The Challenge

The ever-accelerating speed of the retail industry means it is crucial for these companies to be able to securely and quickly collaborate with internal colleagues as well as external vendors across their supply chain.

The technology they sought after needed to provide a stable information platform to enable store managers and their team to have seamless communication and collaboration internally among coworkers, and externally with suppliers, vendors, and customers.

In order to achieve effective and timely communication, the global retail company made the decision to use Microsoft Teams. However, the company's IT team faced difficulties with deployment, particularly around their unmanaged provisioning and accessibility. This resulted in a need for increased governance functionality.

There are three obstacles that proved to be of highest importance during this project.

Ensuring Secure Collaboration

Being a mega retailer means there are thousands of people both internally and externally that need to be accounted for when considering the security of content.

Internally, the right information needs to be uploaded and shared in only the right Teams. And external guest access - such as vendors and contractors - must be managed appropriately to prevent lost control over shared content.

Maintaining Operational Governance

By replacing the IT team's task of provisioning Teams to reduce their burden, the appropriate control over that provisioning needs to be set in stone. An enforced lifecycle management had to be implemented to maintain a clutter-free environment and prevent dark data sprawl.

Sustainable User Adoption

The company knew this wouldn't come to fruition if their end-users aren't onboarded sufficiently to make sure they are empowered to utilize the appropriate Office 365 tools. This needs to be executed well to pull everything together and maximize Office 365's ROI.