Spearheading the assessment to move to MEC for ensuring Information Protection of a semiconductor company

The Challenge

The customer sought to protect some of its most sensitive information by implementing Sensitive Information Protection (SIP) labeling on its documents using Microsoft Information Protection. Netwoven was chosen to spearhead the SIP project. While testing the SIP labeling and functionality, they found that when using SIP labels, some of the co-authoring functionality with Office documents did not work as expected.

Netwoven reached out to Microsoft, and the co-authoring fix was planned to be released in the Microsoft 365 Apps Semi-Annual Channel (SAC) release in approximately one year and would be available in the Monthly Enterprise Channel (MEC) release in the next six months. At that time, the company was updating its Microsoft 365 Apps annually using SAC. They decided to investigate moving to the MEC monthly update cadence to reduce the risk of not protecting its sensitive information on time, and to meet the SIP global rollout deadline they committed to.

The Solution

Netwoven was chosen to spearhead the assessment to move to MEC due to its expertise in Microsoft technologies. Netwoven’s task was to perform a comprehensive analysis of the company’s challenges of moving to MEC by analyzing and providing guidance on the following:

• Critical third-party applications with Office integrations
• All applications with Office integrations that would need monthly testing
• Current IT infrastructure and preparedness
• Backup and rollback solutions
• Monthly testing plan and process
• Resources needed
• Budget requirements and total cost
• Locating reference customers who have moved from SAC to MEC

Netwoven’s analysis and guidance found that the company was well prepared to update to MEC and could benefit in other ways from the update. They recommended the move to MEC.

Following Netwoven’s recommendation, the company’s stakeholders decided to move forward with the move to MEC. Again, Netwoven was chosen to lead the project to move the company to monthly updates. The project had several components, including:

• Obtaining a Microsoft MEC specialist to help with the transition
• Setting up Microsoft’s Admin Center to manage deployments
• Hiring resources
• Creating deployment rings and creating Early Adopter and UAT user groups
• Creating ongoing testing plans
• Providing adoption and change management
• Preparing IT for the transition
• Preparing Help desk for continued support
• Operationalizing the move to MEC

With the initial update, the company reached its goal of rolling out to 90% of company devices, three weeks earlier than expected, and on budget. With the initial rollout, the company encountered some Office issues that were resolved quickly due to the preparedness of IT and helpdesk, and the quick support of Microsoft.

The Benefit

The company reaped substantial benefits from moving to the Monthly Enterprise Channel. In addition to clearing the way for the global rollout of SIP, other benefits were, and still are, being realized:

• Other non-SIP related co-authoring issues were fixed
• Existing Office integration issues were fixed
• Features and bug fixes are now delivered on a faster cadence
• End users now get the latest updates and productivity tools
• Security capabilities are now delivered quicker, and vulnerabilities are addressed faster
• End-users are experiencing less downtime and fewer productivity disruptions due to coordinating the upgrade with patching
• The risk of a data breach is reduced because of faster quality fixes and end-user access to security-related features
• Teamwork and innovation grow with more seamless integration across Office and other enterprise applications
• End users, help desk staff, and IT administrators are saving time by enabling a faster, more reliable, and manageable update process that increases app stability and reliability.