Are you considering migrating to Microsoft 365? If so, you might be wondering how to make the transition as smooth and cost-effective as possible. In this blog post, we'll provide you with a Microsoft 365 migration roadmap based on a real-world example from our client, GoodLife Fitness, a company with over 300 fitness centers across Canada.
In this blog, you will find:
❓What is a Microsoft 365 Roadmap?
🚗 Microsoft 365 Migration Roadmap – 4-Step Approach!
⏲️ Step 4. Halve Deployment Time
⭐ Microsoft 365 Migration Roadmap Testimonial
What is a Microsoft 365 Roadmap?
Before starting any migration process, it's importantto have a clear understanding of the technology roadmap that will guide your migration tasks and your organization's future technology initiatives. The Microsoft 365 Roadmap is a visual representation of your organization's technology journey with Microsoft 365, outlining the milestones you need to hit along the way. It's a powerful tool that helps you plan and communicate your technology roadmap with stakeholders across your organization, ensuring alignment and effective adoption.
GoodLife Fitness Case Study: Migration to Microsoft 365 in 16 weeks!
One of our customers, GoodLife Fitness (Goodlife), a company with more than 300 fitness centers across Canada, talked to us about moving its workforce of nearly 15,000 associates to Microsoft 365. Goodlife considered Google Workspace because its club associates used Google Gmail for email, while home-office staff used an instance of Microsoft Exchange Server on-premises. GoodLife wanted its employees to communicate using one email system and originally planned to just migrate email for all employees to Google Apps, but later chose Microsoft 365 instead.
The challenge was how to move 15,000 users to Microsoft 365 cost-effectively and without affecting their work during Goodlife's high sales season. We decided to engage with the Microsoft FastTrack Team. FastTrack is a suite of services and resources designed to help organizations smoothly transition to Microsoft 365. The program includes envisioning, deploying, and adopting services and materials tailored to each organization's specific needs.
With the planning and deployment efficiencies provided by FastTrack, we completed a fast and flawless deployment with staged migration of 15,000 users to Microsoft 365 in only 16 weeks. Here is how the migration plan and project unfolded.
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Microsoft 365 Migration Roadmap – 4-Step Approach!
Step 1. Establish a Clear Vision
The first step in any migration project is to establish a clear vision of what you want to achieve. This involves identifying your short-term and long-term goals, creating a project plan, and setting target timelines. Work closely with your IT department and stakeholders to identify what needs to be migrated and when.
In our migration with GoodLife Fitness, our project manager and a FastTrack Manager worked with the GoodLife Fitness IT department to create a project plan that addressed urgent goals—getting everyone on the same email and calendaring system, for example—and longer-term goals such as creating a SharePoint Online portal for each fitness center and deploying a tool for enterprise social networking. We created a FastTrack Success Plan to establish best practices, target timelines, and help with business use-case scenarios.
With our customers, we always invest heavily in customer immersion experiences to establish a clear vision of where customers might go with Microsoft 365. We build a detailed roadmap of what they could do, but because the whole journey can be daunting, we emphasize bite-size pieces.
Step 2. Onboard Quickly
Once you've painted a clear vision, it's time to start migrating your data.
For GoodLife, the first task was to migrate their email and calendaring system. We performed remediation work on their Active Directory and Exchange Server environments and migrated the first 150 mailboxes.
It's important to ensure that all necessary remediation work is done before migration to minimize disruption to user accounts during the migration process.
Step 3. Engage Employees
Once your data is migrated, it's time to engage your employees and encourage them to start using Microsoft 365. One of the keys to a successful migration is to provide your employees with access to the right training and support.
We helped GoodLife take advantage of the FastTrack Success Center materials to drive Microsoft 365 adoption. We customized materials to create posters and communications to help set expectations with employees. We also set up a Microsoft 365 champion program so that individuals could learn how to train their peers.
Change can be hard, but by providing employees with the necessary resources and support, GoodLife Fitness was able to ensure the swift adoption of Microsoft 365.
Goodlife has advised us that the FastTrack launch materials added huge value to their success in rolling out Microsoft 365.
Step 4. Halve Deployment Time
By following the steps above, you can significantly reduce your migration time and maximize your investment in Microsoft 365.
Because migration time was reduced by half, GoodLife benefited from its Microsoft 365 investment sooner. Following this roadmap, we migrated 15,000 users to Microsoft 365 in only 16 weeks!
Conclusion:
In conclusion, migrating to Microsoft 365 can be complex, but it can be accomplished quickly and effectively with the right approach and tools. The 4-step approach outlined in this blog post and the help of the FastTrack program can make the migration process smooth and seamless while minimizing disruption to your business operations. GoodLife Fitness is a great example of an organization that successfully migrated to Microsoft 365 with the help of ProServeIT and the FastTrack program.
Microsoft 365 Migration Roadmap Testimonial!
And here is what Goodlife had to say about their Microsoft 365 migration project:
“ProServeIT worked seamlessly with our own IT department and the FastTrack Center. Together, we deployed the necessary infrastructure to move from a mixed Exchange and Google Apps environment to a common platform with Microsoft 365. We did this against an aggressive migration schedule during one of our busiest sales periods. There has been great feedback since the project completed, and we saw swift adoption by our users.”
Mike Marsman, Director of Technology, GoodLife Fitness
Let us Help You with Your Microsoft 365 Migration!
From our experience as a trusted Technology Advisor for many organizations, we strongly believe Microsoft 365 is worth more than the sum of its parts. The more services customers use, the more value they get for their money.
Our team of experts has helped many customers of different sizes in various industries. Talk to us to create your own Microsoft 365 migration roadmap today!
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