• Education• Productivity• Project Management

• Sales & Marketing • Search• Training• Tutorials• Visualisation

As with anything there’s going to be a learning curve involved. Sometimes it’s steeper for others, but with the right level of training, encouragement and collaboration then the sky’s the limit.

Our advice, ultimately, is seek advice and ensure you’re trained. It’s much, much less expensive to front-load your project/s with planning and guidance than it is to go it alone and try to correct your ‘course’ mid-project. Remember, you want to maximise your investments, not minimise them!

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Business Agility Consulting LtdSpirella Building

Bridge RoadLetchworth Garden City SG6 4ET

01462 470 160info@business-agility.com