The Opportunity

Our client is undertaking a major digital transformation programme. They were looking to replace standalone legacy IT systems, enabling them to modernise their IT platform to promote mobile, flexible working and enhance user experience in a highly integrated and complex environment.

The current IT environment had several pain points including:

• Slow systems
• Unproductive working across different devices
• Inefficient communication across teams
• Current system didn’t encourage a culture of collaboration
• Didn’t cater to different user workstyles
• High maintenance costs

Our client was therefore looking for a Managed Professional Services provider to deliver a fully managed, seamless end to end transition of IT systems and to ensure in-house teams were upskilled, with successful knowledge transfer to the new systems.

After a competitive tendering process where we presented an options paper and outlined a business case to the DHSC Agency, we were delighted to be awarded the contract. This is a fantastic project for us to take on, with 1,300 end users across 3 organisations.

Our Approach

At RedRock, we underpin all our Managed Professional Service engagements with the same core values:

• Client enablement
• Teams of excellence
• Impartiality

Each engagement is directly overseen by our Portfolio Director to ensure this. From the outset, our Portfolio Director collaborated with the Agency to ensure we fully understood the project’s desired outcomes. This also included monitoring progress and performance, providing updates and support where necessary.

With this in mind, and from our discussions with the Agency, we were able to provide a large team of 20 experts across the following areas:

• Full Programme Manager
• 3 Project Managers
• Subject Matter Experts
• Change Managers
• Communication Specialists
• 4 Learning Specialists
• Team quickly co-located with in-house teams

Our Solution

Our team engaged with the Agency and all other stakeholders, holding a series of meetings and workshops to ensure everyone involved had a chance to discuss the current issues and fully understood the aims of the project.

From these discussions, we agreed the new digital workplace must encourage the 3 Cs:

1. Communicate – open, transparent and effective across devices
2. Collaborate – make work quicker, smoother, more enjoyable and large scale
3. Connect – as a result of the above, create stronger relationships with colleagues and customers

A digital workplace culture empowers everyone to transform and grow the business.

Based on these aims, Office 365 Productivity and Collaboration suite was chosen as the best-fit solution for several reasons:

• Cloud based so employees can reach their applications and files from virtually anywhere and on any device
• Enable colleagues to see each other’s availability and communicate in real time with shared calendars
• OneDrive provides a simple and secure online storage solution, enabling a smoother collaboration experience between customers and colleagues
• Easy management of monthly costs
• Updates are automatic, so employees are guaranteed to always be working on the most up to date version of any Microsoft product

The suite of apps chosen within Office 365 include:

Communicate

• Yammer
• MS Teams
• Skype

Collaborate

• OneDrive
• MS Sway
• Sharepoint
• Organise
• MS Planner
• MS Delve
• PowerBI

To support the adoption of this software, we also rolled out Lenovo ThinkPads across the organisation.

It was vital to ensure we could enable a strong onboarding process. To do this, we implemented the following:

• Pilot trial to gain feedback and understand any issues before rolling out to all users
• Seminars to give an overview of the changes and how this would impact users
• Training programme for all users
• Model office set up so employees could practise with the new software

This process ensured that by the time Office 365 had been completely rolled out, all users were confident in using the new system and how each app could be used to address individual needs.

The Outcome

This project is modernising and reshaping the Agency, empowering its people by developing internal skills and building capacity.

RedRock were able to provide a reliable, experienced team that managed the full adoption of the new IT systems to bring about business change. This created numerous benefits, including:

• Cost – flexible licensing makes it easier to add and remove licenses with no tie-ins
• Productivity – teams have more access to information resulting in faster, more informed decision-making
• Convenience – accessible applications using single sign-on, removing the need to dip in and out of applications
• Flexibility – users can work anywhere over any device and message or share information in-app
• Innovation – ideas and information are shared more readily making the business more responsive and agile
• Security – communication and data are protected through the application of embedded security controls
• Futureproof – applications can evolve with the business and are maintained, managed and updated automatically