Winter is coming…and 2018
With 2018 quickly approaching, we’re working with our clients to plan priorities and budgets for the New Year. Most organizations that we come across understand that even if Office 365 is their toolbox of choice, it isn’t a plug-and-play solution. Indeed, there is a wide range of combinations within O365 that can create a highly efficient enterprise environment, but getting there takes forethought and vision.
Companies are asking questions from the broadest to the most specific. How do I plan? What should a roadmap look like? Should I be migrating my on-premises farms to the cloud? Should I be thinking about Teams? OneDrive? The list goes on.
Our technical expertise with “all things Office 365” combined with our experience in business strategy can help you create and implement a plan that will meet the operational vision you have for your business.
Stay ahead of the changing environment
Don’t procrastinate: both business and Microsoft systems have the ability to change faster than the weather in the Northeast.
The O365 platform itself has broadened, and it’s common for our clients to ask for guidance about putting together the elements that work best for them. We often help our clients understand:
Is OneDrive ready to be used as an enterprise file system?
Which is the appropriate collaboration tool: Teams, SharePoint, or Yammer?
Is Skype for Business really being folded into Teams?
Wait -- what exactly is Teams? (more to come on that in our next post)
The planning process provides an opportunity to address the questions above and thoughtfully approach common pain points like:
Infrastructure costs: moving existing on-premises SharePoint, Lync or Exchange infrastructure online
Security: preventing data leakage and managing data governance
eDiscovery: finding solutions to challenges across content platforms, including instant messaging, email messaging, collaboration data and documents, journaling, etc.
User experience: updating outdated, unprofessional intranet and determining how employees get information – and if they appreciate the way it’s delivered
These pains don’t get resolved with an Advil and a pat on the head. You need to identify what’s holding you back, and then put a series of development and rollout goals in place. So it’s more like multi-step dental surgery. But with smart and friendly DLC surgeons who know their anesthesia!
Efficiency, collaboration, and success
If we rewind to last year, the emphasis of IT was on marrying the urgency of “visible IT” – technology that is openly and frequently viewed by customers and company leadership – with the less sexy underlying engine that supports the organization.
Deloitte aptly deconstructed this “digital iceberg” as we closed out 2016, noting in its Global CIO Survey that:
"What many business leaders currently regard as “digital” is predominately the part of the iceberg that shows above water. What lies below are often legacy systems, a rigid organizational culture, and antiquated processes that have encumbered the shift toward digital."
"The CIO is well positioned to influence and support the whole digital iceberg and to help create the right strategy, platforms, and services to realize a holistic digital enterprise rather than a collection of disjointed departmental investments."
Throughout 2017, the proliferation of standalone solutions hasn’t helped CIOs in this task – but it is indeed possible to build a better iceberg. Your 2018 planning should yield clear goals, a course to a stronger IT environment, and a strong understanding of how the solutions can be interwoven to support one another.
When you engage with DLC as a one-stop-shop around enterprise consulting, implementation, managed services, and custom app development, we help you consolidate vendors, reduce risk, and save time and money. Put simply, we can help you steer the ship with the icebergs in plain view.
