We’ve been talking so much about AI and SaaS recently, other industries that aren’t “fully digital” and still deal with legacy technology and manual processes seem to have been forgotten about.

In these sectors, we’re looking at a whole set of different issues: no updates available for the software that they’re using, and once it’s discontinued, there’s no direct replacement. Apart from that, a lack of integration capability with other, more modern solutions can be a major challenge. That leaves you with two issues: a) vulnerabilities and b) productivity limitations.

Taking the standard productivity suite: Microsoft 365 – you would have thought it may be straightforward to use for any company. While yes, it does work for most businesses, there are certain instances where it needs special consideration as to how you can better leverage it. Like, how does the customer work and what are the limitations and roadblocks – and how do we overcome them?

Migration ≠ Moving

Here’s why that is: it’s not just “moving” to Microsoft 365. It’s very much about the ancillary considerations that need to fit around it, and identity is the first of them: do you create cloud-only accounts in Entra ID, or keep on-premises Active Directory as the source of truth and sync it up with Entra Connect (or the lighter-weight Cloud Sync)? That one decision pulls in password hash sync versus pass-through authentication, UPN and domain suffix clean-up, and how MFA and Conditional Access get rolled out. Then the data: mailboxes and shared mailboxes moving across in a cutover or hybrid Exchange migration, and years of file and shared-drive content into SharePoint and OneDrive – where NTFS permissions have to be remapped and folder structures that grew organically rarely survive a lift-and-shift – and plenty of line-of-business or legacy apps still expect an unauthenticated SMTP relay or basic authentication, both of which Microsoft has now retired or locked down, so you’re looking at an authenticated relay or an app registration with OAuth, assuming the vendor supports it at all. Then there’s the shift from capital expenditure to a per-user operational subscription, which changes budgeting as much as it changes technology – and user training has to be funded alongside it. And lastly – which, granted, some may take as obvious: a fast, reliable internet connection, plus a plan for what happens when it drops. Staff working out of SharePoint and Teams all day feel an outage far more acutely than they did with a server in the cupboard. It’s in fact not the standard everywhere, especially if a business is based in the countryside rather than a city centre.

And sometimes it just isn’t the right fit, but you’ll still need to find ways to make the legacy technology secure – and if that fails, we’re now more spoilt for choice than ever when it comes to technology, so it’s about exploring alternatives. What I mean to say is: just because Microsoft 365 is standard, doesn’t mean I should push it on a customer to serve my sales agenda.

What a Customer Could Do With Their Budget Instead

We had a customer case recently where it all boiled down to the question: if they had to spend between £8-12k on licensing and professional services for Microsoft 365, what could they themselves spend the money on? What benefits would they want to see and what would they be getting that they currently don’t have?

To put it into perspective from our side: If there wasn’t anything that would improve the way they’re working or streamline operations, they’re just maintaining security. So as part of our roundtable, we spoke at length about their challenges, what some of the ways forward are with them, and how they could better use technology to overcome them. Rather than spending thousands of pounds, it’s actually just looking at the crossover between operational and technical challenges in the application they use specifically – and how we can give them a better outcome and a better solution.

Establishing Requirements Before Technology Decisions

To summarise: what we at Innovate Ltd do – and really any IT services provider serious about their job – is actually establish their business needs, which involves less talking and more listening. Next step is figuring out how we can ensure they’re maximising their investment/available budget. Technology decisions are secondary – and even then, it’s about exploring all the possible alternatives.

Long story short: we need to get away from the “because it works for company A, it will work for company B” and look more at individual use cases, even if it takes longer and requires more brainpower. Sometimes that means adapting Microsoft 365, other times a different solution will work better.

In the end, what we’re after is customer satisfaction. I personally don’t see a point in selling something I know for a fact wouldn’t work for our client – commission or not, although I understand that may be a matter of personal integrity.

But I do have to ask: since dissatisfied customers are a guarantee to not getting any further business - why is this a common approach?