Follow These 4 Tips to Streamline and Simplify Your Migration to SharePoint Online
In our last blog, we shared the 5 important steps companies should take when migrating to SharePoint Online. And while following those steps will certainly make for a much more streamlined transition, there are a number of less tangible (yet equally important) ways to both ensure an effective migration and drive end-user adoption – ensuring you get the most from your investment in Microsoft’s leading records management tool.
Having led a significant number of migrations over the past years, HELUX is well versed in the best practices savvy companies deploy to ensure the best possible transition to SharePoint. Below, we share our top 4 tips for your success!
Tips for an Effective Migration SharePoint Online
Understand the Project's Size, Scope and Complexity
Many companies don’t have a full understanding of the scope and scale of their planned transition. This kind of migration is not equivalent to a simple change, such as upgrading from one iPhone model to another. For users accustomed to the previous system, the transition can be significant and complex.
Project size, scope and complexity is primarily dictated by the volume of records to migrate – often correlated to the size of a company, its organizational structure and the number of end-users who will be impacted by the transition.
Having an appreciation of the transition’s true size and scope will enable your team to adequately identify and allocate resources early on and develop the appropriate plans and timelines. Inadequate resourcing and planning will only lead to delays and challenges handling large amounts of data. The best route? Dedicate a separate team to ensure a successful migration and treat migration as its own project.
Prioritize Change Management and User Experience
While many refer to migration as simply moving data from one system to another, it's essential to recognize that it involves a significant change in end-users’ experience and daily routines.
Effective change management, along with user adoption and training plans, is crucial to support a successful migration. Engage all stakeholders, communicate early and often, and ensure end-users are aware of the key timelines and milestones. Be transparent about how the user experience will evolve and be sure to stress the benefits of the future state.
If you have a change management expert on your team, they will be a great asset, but if such resources aren’t available in-house, you can ramp-up on change management essentials (such as researching John Kotter’s well-known 8-step model), or even better – leverage a proven content management partner’s depth of expertise to ensure all key considerations are addressed.
Establish a strong information architecture and governance approach
Without a robust information architecture (IA) and the proper governance strategy, an organization can end up with a chaotic and unorganized records management system that negates their return on investment and frustrates end-users. Clearly defining IA and governance early on is important – especially in the context of M365. This involves creating a well-defined structure for how data and documents will be organized and accessed within the new system. It will help you to establish practical guidelines and rules to prevent the system from becoming the “wild west”, and will set up “guardrails” that ensure the system remains organized and efficient, with controlled usage.
Proper governance requires determining which controls must be in place and appointing a governing body to determine how the system should operate. To ensure focused and efficient execution, a dedicated migration team should be established – separate from the people responsible for user onboarding and configuration.
Don’t Move Garbage to the New System
Many companies find it tempting – and believe it will be easier – to simply migrate all records over from one system to another. What they may not realize, however, is that moving to a new platform without addressing issues in the source system will only transfer existing inefficiencies or problems. In addition to complicating matters, it can leave end-users questioning whether the new system is really better than the previous one – hampering user experience and adoption efforts.
SharePoint Online offers a number of incredible features that enable modern collaboration for creating web sites, publishing content, and storing files. Unfortunately, many organizations fail to take advantage of the advanced capabilities of the new system because they migrate content from a poorly structured or unorganized source. Without proper organization, both searchability and findability are hindered, and users cannot efficiently leverage metadata-based searching.
Be sure to invest early in transforming information and addressing structural issues to avoid bringing old, poorly structured content into the new system.
Considering a migration to SharePoint Online?
Every day, companies across every major sector turn to HELUX for guidance on ensuring an effective and well orchestrated migration to Microsoft SharePoint Online. Our team taps into their depth of experience to help organizations scope, deploy and scale their migrations – while ensuring ample focus on stakeholder engagement, change management and sustainable governance for optimal success.