The problem
Leadership had funded a move from Google Workspace to GCC High for compliance and client requirements. Documents landed in four SharePoint sites via lift-and-shift import, but teams still worked the way they had in Google Drive—recreating files, emailing attachments, and waiting on IT for every new site. Search failed. Permissions did not match how legal, delivery, and operations actually collaborated. The migration was technically complete; the business case was not.
Initial state
OWCER started with a structured current-state review—not a slide-deck assumption about what should exist after migration.
- Google habits on a Microsoft stack — staff still organized work around personal drives and email attachments; SharePoint and Teams were overlays, not systems of record
- Platform inventory — SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive documented across four lift-and-shift sites with no coherent information architecture
- Workflow vs. permissions — delivery and operations teams mapped against actual tool usage; gaps confirmed leadership concerns about over- and under-sharing
- Provisioning bottleneck — every new site or team request sat in a manual IT queue with no self-service path
- Findability failure — search and metadata did not match how staff looked for work; duplicate content undermined trust in the migration
Transformation
- Operating model — limited information-management and records rules aligned to GCC High, replacing ad hoc Google-era habits
- Restructure — redesigned SharePoint and Teams topology; corrected permission gaps leadership had flagged
- Automate — self-service flows for common site and team requests; Power Automate where approvals could replace email chains
- Search & collaboration — improved findability in SharePoint; introduced a compliant commercial partner-tenant pattern where GCCH alone blocked necessary external collaboration
Outcomes
- Migration ROI realized — staff stopped treating GCC High as “Google with extra steps”; SharePoint and Teams became the default place work happened
- Faster operations — routine site and team requests no longer queued behind manual IT; approved resources arrived in days, not weeks
- Cost-neutral run rate — no increase in monthly operational cost; savings from less rework, duplicate files, and idle time searching for content
- Audit-ready governance — permission and information-management model leadership could explain to clients and auditors without blocking delivery work
“We were live in GCC High but still working like we were on Google. Restructuring SharePoint and Teams—and automating the requests that used to die in email—is what made the migration worth the investment.”
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