Project Description

The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) was undergoing a large digital transformation programme across their entire organisation. As part of this they had already rolled out Skype for Business, Outlook, OneDrive and were in the process of rolling out Windows 10.  

ACCA asked Bridgeall to assist them with the introduction and rollout of SharePoint, Teams, Power Platform and some of the wider Office 365 workloads. In addition, they were also looking to set up an operating model for delivery of changes and for this to encompass upskilling of their existing IT staff.

Founded in 1904, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants is the global professional accounting body offering the Chartered Certified Accountant qualification. The ACCA are a worldwide professional accountancy body with more than 219,000 fully qualified members and 527,000 students worldwide.

Challenges facing the ACCA

As part of their efforts to modernise business processes, the ACCA required an introduction and rollout of SharePoint, Teams, Power Platform and some of the wider Office 365 workloads to their organisation. The team were rolling out a new suite of technology and needed help to ensure adoption of the new tech. They also wanted to ensure they had the correct control framework in place and had to make sure that their data was secure in the cloud. 

In addition, they were also looking to set up an operating model for delivery of changes and for this to encompass upskilling of their existing IT staff. 

 

Working closely with the internal management team, we implemented the following solutions to help meet the ACCA’s objectives.  

Phase 1 

Governance model for SharePoint and Teams – The Governance model detailed the recommended setup of SharePoint & Teams within ACCA. It provided detail around the way SharePoint & Teams should be set up for use, how the platform should be governed and used and what policies and procedures should be in place with regards user access, naming conventions, external sharing etc. Maybe an extra point about controlling who and how you set up new Teams or SharePoint sites and when sites get shut down after not being in use. 

Secure design and principles for SharePoint and Teams – The secure design and principles documentation detailed the recommended SharePoint & Teams security stance for use within ACCA. This aligned with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) Good, Better, Best model for securing cloud services and provided existing IT and IT partners with a secure design and principles to align themselves with.  

Phase 2 

Governance model for Power Platform and Stream – The governance model was used to recommend best practice for the setup and administration of Power Platform and Stream within ACCA. It included topics such as environment creation, Data Loss Prevention policies and the setting up of a Centre for Excellence to support users within the organisation. This allowed ACCA to easily monitor all Power Apps in use within their organisation, how well used they are and what data they access. 

Operating Model – We proposed an operating model detailing how ACCA would work with Bridgeall to understand requests for SharePoint & Teams functionality from the business. The model set out how Bridgeall and ACCA would work together to receive, triage, impact assess and deliver the relevant functionality while ensuring that the platform retains its governance and security stance while delivering the needs of the organisation.  

Document Management – Retention/ Protection – We worked with the ACCA to define how best to setup retention and protection policies for use within the organisation. 

Working in partnership with Bridgeall allowed the ACCA to proceed with their digital transformation and have confidence that the necessary security, procedural and operational guardrails were in place. Implementing best practice early in the process helped to ensure a smooth transition when scaling from pilot groups to the whole organisation. Through the project the organisation were able to realise the following benefits: 

  • Better adoption of solutions
  • Full security of their data and documents 
  • Peace of mind and governance over Teams, SharePoint and Power Platform ensuring the solutions are used as intended