7 Ways to Speed-up Office 365 Implementation
Have you been thinking about migrating some or all of your business’ technical operations to the cloud? Where do you start?
For many reasons, a staged approach is the most common. However, businesses often begin their cloud migration with a single application or service and there is no clear plan in place for the ‘next step’ or for any other business functions. Thinking back, the biggest advantage provided by previous MS Office versions was ease of interoperability between all of the applications. Similarly, the Microsoft Cloud offers the same interoperability advantages when more of the features and applications are utilized. Companies often choose to cloud-host applications such as Exchange/Email, SharePoint or CRM for a particular business reason. However, by not leveraging the Microsoft design for how these applications work together, companies are not taking full advantage of their investment.
Here is our list of 7 ways to maximize the benefits of cloud technology:
1. Consider business needs
Whether mobility, security, stability, efficiency or financial, a clear understanding of business needs and identification of the technology challenges facing the business are the first step.
2. Evaluate all available Microsoft Cloud solutions
Once the needs and challenges have been identified, alignment with the different cloud offerings becomes possible. There are capabilities of the Microsoft cloud available that are often overlooked because the focus is on a single application and not the entire solution.
3. Clarify the goal
The entire solution must be visualized and clarified prior to starting any cloud migration. In order to attain full buy-in from other project stakeholders, the end result must be clear and beneficial to all users. Equipped with the understanding of the full capabilities Microsoft Cloud suite, the vision is a lot easier than it seems.
4. Create an implementation plan
Once a business decides where they are going, the details of how to get there can start to fall into place. The staged approach mentioned above is a reasonable plan, as long as the next stages are clear. In the same way, the details of the timeline are not as important as simply making sure that a timeline actually exists.
5. Utilize policy and procedures
Stay with me here – this is not as bad as it sounds. Once the company stakeholders have committed to the cloud vision, policies and procedures must be created to translate the goals into a system that the business process can leverage. In other words, how is it going to change the way that everyone works? This is the whole point, cloud technology should change the business process and how people accomplish their work.
6. Train, train, train
Once the workflow process has been documented, the entire workforce top to bottom will need to be educated on how to leverage the new investment by understanding the options and the capabilities available to them.
7. Engage with an experienced provider
Utilizing the expertise of a Microsoft Cloud Service Provider like Think Tech Advisors can protect your business from implementation failures and accelerate the migration of in-house technology systems to the cloud.
Simply moving a single application to the cloud is certainly a start, but does not really “cloud enable” the business. In order to take full advantage of all that the cloud has to offer, a cohesive plan can really accelerate the benefits that the cloud can offer and help your business prosper!
