Lallemand streamlined SharePoint sites by 70% and built a complete cloud solution with ShareGate

Enormous SharePoint migration

After almost 100 years of doing business, global agri-foods leader Lallemand was about to perform a massive digital transformation. SharePoint Administrator Amy Senécal Côté was faced with a challenging task.

“I was hired to migrate all of Lallemand’s SharePoint on-prem sites to SharePoint Online,” Amy says. “For me, SharePoint and ShareGate always go together, and I knew that it would be an essential tool to help me complete this task.”

The company began their digital transformation by moving many day-to-day functions onto Teams. The experience made them realize there was enormous value that could be unlocked by optimizing the Microsoft 365 tools, and they needed to consolidate to the cloud as soon as possible.

Amy says, “We had three SharePoint environments, the 2007, 2010, and 2016 versions. There was a lot of duplicated data and some of our users were stuck with features and functionality over a decade old.”

Lack of visibility

Amy couldn’t begin the migration until she knew exactly what she was working with.

But the full scope of the project was unknown. Lallemand’s data had been accumulating in all three environments for over 10 years, and various teams were operating on each platform.

Amy says. “Multiple migrations had been done over the years but never completed. I had no visibility on what sites could be closed, and what needed to be migrated.”

Difficulty finding documents

As she started reviewing the sites and meeting with business users to understand their needs for the migration, Amy quickly realized that a lot of them felt overwhelmed by the multitude of document storage locations that were available to them.

“We started with some documents on servers and some on the on-prem SharePoint environments. Next, we added Teams and OneDrive, and finally SharePoint Online,” she says.

Knowing that she needed to make things simpler for her colleagues, that the on-prem servers were utilizing resources that could be reallocated, and that she couldn’t afford to lose a single bite of essential data, Amy trusted ShareGate.

“For me, ShareGate was a no-brainer. I’d used it before, and knew it could handle a project like this perfectly. If they didn’t already have a license, I would have suggested it.”

- Amy Senécal Côté, SharePoint Administrator, Lallemand

Empowering reports

With the reporting features in ShareGate, Amy was able to catalog all of Lallemand’s data.

“The reports allowed me to do a site inventory and easily reach out to site owners to determine what needed to be migrated and what was no longer needed. The [SharePoint] reports showed me all the web apps, site collections, unused or empty sites, last modification dates, site owners, and more.”

Amy identified 860 open sites with content on them. After site owners helped her identify what content was no longer needed, she was able to close 475 sites in just 3 months. She now knew exactly how many sites were left to migrate, and could start planning the migration in a much more efficient manner.

“One year later, we’re halfway through the migration and have closed a total of 600 sites from our on-prem environments. Everything is much more organized,” she says.

“I love the reporting tool, and I’ll continue using it even after the migrations. It presents a simple overview of your environments, and it’s great for governance and providing easy-to-read reports to the business users.”

Streamlined migration

Not only was ShareGate able to easily manage the enormous migration, but it made it possible for Amy to restructure and optimize as she processed the sites.

“ShareGate has been my best friend all year. It’s helped me isolate problematic areas so we can do a conscious migration, rebuilding from scratch and restructuring to make everything streamlined.”

Amy says she relies on ShareGate to make sure that everything is migrated correctly.

“Migrations can be challenging because sometimes data doesn’t follow properly, or it appears differently in the new environment and can be difficult to track. That isn’t a worry when working with ShareGate. We get really clear migration reports so we’re always confident that the process was a success,” she says.

“ShareGate is a no-code solution. You don’t need to write scripts or use PowerShell, so it’s a huge time saver.”

Game-changing support

Amy says, “Personally, I feel the biggest value of ShareGate on top of the tool itself is the support that they offer. I know I can trust their Resource Center and Ask the Expert sessions to give me exactly the information I need to complete tasks correctly and to use the tools efficiently.”

She created her migration plan using the learning resources on ShareGate’s website, knowing the advice would help her get the job done. She’s also connected with their support team at crucial moments in the process.

“When I first started at Lallemand, because of the multiple SharePoint environments, accounts, and working from a virtual machine, I had trouble connecting and would get multiple errors using the tool. ShareGate support not only helped me configure it properly, but also explained the logic behind it all, allowing me to feel more confident and autonomous.”

Amy also reached out to support when it was time to migrate especially large sections of data.

She says, “The process was a little bit different, but support showed me how to use the restructured environment to promote sub-sites into the core site.”

“When you open a ticket with their support team, you get someone extremely knowledgeable on all of Microsoft 365. They explain everything clearly and you get thorough follow-ups. Knowing I can trust their support is a huge added value to the product itself.”

Microsoft 365 unleashed

Moving to SharePoint Online meant redefining what goes on SharePoint and what goes on Teams. This clarification has made Lallemand’s content system much more sensical for their users, and helped set a clear direction for the migration of the on-prem content.

“Migrating to the cloud has also allowed us to do a bunch of optimization and workflow automation with the other tools of Microsoft 365. We’re now offering a more complete solution to our users.”

The best part: SharePoint Online gives all of Lallemand’s users access to Microsoft 365, which means no one has to struggle with SharePoint 2010’s outdated features anymore.

“We’re proud to offer our employees a fully modern environment,” Amy says.

Teams integrated

A benefit that surprised Amy was the ability to migrate some of the on-prem data onto Teams. This required a bit of restructuring of the Teams content, which the tool handled with ease. “The fact that ShareGate could support that was a huge benefit to me,” says Amy.

“ShareGate Permissions Matrix Reports are so clear and easy to understand, they help me communicate with site owners so they can clean up unused sites and permissions, keeping the new environment clean.”