They say that habit is an iron shirt. But even that rusts over time. And so Raiffeisenbank decided to abandon the Lotus platform, which has been used for years but is no longer suitable. Why did they expose their 3,500 employees to a major cultural change? And how has the transition to O365 tested the rigid covid measures?
THE END OF IMMOBILITY (NOT ONLY DURING THE LOCKDOWN)
Prior to the project, bank employees could access corporate documents and information only via computers in the company network - Email and calendar on mobile was only available to a minority, remote collaboration was impossible. This state of affairs did not meet the requirements of the modern way of working.
The main goal of the migration to the Microsoft O365 platform was therefore to deliver Raiffeisenbank technologies that enable employees to collaborate and communicate online, regardless of where they work. The necessity of such a requirement was confirmed by the fact that the management of the project itself was eventually carried out remotely via Microsoft Teams due to the pandemic situation.
Cloud strategy Raiffeisen Bank International envisages that each country within the Group will gradually move to a single environment. Each country will choose its own local partner for this change. As far as the Czech Republic is concerned, ORBIT has been involved in this project:
- to be responsible for the successful completion of the entire project,
- stand in activity coordinator of all suppliers,
- migrate 3500 users to group tenant O365,
- To be done pilot testing a group of 300 ambassadors.
The transition to O365 was a necessary prerequisite for Raiffeisenbank to start acquisition activitiesso that the bank could implement its development plans.
A side, not insignificant, effect of the migration to Microsoft O365 was the decision that the company renovate the unnecessarily large central offices.
FROM BUSINESS ANALYSIS TO MIGRATION TO O365
In January 2020, it broke out. The first step was preparation of business needs analysis individual user groups. On this basis, we defined specific migration packs in terms of benefits for users.
As Raiffeisenbank is a banking institution, we also had to perform cloud compliance - an analysis of the status of all the necessary requirements for the CNB's parent body. The resulting detailed compliance document was delivered by the bank in the form of a notification to the CNB, which approved it without question in the summer.
The team worked as a whole - we did not differentiate between representatives of suppliers, customers or ORBIT. We had to change management four times before the process settled down, but it bore fruit. Moreover, we could rely on "premier support" from local Microsoft (thanks, Ondřej Štefko).
We managed the project agile approach methodwhich involved the continuous delivery of MVP (minimum viable product), i.e. a usable product with the least possible functionality.
In September 2020, the first pilot took place and subsequently sharp migration. We chose the pack (migration per pack), which we adapted to the adoption from the user's point of view. The different waves of deployment were targeted to meet user needs and the principle of easy adaptability.
A significant contribution to the smooth running of the project was testing the configuration of O365 services and onsite applications (Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Edge). For this purpose, we created a test O365 tenant and installed virtual servers using Microsoft Azure services to simulate the company's production environment in the cloud - including connection to O365 services.
Thanks to ORBIT's experience with infrastructure projects, the migration was also optimization of IT infrastructurewhich enabled a seamless transition to O365.
Results and side effects of migration to O365
All this has claimed its victim: we lost a significant part of the multi-day ORBIT team building, which hit between lockdowns, and at the same time into the hot phase of migration. We did go to the venue, but only came into contact with our merry colleagues on sporadic trips to eat or sleep. For a client, anything
However, by March 2021, we were done. The result Migration from the Lotus platform to the O365 was significant transformation of work culture at Raiffeisenbank:
- Employees can now work from home and are better able to balance work and personal life.
- The way of internal information sharing.
- The documents are subject to different levels of security (public, internal, top secret).
- Simplified access to cloud resources (formerly composed of several products, now on one platform).
- During the covid-19 pandemic. collaborate through Microsoft Teams, which resulted in financial savings on travel costs.
Thanks to the e-discovery tool, Raiffeisenbank will also find it easier to manage banking compliance. What's more: the usable area of the central offices is being renovated decreased by about 30 %.
Although the overall change brought a number of changes to Raiffeisenbank's employees, the project received a completely smooth reception. The adoption portal received 23,000 visits during the project and the helpdesk dealt with minimum problems. The thanks and appreciation from CIO of Raiffeisenbank Vladimír Matouš made it all the more pleasing.
