What Are the Technical and Process Assessments?

There are two tasks we undertake with every new client at Regroove: a technical assessment, and a process assessment.

Regroove helps businesses use technology to improve their business processes. To be effective in this role, we need to develop a good understanding of the client’s current technical setup and business processes.

In this blog, we’ll outline what you can expect from the technical and process assessments.

Technical Assessment

The purpose of the technical assessment is to obtain an overview of the client’s existing technical and security configurations. If you are not currently on a Microsoft 365 tenancy, this entails walking through your current system to understand how the administrator has set up the environment.

If you’re currently using a Microsoft 365 tenancy, the technical assessment involves viewing how policies and settings are configured in the Admin Centers. These insights help Regroove understand if best practices have been implemented in the tenancy. Every choice has an impact on how people in your organization use SharePoint and Microsoft to work, and also affects the architectural decisions we recommend when crafting solutions in SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams.

The assessment also assists us in confirming essential security and compliance requirements are in place before we begin work within your tenancy. The settings we monitor include:

• Audit Logging
  Audit logging in Microsoft 365 allows you to track and manage end user and administrator actions throughout your tenancy.
  
• Retention Policies
  Retention policies are used to manage data and to determine whether to retain or delete content based on your organization’s required compliance.
  
• Licensing
  Microsoft 365 has several different licensing options. Depending on the requirements of your organization, it may be recommended to modify your licensing for some or all your users to make use of additional security features and other functionality.
  
• Global Admins
  The number of Global Admins in your tenancy should be limited and should be reviewed on a regular basis.
  
• Group Creation
  By default, all users can create Microsoft 365 groups. We recommend locking down who can create groups – and by extension, Microsoft Teams – to maintain a level of governance over your Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams environment.
  
• Verified Domains
  Microsoft 365 allows you to create and add custom domains to your verified list.
  
• Secure and Compliance Scores
  The Microsoft security and compliance scores compare your security and compliance set up to other organizations of the same size and industry. It also provides you with steps you can take to improve your score.
  
• Spam, Malware, Phishing, Safe Links and Email Security
  Microsoft sets spam, malware, phishing, safe links, and other email security defaults when your tenancy is created.
  
• Data Location
  Your data location settings refer to the data centre where Microsoft will automatically store your information and data in the cloud.
  
• Company Branding
  Company branding on Microsoft 365 login screens and throughout the application is a simple and important way to prevent internal data leaks.
  
• Endpoint Manager
  Endpoint Manager assists in securing organization-owned and personal devices that access your data and helps to stop attacks at the device level by ensuring only properly authorized devices can access your company information.
  
• Access and Sharing
  Access and sharing settings assist with sharing documents both internally and externally to guests of your tenancy, or email addresses outside of your domain.
  
• Multi-Factor Authentication
  Implementing multi-factor authentication for all your users blocks 99.9% of all incoming attacks.
  
• SharePoint Site Creation
  You can lock down which users can create SharePoint sites. We recommend locking down who can create sites to maintain a level of governance over your Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams environment.
  
• Device Information
  Confirmation of how many devices are registered to your tenancy and their version information.
  
• Network Connectivity
  The Microsoft 365 connectivity test measures the connectivity between the device and the internet, and from there to Microsoft’s network. Insights from this test help develop an understanding of connectivity problems for office or home office locations.

Process Assessment

Our process assessment is less of a prescribed process, as it depends greatly on your organization’s unique way of working. Typically, this session is conducted with a Regroove consultant in an informal setting where we can hold a discussion about your company’s business processes.

Specifically, we’ll focus on:

• Legacy line of business software 
• Desktop applications, including Office applications, in use
• Applications for virtual meetings, calling, and chat
• Current file locations

We’ll ask questions like:

• Walk me through your typical workday – what kind of files are you using most? What are you normally doing with these files?
• What do you do when you save a new version of your file? Do you use version history or history comments?
• How do you collaborate on files with people on your team?
• How do you collaborate on files with people outside of your organization?
• Do you store files that are an abnormal file type (not Word, PDF, Excel, etc.)? For example, large video or image files or software specific files?
• Do you have any system for tagging your files?
• And more!

These questions lead to further discussion that build understanding about what your team does, how they do it, and how Regroove can help to improve these processes.

Conclusion

Are you interested in improving your business processes with cloud technology? Regroove can help! We’ll start with a technical assessment and process assessment that helps us gain an understanding of your organization. Next, we’ll help you modify or implement cloud technology to improve efficiency and productivity at your organization. Get in touch with us at regroove.ca to get started!