Cognified Dropbox to M365

Cognifide is a marketing technology consultancy that works with some of the world’s leading businesses to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Today’s dominant companies are built around the customer experience. They have a clear vision of what that experience should be and can quickly and continuously bring it to life. Our technical and transformational expertise gives marketers control, helping them to get to market faster, improve execution, innovate and be more efficient.

The Need:

Wunderman Thompson, part of international advertising group WPP plc, operates in 90 markets around the globe. Its corporate family consists of over 20,000 experts, working within a large number of businesses – each of which uses different tools and platforms to manage and store its own data.

Previously we had worked with another provider, but although our cooperation had dragged on for a year it had achieved nothing. Working with Nero Blanco was an altogether different experience.
We had already worked with Nero Blanco on the migration from Google Drive to Office 365 in November 2019, during which they had made a complex, time-sensitive process flawless.
– Bartłomiej Szafko, Global Head of Services, Cognifide

It’s a digital divide that makes it hard for the businesses within the group to work together. The eventual aim is for each of the companies within the group to migrate to Office 365 in the WPP Cloud, to enable full collaboration, seamless communication, and operational efficiency.

With tens of thousands of users and vast amounts of data throughout WPP, this mega migration is an exceptionally complex and unique project that can only be handled one business at a time.

While Cognifide users had already been migrated into the WPP Cloud tenant, further migration was required to relocate – and clean up – the company’s Dropbox Business data.

For Cognifide, the switch from Dropbox Business to SharePoint and OneDrive within the WPP Cloud involved migrating large quantities of data and access rights within an aggressive two-month deadline, driven by the imminent end of the company’s annual Dropbox Business subscription, and the need to avoid further charges for the service.

The Solution:

With over 50 years’ experience of tackling complex, large-scale migration projects, Nero Blanco were the obvious choice to take on the challenge.

Big enough to work with some of the most well-known companies around the globe, yet agile enough to provide a personal and highly efficient service, Nero Blanco have developed a reputation for their high-calibre service and guaranteed no-risk, on-time delivery.

As with all end-to-end migrations, the project combined the use of a best of breed SaaS solution with Nero Blanco’s transparent, collaborative approach and creative problem-solving.

One of the best things about their approach is that they deliver what we need, how we need it, rather than pushing us to adapt our processes to accommodate the way they work, as many consultants do.
The Dropbox migration took nine weeks as planned, and was immaculately delivered with minimal interruption to our business. We created milestones for important deadlines, built in testing phases that were specific to our business, and incorporated buffers that enabled us to adapt plans and save time where necessary.
Our dealings with Nero Blanco have been based on a collaborative partnership, founded on mutual trust and respect. They are flexible, responsive, and quick to act decisively. The success of the migration speaks for itself: Nero Blanco are true experts in their field and it was a pleasure to work with them.
– Bartłomiej Szafko, Global Head of Services, Cognifide

Under the guidance of project lead, Twan van Beers, Nero Blanco delivered
on the following scope of work:

Agreed deliverables:

planning and discovery
pre-migration tasks
configuring of the selected best of breed SaaS solution
single cutover event before 14 April 2020, enabling pre-staging of Dropbox data
final ‘catch-up’delta-pass syncs over the cutover weekend.
post-migration support
manual scripting of a mapping source to target, not provided by the SaaS solution

Migration of Dropbox Business to Office 365: