Organizational Assessment: Assessing Readiness for Adoption of Microsoft 365

 

When organizations decide to migrate to the Microsoft 365 suite of applications, the next important task to do is conduct a readiness assessment. Doing this provides you with a thorough review of the advantages, challenges, benefits and costs associated with the adoption of Microsoft 365.

Additionally, implementing an organizational readiness assessment also allows you to avoid the most common mistakes in the process, and ensure that you get the maximum out of your investment along with delivering a distinct competitive advantage to your organization.

Learn more about the readiness assessment for the adoption of Microsoft 365 in this blog including its importance, benefits and steps involved in the process.

What is Organizational Assessment? 

Organizational assessment with respect to implementing Microsoft 365 is essentially a service that offers an independent assessment of an organization’s readiness and options for adoption of Microsoft 365. The service caters for the complete Microsoft 365 suite assessing everything from cost, pre-requisites, priorities, benefits, and implementation roadmap of Microsoft 365 across SharePoint Online, Skype for Business, Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive for Business and Office Web Apps.

Among some of the key features of this assessment include-

• A detailed and comprehensive discovery and requirements analysis to assess and determine business needs/drivers
• Thorough engagement via interviews, workshops, review of artifacts, and access of systems by experienced and certified Microsoft 365 consultants
• Taking a well-defined and structured approach to discovery, detailed analysis, assessment and recommendations
• Detailed assessment of existing IT architecture, workloads, and applications 
• Use of Microsoft reference architectures and tooling to address various issues and risks enabling the successful adoption

Why is it Important to Have Your Organization Assessed? 

Having your organization assessed for Microsoft 365 readiness is important for the below reasons-

• Helps you find the best way ahead including various changes involved and how they will impact your business.
• Allows you to thoroughly evaluate the business, processes, technology, and people.
• A thorough Microsoft 365 readiness assessment lets you gain deeper insights on aspects such as compliance, governance, and security requirements.
• Eliminates the risk of migration failure as moving to the cloud is typically a complex process. 
• Allows you to build a proper cost model by determining the things that can be moved, should be moved and shouldn’t be moved.
• Gives you a better idea if your IT or technology team is ready for deploying and supporting Microsoft 365.

Steps to Assess Your Organization for Deploying Microsoft 365 Apps and Services 

A detailed and comprehensive organizational readiness assessment comprises of a review of network infrastructure, applications, and servers. Here are some of the important steps you need to take to assess your organization for deploying Microsoft 365 apps and services- 

• Review of Infrastructural Requirements 

The first step in Microsoft 365 readiness assessment should be a thorough assessment of existing infrastructure including reviewing the details of client devices, architectures, operating systems, existing Office versions, required languages, projects, and Office applications.

Here you also need to ensure that all client devices meet the minimum system requirements for Microsoft 365 apps installation. Make sure to review the system requirements of office server workloads along with reviewing of deployment tools in use.

• Selection of Licenses and Features 

The next step in the process involves the selection of various Microsoft 365 features and the appropriate licenses. These licenses are available in different tiers, and the higher you go the better you get.

With regards to Microsoft 365 feature selections, it is important to pick the ones that you’re ready to deploy. You can later introduce additional services/features as your business scales.

• Checking the Compatibility of Active Directory Services

This step involves checking and ensuring the compatibility of your active directory environment with Microsoft 365 requirements. The idea here is to check and ensure that Microsoft Active Directory (AD) has no issues and fully meets the supported levels with the current implementation. This is to prevent the troubles associated with Single Sign-On (SSO) and Azure AD integration.

• Compatibility Checking with Existing Infrastructure

One of the most common disruptions when it comes to a successful Microsoft 365 migration is outdated infrastructure. This makes it critically important to check compatibility and do a thorough readiness assessment for infrastructure.

All the existing applications and infrastructure running on your IT system need to be assessed for their compatibility to be able to determine whether it is feasible to go for a complete cloud environment or a hybrid solution. 

• Seamless Client and End-User Experience 

Ensuring seamless end-user and client requirements play a crucial role in successful Microsoft 365 migration. You need to check if all the organization’s desktops and laptops are Microsoft 365 ready to get a better understanding of the infrastructure and come up with an action plan to help smooth user experience. 

• Network Requirement Checking

Lastly, checking network and firewall services is another important aspect when connecting your applications to the cloud. Among the things that you need to check here include determining internet proxies, DNS requirements, and ensuring the appropriateness of firewalls and ports to maintain strong security protocol.

Benefits of Readiness Assessment Before Implementation of Microsoft 365 Apps And Services

The key reason why an increasing number of organizations are migrating to Microsoft 365 is because of its ability to deliver improved productivity, better collaboration and an attractive payment model. However, performing a readiness assessment before implementation of Microsoft apps and services is a must as it can lead to several advantages including-

• Minimize the risk and uncertainty associated with Microsoft 365 migration
• Gives you an independent assessment of your existing IT infrastructure and its suitability to migrate to Microsoft 365.
• Provide you with an estimate of all associated costs related to training, deployment, licencing and ongoing support.
• Well defined approach and timescales for migrating to Microsoft 365 along with tailored adoption roadmap
• Ensures that all your organizational expectations related to the benefits of migrating to Microsoft 365 are met
• Helps you identify any technical issues associated with the overall migration process
• Allows you to identify the best Microsoft 365 licencing subscription model that best fits the needs of your organisation.
• Support your specific business case and engage all the key stakeholders and decision-makers in the process
• Accelerate your overall adoption process, thus increasing ROI while eliminating expensive migration issues

Conclusion 

If you are also looking to migrate to Microsoft 365, we at TRNDigital bring a well-planned and structured organizational readiness assessment approach to discover, analyse, assess and recommend with a series of workshops, interviews, and review of systems.

At TRNDigital, we make sure to carry out a detailed readiness assessment to fully understand your specific business and organizational context and current environment. Further, for the Microsoft 365 readiness assessment service specifically, we continuously engage with the nominated customer point of contact to understand the project schedule, arrange meetings to confirm the scope, and align all parties.

Contact us today to know more about readiness assessment services for Microsoft 365 adoption services.