LifeArc

Centralizing, Improve Accessibility, & Gaining Business Insights with Microsoft Office 365

Client Profile

LifeArc® is a medical research charity advancing science and transforming medical research into treatments for patients. They focus on improving human health by adding value to early-stage scientific research. They have a 25-year legacy of helping scientists and organizations advance their research for patient care, including cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease.

The purpose of the year-long migration and Office 365 adoption project was to migrate away from the Documentum ECM system and take advantage of the functionality, mobility, and enhanced security offered by M365 services like SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and Teams. This would enable LifeArc to collaborate with their scientific and charitable partners whilst protecting the intellectual property in their research.

Moving to Office 365 was a key component of our ongoing plan to centralize and improve accessibility and gain more meaningful insights from our business and scientific data. Working closely with Proventeq as our specialist technical partner, we were able to migrate from our legacy content management platform into Oﬃce 365 with conﬁdence.

Migrating from Documentum was not an easy process due to issues around proprietary formats and labels from the original locations. This included LifeArc’s Intellectual Property Management Systems being tightly integrated with assets stored in Documentum, which required updating for migration. The business process relied on external systems that has a tight integration with documents stored within Documentum.

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LOCATION

UK

SECTOR

Research

SOURCE

Documentum

DESTINATION

SharePoint Online, OneDrive & Teams

LifeArc's Unique Challenges

Restrictions and prerequisites around browser plugins and software.
The need to restructure the file systems and processes.
Issues around proprietary formats and labels from the original locations.
The business process relied on external systems that has a tight integration with documents stored within Documentum.

Adopting & Deploying A Holistic Office 365 Migration Strategy

Business strategy

A clear and effective communications and training plan and necessary governance was set up within Office 365 to ensure that it was successfully adopted and implemented across the business.

Migration from multiple sources

All enterprise content was migrated from cabinets in the Documentum system to specially provisioned department sites on SharePoint Online. All user content was migrated to OneDrive locations.

Applying strict security standards

Content was made secure by translating security policies (in adherence with strict regulatory requirements for the Finance and HR depts) from Documentum to SharePoint.

Auto-tagging contents

A user-friendly interface was provided for all users to work with which included the ability to co-author documents and leverage integrated solutions to auto-tag content, especially for the Legal department.

Custom SPFx

A dedicated area for the Projects team to work on active and closed projects was created along with custom SPFx components to facilitate better working with projects. Deploying Microsoft Teams for these projects provided users the platform for better project collaboration.

Data security

To ensure data integrity, data corruption in the source was resolved using Proventeq Migration Accelerator and third-party systems integrating to Documentum (such as the Intellectual Property management platform) were updated.

The Results

Improved collaboration

Taking advantage of collaborative tools in SharePoint and Teams, as well as the Office 365 suite, Lifearc could create a virtual workplace where teams can meet, collaborate, complete tasks and work on documents centrally.

Significant cost savings

By transitioning to SharePoint Online, LifeArc has been able to make significant (up to 80%) cost savings by reducing licensing, infrastructure, and support costs.

Powerful data loss prevention

Easier but more powerful administration and management coupled with provisions for Data Loss Prevention to protect LifeArc’s academic research.

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As part of a holistic O365 adoption strategy, proper project management plans were created, agreed upon and executed from both sides. Adherence to a strict migration timeline was mandatory to prevent additional costs due to renewal costs of Documentum license and support.

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