Solution advisory and migration services help an agri-business with budget optimization

Goal: Smooth and quick system-to-system migration to enhance digital alignment with the long-term business vision of the client.

Solution: A to Z solution consulting, Azure Active Directory creation, implementation of Microsoft suite of solutions.

Benefits: The client optimized investments intended for the digital upgrade.

Services delivered: Active Directory, migration to Exchange Online, Teams implementation and adaptation, Basic security setup.

Using the Relief Program offered to Ukrainian businesses by Microsoft and its FastTrack benefits earned by Infopulse, we laid a clear and concise migration roadmap to Microsoft's stack of technologies.

• We helped in setting up Active Directory, uniting multiple account records from disparate systems under one roof. Since the on-premises-based Active Directory had been earlier created by the client, we worked along with client’s tech team on the cloud part.
• One of the challenges was the fixed budget the company could spend to transition to Microsoft 365 from Google Workspace, moving us to act quickly to meet the deadlines and save their budget.
• Conducted migration from Google Workspace Enterprise to Microsoft 365 for 1,400+ company users, enabling better collaboration across the company with a suite of modern powerful productivity tools.
• After migrating the initial batch of 25% of business users, we onboarded client’s staff to Microsoft Teams, which is used by our client as a unified collaboration & communication tool.
• Additionally, Infopulse implemented adoption and change management practices to guarantee a smooth system-to-system migration and help the client fully benefit from its investments – as a certified Microsoft partner, Infopulse shares the adoption and change management philosophy of Microsoft.

Technical Details

Active Directory

Since our client had Active Directory (AD) partially in place, the client and Infopulse agreed to build the cloud part of the AD infrastructure before proceeding further with the full-scale migration to Microsoft 365. The reason for that was that the varied systems in use with different passwords could create bottlenecks in the work of the IT department in the long run. Having compared the Google-based system in use and the Microsoft infrastructure suggested by our experts, the client saw more benefits in the alternative scenario proposed by Infopulse.

For example, when a person leaves the company, all their access must be revoked; and with the industry-specific attrition rates, this would be hard to address without Azure Active Directory. With many users using multiple systems for their daily tasks, this could cause disruptions and compromise business continuity.

Migration to Microsoft 365

Our team helped agrifood company smoothly exit the Google Workspace Enterprise including storage, mailbox, and calendar, and migrate to Microsoft 365. Typically, platform-to-platform migration costs are two-fold. They include user onboarding and licensing costs. Microsoft Relief Program was instrumental in the migration process as this offering helped the client smoothly migrate to a new infrastructure in a cost-effective way.

Next Steps

We helped our client prioritize their investments, shifting the attention to more vital tech upgrades that would be followed by building a corporate portal. This suggestion partially resolved the communication difficulties at hand and now serves as a base to further develop the desired portal. 

Beyond that, Google+ for corporate use was not a good option and did not satisfy the client’s vision of a corporate portal. To further enhance their digital transformation, we plan to roll out Microsoft Viva implementation along with the corporate portal in the next iteration of the project.