Fairway Group – Freedom to be agile
Prosperity 24/7 worked alongside Fairway Group to securely implement a new digital platform for this independent, owner-managed fiduciary group offering trust, funds and pensions services. This significant project involved migrating all critical systems from Fairway’s previous environment into Microsoft Azure and Office 365.
It was a major exercise, which meant designing a new operating platform, whilst migrating the critical business applications, designing and implementing a new network topology, a new domain, new desktops and new user configuration as well as migration of all corporate applications and data, whilst, most importantly, bringing all colleagues along on the journey as well.
The project was completed over a period of 12 months with two key milestones set to ensure the detailed transition process was handled smoothly. The first milestone of transitioning all users to Office 365 was a large volume piece involving migrating all mailboxes and users and required extensive training, testing and validation to ensure the integrity of the data was maintained. This was effected smoothly, by working closely and intensively training, Fairway Group’s Change Champions, who brought a renewed energy to using this capability.
The second key milestone within this project involved building an entirely new Cloud based infrastructure. New connectivity was commissioned and configured, core business applications were built and tested working alongside suppliers and internal users. Desktops were built to follow the new design. Extensive UAT was undertaken to ensure that all business requirements to work effectively were put in place. It was at this stage that our involvement with Fairway’s Change Champions really accelerated and it was a proud moment to see the Fairway Group fully engaged with the transition and the seamless migration to a new operating platform.
Stephanie Fox, Head of IT at Fairway Group commented:
“The use of the Office 365 product suite has been instrumental in changing how we work. Having engaged Teams early on in this process, it provided us with an early advantage in moving into home working, as the transition to making this our default method of communication was smooth.
The Microsoft Azure and Office 365 platforms provide greater capabilities and possibilities than we have seen previously from an IT perspective. We have more control and visibility over our environment through the tools provided, and it provides a greater degree of assurance to IT.
The move to Microsoft Azure and Office 365 was the right approach for Fairway Group, as it provided the resilience and agility the business required. It also provided our business with the tools we needed to implement change. It provides a full remote working capability, with no additional configuration required from IT to enable this feature. At the start of the pandemic, the move to home working was seamless, with all users operating effectively from day one – a testament to the platform that has been built.
We now have a scalable digital platform that we are continuing to build upon, with new opportunities being presented as part of the product sets. We continue to engage with Prosperity 24/7 for their expertise in this area, to drive further innovative ideas that will protect our business and ultimately present further opportunities.”
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