Digital evolution and the implementation of Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft Teams Implementation and Customisation, Training and Support.
“The team at Ingentive are unmatched in breadth and depth of experience; They have an exceptional attitude and an approach to technology which is infectious. The Teams engagement created a simplified communication platform with exceptional integration possibilities, fast-tracked mobilisation and vastly improved the onboarding and implementation experience for the colleagues within McCurrach.“
– Colin McArthur, Network and Infrastructure Manager
Identifying The Problem
McCurrach had to move their 1200 staff to fully remote working with no notice during to the COVID-19 pandemic, closing their Glasgow city centre head office and shifting close knit teams across their business units to home working. This introduced a need for seamless communication and collaboration for meetings and conversations which would typically have taken place in person. With such a diverse workforce across field, remote and office, McCurrach needed a solution within their existing investment to empower users to do more. They had a planned Skype for Business migration in 2020 as part of their wider cloud strategy, however the immediate switch to remote working in March introduced a challenging situation which meant that McCurrach would have to roll out Microsoft Teams to all staff at a much quicker pace.
Addressing the Challenge
Ingentive quickly developed a content creation and training plan, creating tailored and engaging training content which would have an impact and remain relevant to the teams within the different service areas of McCurrach. Following a user profiling exercise, Ingentive were able to plan out the initial key training sessions targeting power users and change champions for Teams to understand how individuals within McCurrach would use the tool to meet business and customer requirements.
These change champions would become the main points of contact across the business units. Core communication and collaboration features within Teams were covered, as well as advanced scenarios and surrounding governance for these, such as adding external guests into Teams and best practice for setting up and running meetings with internal and external partners and clients.
The initial topic-based training sessions were recorded, edited and published to allow users who were not able to attend the sessions to consume the content at their own pace, at a time that suited them, alongside bitesize videos to demonstrate how to use fundamental features within Microsoft Teams.
Running these training sessions as interactive Teams meetings allowed McCurrach colleagues to ask questions and provide direct feedback which was used to plan out knowledge webinars and prepare internal support for common queries.
Ingentive then developed a core knowledge webinar to cover the identified areas of Microsoft Teams which would have the most impact. Larger groups were able to attend these webinars in their own time by subscribing to the weekly session or watching a session video on demand, which ensured strong coverage across business units as they were moving onto Teams which ensured strong coverage across business units as they were moving onto Teams. These were delivered as Teams Live Events which meant that users were accessing the training content through Teams whilst using the platform itself for communication and collaboration, allowing them to ask questions and provide feedback to the IT business partners running the sessions with Ingentive.
Celebrating the results
With a full deployment of Teams into the organisation over the course of just a few months, active usage increased from 1.5% to 70%, allowing McCurrach to stay connected, and internal teams were able to focus on delivering outcomes for their clients during an unprecedented period for the retail and service industry.
Teams will play a particularly powerful role for new starters within the organisation; By making use of the training materials and being added to the relevant Teams, new colleagues can easily find content and immediately feel connected with meetings and conversations, alongside easier access to files and policies.
Teams has rapidly become the primary productivity solution for McCurrach, and they are now investigating the use of applications within Teams from third party products which are used throughout the business and assessing where bots and custom apps might be integrated into core workflows. A key example of this is integrating Power BI dashboards into client specific Teams for presentation.
Overall, even though the move to Microsoft Teams was planned as part of a wider strategic move to the latest Microsoft Cloud technologies, McCurrach had to undertake this migration whilst working from home with colleagues spread throughout the UK & Ireland. The training delivered via Ingentive allowed them to focus on serving their clients and continuing to be innovative whilst learning how to make use of the new tools during the ‘new normal’.
