OptimisingMicrosoft365forEngineeringNZ
Engineering New Zealand partnered with Dynamo6 to optimise Microsoft 365, overcoming a hybrid environment, unorganized Teams, limited user training, and lack of governance. The result is improved collaboration, information findability, productivity, and security.
About Engineering NZ
Engineering New Zealand is a not-for-profit membership organisation that champions career development and provides discussion and views on topical engineering matters. They represent the interests of over 22,000 professional engineers.
Challenge overview
Founded in 1914, and with a footprint of around 80 people working for the organisation, they’d made some moves into cloud-based working but still had some legacy IT approaches holding them back. Overall, Engineering NZ was looking to improve collaboration across the organisation and get more out of their Microsoft 365 suite.
Our approach
Taking a 3-phased approach, we’ve explored the now and desired future state, solution designed it, and then implemented a best practice-based setup of Microsoft 365. Here are details about each phase’s milestones:
Discover
Through surveys and workshops, led by our business analysis team, we gathered user requirements. In tandem our Microsoft 365 lead practitioner carried out a best practice review of the existing environment, identifying areas for improvement. From this phase, we uncovered several challenges Engineering NZ were facing.
- Hybrid environment - They were using a mix of Microsoft 365 and on-premises file servers, leading to difficulty finding information.
- Teams sprawl - A rapid shift to remote work in recent years had resulted in a large number of unorganized Teams with unclear purposes.
- Limited user knowledge - Insufficient training left users unsure of how to effectively utilise Microsoft 365 functionalities.
- Governance issues - A lack of governance policies around team creation, data sharing and permissions.
Design
Based on the gathered information in Phase 1, we designed a solution that streamlined the team structure and established clear naming conventions. We also provided guidance on data mapping that would allow a smooth migration of data from file servers into a well-organized SharePoint structure. And finally, we outlined the policies for user permissions, data sharing, and security controls.
Deliver
After some hard mahi from the Engineering NZ team completing a pre-migration data cleanup, implementation and end-user training took place next. Drawing on the solution design in Phase 2, the proposed file and tenant structuring changes were implemented including the additional governance policies.
For training, our partner Digital Workplace Results (formerly ShareThePoint) provided comprehensive remote user training on Microsoft 365 functionalities and the new team structure.
The results
- Improved findability of information due to a centralised and organised data structure.
- Reduced notification overload and clearer communication channels due to a streamlined Teams environment.
- Increased user productivity due to effective training on Microsoft 365 tools.
- Enhanced efficiency and security through established governance policies.
Looking to optimise your Microsoft 365?
If you’re experiencing challenges with data sprawl, user training, and governance, Dynamo6 can help you unlock more efficiency and improve security. Get in touch or find out more about our Microsoft 365 optimization assessment.