Case Study

Confidence and control gained over Teams and SharePoint

Confidence and control gained over Teams and SharePoint saves time and money, and improves security and compliance

Client: Aspen Ireland

Complexities

Global organisation with multiple trading companies on one tenant
Highly regulated industry with niche and complex requirements
Valuable intellectual property and sensitive data that needed to be managed correctly

Results

Aspen Ireland have gained control over the management of their data in SharePoint sites and Teams, protecting valuable intellectual property and sensitive information.
Improved user experience with an easy-to-use app that is readily accessible. The process has been streamlined with online questionnaires, forms and a clear workflow, providing guidance and education to users about best practice.
Reduced administration time and effort for the IT team spent on provisioning, management and lifecycle activities related to SharePoint Sites and Teams

The challenge

Aspen Holdings is a global pharmaceutical company with offices in over 50 countries. Aspen Ireland shares a tenant with the wider Aspen Holdings group. The IT team of Aspen Ireland were looking to improve the governance and management of their Microsoft collaboration tools and environment. They wanted to take control over the creation and management of new Teams and SharePoint sites. By enforcing good data management practices, they would be able to protect sensitive data created and stored within these sites. In addition, they needed to implement better lifecycle management to ensure that sites were archived and deleted appropriately.

"Key to this has been the initial and continued training and support of the Cloud Essentials team and its members. Not only are they on-hand for any queries I have raised with them, but they respond quickly and, crucially, with in-depth knowledge of the product."

Our solution

Automated governance of collaboration tools and environment

Cloud Essentials introduced Aspen Ireland to AvePoint for Cloud Governance which uses a layered approach with rules and policies, workflows, forms and questionnaires to automate the creation, oversight and lifecycle management of SharePoint Sites and Teams.

Proof of concept provided clear demonstration of benefits

Aspen Ireland were eager to see how the AvePoint for Cloud Governance tool would meet their requirements and Cloud Essentials were able to negotiate a short-term licence agreement with AvePoint to be able to offer a proof of concept. Once Aspen Ireland had decided to buy the tool, Cloud Essentials were able to reactivate the licenses and the configuration changes and customisation were taken into the live deployment.

Configured to meet stringent business requirements

Cloud Essentials worked with Aspen Ireland to understand their existing business processes including permissions and approvals. We were able to offer recommendations for improvement, drawing on our experience working in highly-regulated industries. Cloud Essentials used their in-depth knowledge of AvePoint for Cloud Governance to configure and customise the tool to the client’s requirements, ensuring the client was able to get maximum value from the tool’s functionality. The client is now able to automate the endto-end process of SharePoint site/Team creation and lifecycle management

Additional benefit of managing legacy/existing sites and Teams

The Cloud Governance tool can be applied to pre-existing environments and apply the same rules to those workloads as well as managing OneDrive and Active Directory in addition to SharePoint and Teams.

Direct line to AvePoint for swift resolution of issues

Cloud Essentials used their close relationship with AvePoint to escalate issues and enable swift resolution of questions that arose during the proof of concept and live configuration.

"I have found AvePoint for Cloud Governance to be an extremely useful software tool/platform since we started using it with Aspen Ireland. It is both advanced for IT Admin employees and at the same time, very easy to adapt to on a user level for other employees. Key to this has been the initial and continued training and support of the Cloud Essentials team and its members. Not only are they on-hand for any queries I have raised with them, but they respond quickly and, crucially, with in-depth knowledge of the product. These guys know their stuff, and the software they have supplied Aspen with has certainly made my job, and the job of several others, much easier and quicker."

Karl Geiran, I.T. Applications Specialist, Aspen Ireland

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Case Study

Confidence and control gained over Teams and SharePoint