Your M365 migration has been approved! Now you are left wondering: where do I start, what are the risks and how do I minimize disruption to my business?

These are common and legitimate concerns voiced at the beginning of any migration. But, moving to the cloud can be stress-free and seamless if done properly.

Last Thursday, Chris Plauschinn of Ricoh Canada, Steve Matthews of ActiveNav and Mekonnen Kassa of Microsoft came together for a live webinar to share their insights on how to prepare for a successful migration to Microsoft 365. Not only did they offer actionable steps that organizations can take to prepare for the move, but they also shared how you can categorize your data so it is more accessible to its users along the way. Didn’t catch the live webinar? You can view the recording here.

Check out our favourite highlights from the session below:

"My first introduction to M365 migration was in 2015 when migrating internally from Exchange. If only I knew then what I know now! One of the early misconceptions about M365 is that it’s a simple switch for your email. That’s simply not the case. M365 can transform your entire business: the way you work with data, the way you work with each other and ultimately the way that you communicate. But, you need to determine how all the different parts of your business are working and how that all comes together within the entire data universe.

“Data within an organization is a living organism. You need to look at all the different components, map all the content within that data universe and make informed decisions on where to go next.”

— Chris Plauschinn, Director, Cloud and Infrastructure Solutions, Ricoh Canada

“Many organizations say, ‘We’re moving to the cloud. That’s going to solve all our problems!’ It’s completely wrong. That old adage of ‘garbage in, garbage out’, has never been truer. While moving to the cloud is fantastic and will transform your business, there’s a whole change management piece that’s required. People, process and technology are like three legs on a stool. If you remove one of those legs, the stool is going to fall over. The first thing I say to anyone considering migration is to not forget about the change management.”

— Steve Matthews, SVP - Global Sales, ActiveNav

“Data mapping is the first step to any migration project. What is the size of the data I have? What are the latency requirements? You need to discover and map parameters so that you can do your migration better.

"Sometimes we tend to complicate the classifications of data. We’ve seen some customers with 14 layers of classification. We, at Microsoft, only have five. When you classify your data, keep it simple. Base the content within each container on keywords so users can understand where to find it.”

— Mekonnen Kassa, Director, Cloud Security Engineering, Microsoft

How Ricoh and ActiveNav Can Help:

Data discovery must be the first step in any compliance or governance focused project. You cannot manage what you do not know you have. Together, through the use of File Analysis, we can provide the foundation of effective compliance, data governance and risk management to address any information obstacle ahead of your migration.

Thinking about a M365 migration? Contact us today. Whether you are a small, mid-sized or large corporation, we’re happy to answer any questions to may have and help you get started.

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