About the Customer
Trade For Life (Pty) Ltd. is a South African company specializing in frozen products like fish, chicken, beef and vegetables.
The Challenge
Trade For Life sought to migrate their on-premises file server to a secure online platform and to make use of cloud computing. They were still utilizing standard file shares based on the technology of Windows Server 2012. In addition to moving to the cloud, they needed to update local desktop applications from Microsoft Outlook 2010 as an email client and reduce any risk of vulnerabilities as Microsoft Outlook 2010 was no longer supported.
Migrating to Microsoft 365, the Trade For Life team faced new challenges, including adjusting to the new Outlook interface and the collaboration features in OneDrive and SharePoint Online.
The Solution
Silicon Overdrive migrated five users and one on-premises file server to Microsoft 365. Our engineers installed the required Desktop Office apps, including OneDrive, and set up SharePoint Online and the client’s user profiles.
Configuring OneDrive and SharePoint Online allowed Trade For Life’s staff to access their files from anywhere, at any time, free up device storage, securely store files, and more.
As part of the installation, our certified engineers assisted the staff with in-depth training on using their new Microsoft 365 platform and all its services. The training included features like file collaboration whilst working in SharePoint Online and using Microsoft Teams for communication and further collaboration.
The client wanted to keep a specific file storage process that did not overwrite existing information and save different versions of the original document. The team helped users with their workflow by disabling the AutoSave feature in Word and Excel. Silicon Overdrive recommended that the users review their workflow as there were many other features, such as document versioning and check-out of files on SharePoint, that could increase their work productivity.
The Outcome
After migrating to Microsoft 365, Trade For Life has a secure platform where staff can access, share, edit, and upload files in a central environment. Users can access files from anywhere, anytime, on any device.
There was no need for a physical server, as all data is now stored on SharePoint and backed up to the cloud.
A great learning from this migration was that supplementary training methods or assets might help new clients.
