Challenge

Many staff struggled to find and trust information they needed to do their job. Microsoft 365 had been implemented for collaboration, but important documents and records were being stored in a myriad of legacy content management systems across the business. Our goal was therefore to establish and implement an enterprise information management strategy.

The Journey

An information management maturity assessment was done to prioritize the project objectives. The biggest as-is challenges were lack of information governance in M365 and the corporate legacy records management system that many users reported to be a “black hole” for finding records.

An enterprise information strategy was developed with a new corporate metadata model and retention schedule to improve information governance, findability, and interoperability.

Leading information governance solution providers were invited to show how their solution could best manage documents and records when work happens in M365. The clear winner of this was Microsoft Information Governance and Records Management. This was verified with multiple proof-of-concepts across the business, and an evaluation of Microsoft Records Management against industry standards.

The CIO wanted the project to provide a cost savings, not only improve information availability, trustworthiness, and completeness. The project plan therefore got expanded to include a replacement of the following legacy systems:

• 60TB+ migration from SharePoint on-premise to SharePoint Online with governance
• Migrate over 50 million records from legacy records management system to SharePoint Online with governance
• Integrate line of business systems to store records in SharePoint Online with governance instead of legacy records management system
• Retro-fit governance to 30,0000 pre-existing SharePoint Online sites

Communication and training resources were developed and introduced to help users transition to new ways of working in M365.

Key Learnings

Microsoft Information Governance and Records Management can meet the business and regulatory requirements for retention and disposition. This enabled the global energy company to standardize on M365 for both collaboration and information management.

The key to success is automated information governance based on metadata that auto-apply record labels. New MS Teams and SharePoint site provisioning includes automatic governance with default metadata (e.g., Business Area, Country, Business Capability, Document Status), which improves search due to metadata added automatically to files stored in M365.

Success is still dependent on effective change management (e.g., get users to store important files in the correct MS Teams/site instead of Exchange and OneDrive for Business)

Impact Numbers

The energy company had the E3 license when the project started, and a business case was made for buying the E5 Information Protection & Governance add-on license for all users. This enabled the energy company to replace legacy systems with Microsoft Information Governance and Records Management, which reduced operational costs and risks while improving how information is managed and shared.