In many businesses, people leaving can often cause an onset of problems when it comes to disparate file data. The files and folders they own in their My Drive can get lost in the abyss once their account is deactivated. This is especially worrying if other people in the business rely on accessing this data. It can also create unnecessary admin for IT managers to identify important files within My Drives and change ownership to the right people or store them in the appropriate Shared Drive.

BIT’s Group Lead: Knowledge, Learning and Development, Matt Smith, wanted to address this challenge head-on and implement best practices on Shared Drive usage to improve knowledge sharing in the business. He wanted to improve data governance and introduce a better structure around file organisation to ensure shared files would be stored in the right place and accessible to the right people. Matt knew he wanted to work with a trusted partner who could carry out the technical work required, allowing him to focus on Change Management, keeping the business informed, and ensuring there were little to no disruptions or concerns felt by end-users.

“We knew that [we wanted to move disparate file data] to Shared Drives and we knew that we wanted to stay with Google products because we are so immersed in Google Workspace - picking another content management system wasn’t an option for us. Netpremacy were a trusted partner who worked with us previously, and they confirmed that Shared Drives was the way forward.” - Matt Smith, Group Lead: Knowledge, Learning and Development, The Behaviour Insights Team (BIT)

After working with Netpremacy to run analysis scans of their data within their Workspace environment, BIT decided to do a full file restructure to move appropriate data from My Drive to Shared Drives. They had nearly 4TB of data across Google Drive and Shared Drive, so the project needed careful planning and execution to ensure there was no loss of data or incorrect access given to employees.

Netpremacy supplied the technical expertise and engineering time to migrate data from the legacy structure into the newly designed Shared Drives structures. BIT focused on supporting its end-users with Change Management.

“The partnership [with Netpremacy] was really strong, and the attention from Netpremacy was really effective. It was important to me that there was no impact on the end-users. Most people in the business, when the migration happened, didn’t experience much change. Working with Netpremacy meant we had technical support on stand-by, so when we had issues come up, we had someone available to troubleshoot any problems.” - Matt Smith, Group Lead: Knowledge, Learning and Development, The Behaviour Insights Team (BIT)

The project had minimal impact on BIT’s end users and the migrations were a smooth transition, resulting in the end users not experiencing any difficulties and carrying on as usual. Acting as an extension of the BIT Technical team, Netpremacy worked collaboratively to ensure all parties were updated via daily stand-ups offering immediate solutions to any questions or concerns, meaning that BIT had tech support on standby.

Matt could focus entirely on individual teams, so if end-users did have any questions, he could tend to them quickly and set up business-wide best practices as the migrations happened in the background.

As a result of the file reorganisation, BIT were able to:

Implement best practices with a better knowledge-sharing structure. Managers of Shared Drives are now using them correctly, which allows proper use of permissions to be driven by groups and not individuals, meaning if anyone were to leave, access to shared data would remain the same.

Enhance file security across the organisation. Now, files are stored in the appropriate folder structures with proper permissions, reducing the risk of potential data loss.

Improve IT resource efficiency. IT teams have time to spend on other projects without worrying about disparate file data or people storing data incorrectly.

Optimise collaborative working. It is now much easier to search for content. Previously, BIT used the LumApps platform to store certain documents. They now utilise Shared Drives using Google Labels, and these are managed properly so people can collaborate much more easily.

Needing to do a file restructure is not an uncommon problem in businesses. Often, the discovery work involved can put organisations off by the amount of work involved and not knowing how to unpick their disparate data, but the benefits greatly outweigh the work involved. In fact, BIT is now looking at the same piece of work for their sister organisation, proving just how important it is to govern your business data properly and to future-proof the knowledge-sharing process and culture.

When you work with a trusted partner like Netpremacy, who has the experience and existing methodologies to deliver these projects time after time and handle all the technical work involved, the process for the customer is simplified.