New Forest District Council - Header

New Forest District Council

Migration from Meridio to SharePoint Online

New Forest District Council - Client Profile

Client Profile

Data migration can optimize decades of user managed content, which can often have inaccurate, inconsistent or minimal metadata applied. Proventeq’s migration experts worked closely with the New Forest District Council’s team, providing technical consultancy to help the team to understand the migration tool and to accelerate migration and complete the project ahead of the target date.

LOCATION
UK
SECTOR
Public Sector, Government
SOURCE
Meridio
DESTINATION
SharePoint Online
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New Forest District Council - Testimonial

Proventeq helped us complete the migration in 22 weeks instead of the planned 25. The early completion saved us from having to renew our Meridio package and we are saving about £26,000 per year, which can now be used elsewhere.
- Chris Haws, Information Technlogy Project Manager, New Forest District Council

New Forest District Council - Swoosh

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Case study summary

In February 2020, just before the first lockdown from Covid-19, New Forest District Council completed the Microsoft 365 roll-out to all staff (about 700 licenses). Following this, they embarked on the move away from Meridio (a legacy EDRMS) to Sharepoint Online at the end of 2020.

Proventeq was chosen to perform the analysis and discovery, with migration to take place within a 25 week time frame before Meridio could be decommissioned.

The council’s Migration Project Team recognized that the old Meridio structure might not reflect the reality of the council today, and with our help were able to map the old folder structure into the new business reality.

The challenges of migrating from Meridio to SharePoint Online

Structures of varying complexity

The council team identified 25 distinct business areas within Meridio, each with folder structures of varying complexity. Classification and separation of data was required to meet the demands of accessibility and navigation within the new SharePoint architecture.

Strict timeframe for the migration

To minimize the impact to the busy council offices, the migration had to take place in stages over the 25 week project period. Each Friday the relevant department would be told to`freeze’ Meridio, and migration would recommence the following Monday again to SharePoint Online.

A huge amount of content sprawl

With so much data and several departments in the council working in their own respective ways, there was a large amount of redundant, obsolete or trivial (ROT) data to assess.

Document control issues

The old Meridio structure created opportunities for documents to be filed in multiple locations which led to several copies of the same documents scattered across the content landscape.

New Forest District Council - Solutions

Proventeq's Best practice strategy

Proventeq’s migration experts worked closely with the New Forest District Council’s team, providing technical consultancy to help the team to understand the migration tool and to accelerate migration and complete the project ahead of the target date.
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Discovery and analysis

Proventeq’s M365 and Azure Cloud experts worked closely with the client’s business and technology teams to design and implement a solution. This enabled a smooth transition for the customer to their existing M365 and Azure Cloud platforms for their DocumentCentric Customer Communication Process Automation requirements.   

Classification of data pre-migration

Proventeq identified that up to 30% of data was redundant and did not need to be migrated from Meridio. This gave the council an opportunity to migrate only the data they needed into the most up to date business practice areas in the target system.

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Restructuring of data to suit each department’s requirements

Proventeq’s Content Analyzer delivered powerful Power BI reports to help the council team to discover data within the Meridio system. Proventeq then helped the council to restructure their data before migration, to enhance the employee experience within SharePoint Online.

The Results

New cloud-based libraries

Council employees are comfortable when using the new cloud system: they see the same filing structure they had before and can create their own library that matches how their business operates. They can move data into appropriate new libraries from the Meridio archive folder the project team created.

Cost savings by decommissioning Meridio

With the data now residing in SharePoint Online, New Forest District Council is able to achieve significant cost savings through the removal of the additional Meridio licenses.

Enhanced productivity

The consolidation and new file structure of the new environment has helped the council employees to find the data they need to meet the challenges and responsibilities of departmental collaboration.

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Make your content work smarter with Proventeq

Proventeq specialises in migration from non-Microsoft and legacy Microsoft systems to SharePoint, Teams and OneDrive. Our AI-powered migration and productivity solutions turn your Microsoft 365 adoption challenges into opportunities.