Utility company overcomes its data challenges

For decades, this utility company has provided safe, reliable natural gas and electricity to its customers. Today, the large organization serves more than five million households.

With legacy systems threatening to make the company’s data harder to access, manage, and protect, the business initiated an ambitious tech modernization project—one that would break down silos, increase control, and lower risk. RecordPoint helped the enterprise power its transformation using SharePoint Online and other solutions.

Challenge

By 2018, one thing had become increasingly clear to this utility company: The years-old version of SharePoint it had been running was no longer cutting it.

More and more, the organization’s employees struggled to easily access the data they needed to perform their jobs successfully. Sharing information to collaborate with their colleagues proved equally difficult.

On top of that, the company lacked any meaningful control over its records. And while information governance didn’t exactly elude the business, it was inconsistently applied. So, the way workers structured and used their data varied from department to department.

Security was also a concern. Without a modern management and storage system in place, the company’s highly sensitive data could potentially be at risk.

In other words, the enterprise had a lot of issues to address. It needed a new solution—and fast.

With legacy systems threatening to make the company’s data harder to access, manage, and protect, the business initiated an ambitious tech modernization project.

Solution strategy

Charting the course forward

Recognizing the problems posed by its outdated on-premises version of SharePoint, the organization embarked on an ambitious modernization project. RecordPoint collaborated with the company to help determine its most pressing needs and chart its course forward.

The first step involved evaluating the enterprise’s current architecture for source data. During weeklong workshops and training sessions, RecordPoint engineers reviewed the contents of the organization’s SharePoint site and studied how the system was originally architected.

Internal staff and RecordPoint employees then began working together to plan and design the next-generation SharePoint site. This required creating processes for classifying data, extracting it, and augmenting it with meaningful context.

Together, the team combined a big-picture approach with a more tactical focus on smaller pilot projects.

Because the organization wanted to implement improvements quickly, engineers developed a Microsoft 365 migration plan that allowed the company to roll out its new solutions—including SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams—as soon as possible. A broader deployment would shortly follow.

Working side by side with SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams, RecordPoint enables the organization to analyze its files using artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Empowering employees everywhere

Prior to the large-scale rollout, the enterprise created a comprehensive change management plan to help boost user adoption. By clearly communicating the solution benefits to its workforce, the company secured widespread employee buy-in.

Now, staff throughout the organization are ready to take advantage of SharePoint Online and its other powerful new tools to:

• Gain greater visibility and transparency to improve content and records control and categorization
• Access all the data they need in one centralized location to increase efficiency
• Share information more easily to streamline enterprise-wide collaboration
• Ensure compliance, increase security, and mitigate risk to protect the business from harm

Doubling down on data management

In addition to its Microsoft 365 migration, the company also adopted RecordPoint.

Working side by side with SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams, RecordPoint enables the organization to analyze its files using artificial intelligence and machine learning. This level of sophistication makes it easier for the business to proactively identify unnecessary or high-risk data—and quickly remove it or place stricter controls around it.

Results

The company is still in its early stages of maturity with SharePoint Online and its other new tools. But it’s already experienced some remarkable results.

Chief among them is that all of its information is now expertly managed. And with its data under better control, the organization can count on:

• Improved compliance
• Increased security
• Reduced costs
• Boosted efficiencies

Together, these upgrades will provide a real jolt to the utility company’s business.