Summary
A life sciences charity, focused on improving human health by adding value to early-stage scientific research, looked to Proventeq to help migrate to Microsoft 365. The organization wanted to migrate away from their Documentum ECM system and take advantage of the functionality, mobility, and enhanced security offered by Microsoft 365 services like SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, and Teams. This year-long migration and Office 365 adoption project enables the life sciences charity to collaborate with their scientific and charitable partners while protecting the intellectual property in their research.
Challenge
While the life sciences charity had a Documentum ECM system, their users lacked the motivation to engage with it. They found it cumbersome to access documents in the source system due to restrictions and pre–requisites around browser plugins and software. Users also wanted a more connected environment where they could share and collaborate in virtual workspaces accessible from anywhere and from multiple starting points (e.g., Office 365 apps, iOS apps, browsers, etc.).
In addition, the organization wanted to reduce the licensing, infrastructure, and support costs associated with having a content management system.
They realized it was time to make a change. However, moving from the legacy on-premise system to Office 365 presented its own challenges.
It would require a significant restructuring of the file systems and processes to align with how records need to be stored and accessed in SharePoint. Also, the project would require a strict migration timeline to prevent additional costs due to renewal costs of Documentum license and support.
Migrating from Documentum would not be an easy process due to issues around proprietary formats and labels from the original locations. This included the charity’s Intellectual Property management systems being tightly integrated with assets stored in Documentum, which required updating for migration. Furthermore, the business process relied on external systems that have tight integrations with documents stored within Documentum.
Strategy
The life sciences charity turned to Proventeq to help with this migration and adoption project. As part of a holistic Office 365 adoption strategy, the project team created proper project management plans, agreed upon and executed from both sides. They set up the necessary governance within Office 365, and they put in place a clear and effective communications and training plan to guarantee successful adoption of Office 365.
The team migrated all enterprise content from cabinets in the Documentum system to specially provisioned department sites on SharePoint, while they migrated all user content to their individual OneDrive allocations.
The project team made content secure by translating security policies (in adherence with strict regulatory requirements for the Finance and HR departments) from Documentum to SharePoint.
They provided a user-friendly interface for all users which included the ability to co-author documents and leverage integrated solutions to auto-tag content, especially for the Legal department.
They created a dedicated area for the Projects team to work on active and closed projects, along with custom SPFx components to facilitate better working with projects. Deploying Microsoft Teams for these projects provided users with a platform for better project collaboration.
To ensure data integrity, the team resolved data corruption in the source using Proventeq Migration Accelerator and they also updated the third-party systems integrating to Documentum (like the Intellectual Property management platform).
Moving to Office 365 was a key component of our ongoing plan to centralise and improve accessibility and gain more meaningful insights from our business and scientific data. Working closely with Proventeq as our specialist technical partner, we were able to migrate from our legacy content management platform into Office 365 with confidence.
(IT Manager, Business Services, )
Results
The life sciences charity is seeing improved collaboration and compliance of the document management system because SharePoint and Microsoft Teams, in conjunction with the Office 365 suite, create a virtual workplace where teams can meet, collaborate, complete tasks, and work on documents from a centrally based repository. SharePoint enables employees to access business content from anywhere and from multiple starting points.
By transitioning to Office 365, the life sciences charity has been able to make significant cost savings (up to 60%) by reducing licensing, infrastructure, and support costs.
Now, the organizaiton has easier and more powerful administration and management coupled with provisions for Data Loss Prevention to protect their academic research.
