Background

Specialist Risk Group provides risk transfer solutions and underwriting services for an international client base. This includes businesses operating in high-risk environments, and brokers serving construction, fleet management and other high-risk trades.

With an existing investment in Microsoft 365, Specialist Risk Group could see the potential in deploying Microsoft 365. However, whilst planning the roll-out of further services, the organisation identified several key knowledge gaps.

Here Director, IT & Projects at Specialist Risk Group Keith Bucknall describes how Yoko:10 have helped plan and guide the roll-out of Microsoft services, ensuring maximum end-user adoption.

Requirements

A cloud-first approach

“Specialist Risk Group has moved from a traditional on-premises IT infrastructure to embrace a cloud-first model” says Keith.

“With a small IT team, we have a buy-not-build provisioning ethos with a focus on cloud technology. We are accustomed to working with partners to help us implement and support our technology, including desktop, mobile devices, intranet and our specialist insurance systems.

“We wanted to maximise our investment in cloud and in particular Microsoft Office 365 and ensure its security and effectiveness.”

Greater collaboration through Microsoft 365

“The Microsoft 365 stack is phenomenal, yet companies typically use only 20% of its functionality,” comments Keith.

“We wanted to move beyond email and begin to exploit the functionality of OneDrive and MS Teams to drive greater collaboration.”

Document Management

“Hand-in-hand with this we wanted to establish more structure and discipline around our documents and workflows.

“We have a number of forms that we wished to automate, and we also wanted to create an environment which reflects how our departments and teams actually work and interact.

“Consolidating everything within Microsoft 365, using OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams is a key enabler to achieving the efficiencies we were looking for.”

Why yoko:10?

Skills and experience

“I’ve known yoko:10 for quite a few years and have worked with them in previous organisations before I came to Specialist Risk Group and trust their expertise” Keith explains.

“yoko:10 have the rare mix of skills and experience in the requirements we wanted to address. I knew they had the right level of expertise to not only help with key decisions surrounding our Microsoft 365 rollout, but also to help us get our information governance and document management approach on-point.”

Project approach

Describing the approach yoko:10 takes Keith says: “When we present yoko:10 with a new requirement or use case, they initiate a planning session to fully understand what we’re after. They provide a thorough Statement of Works and carefully document the process we need to follow.

“As a result, we’re building up a robust technical knowledge base to help us become more self-sufficient.”

End-user focus

“One of the most impressive things about how Yoko:10 works is the laser focus on the end-user experience,” says Keith.

“They have a natural way of facilitating workshops and engaging with users, including understanding how they operate and how they want to improve their processes and workflows.”

Impact and benefits

Increased collaboration through MS Teams

“Yoko:10’s end-user focus has been particularly valuable around MS Teams. Rather than setting up Teams that simply mirror the organisational silos, they were more interested in us having the flexibility to reflect actual cross-functional working patterns.

“With this good understanding of the business organisation, Yoko:10 was able to guide us to an architectural solution that supports the way Specialist Risk Group wants to work.

“As the business gets bigger the MS Teams’ architecture has grown from five to 150 Teams and Sites.”

Document management and automation

“Within Microsoft 365 we have distinct areas for structured data, policies and procedures and document storage.

“We also have a standardised approach to forms and workflows. Rather than just swapping like-for-like we are managing to eliminate duplication and re-engineer some processes. It makes our document management much more strategic and coherent.

“Having all our documentation in one place enables greater accessibility and searchability, as well as saving storage costs by bringing everything into the same cloud environment.

“We’re now moving towards managing the document life-cycle more dynamically by automatically flagging when policy and procedure documentation needs to be reviewed.”

Cloud security and user access

“During the recent acquisitions our Board wanted our new business partners to get up to speed with our culture and communication style as swiftly as possible. Yoko:10 worked with us to provide all our new colleagues with guest accounts, providing temporary, secure access to our internal environment, ahead of all the system transfers taking place.

“These seem like straightforward tasks – but they’re a lot easier to accomplish when you can call on the right expertise!”

New possibilities

Extranet

“In the past yoko:10 also helped us implement our intranet, so expanding this capability into external portals that can be viewed by our partners will be a valuable next step.

“Now that we have better document management procedures in place this ensures that the information we publish internally and externally is accurate and up-to-date.”

Managed Service Provision

“We’re establishing a more retained, managed service relationship with yoko:10. When it comes to guidance, projects and support in the Microsoft 365 space they are definitely our trusted consultants,” says Keith.

“They have the product expertise to make recommendations that they believe will benefit us, without hard-selling.

“We only wish we could do more with them!”

Recommendation

“What you see is what you get with Yoko:10. They are down-to-earth, transparent and consultative; and they can be trusted to deliver a sound solution.

“I love what Yoko:10 stands for – sharing best practice with the end-user in mind. It’s simple, effective and very powerful.

“If you’re looking for a flexible partner who is au-fait with Microsoft 365 collaboration and workflow processes then working with Yoko:10 is a no-brainer!”

yoko:10 says

“It’s been a privilege supporting Specialist Risk Group throughout their Microsoft 365 roll-out.

It has been a real journey, and over the past four years we’ve built strong and lasting relationships with employees across the entire business, not just in IT”

“We look forward to providing continued guidance, consultancy and support for all future collaboration, intranet and document management needs.”