Case study: McAllister Olivarius migrates from iManage to Proventeq
McAllister Olivarius is an international law firm with special expertise in bringing discrimination claims in the United States, England and Wales. They also have a thriving practice in corporate law, conducting transactions and providing advice for companies on both sides of the Atlantic.
“Working with Proventeq allowed us to figure out all of the different mechanics of how to migrate and restructure our data. This allowed us to have a clean break and start working immediately in the new system.” – Honza Červenka, Internal Project Lead
Case Study Overview
As is common amongst law firms, McAllister Olivarius were operating on an iManage Worksite system. The limitation of managing content from four separate divisions and entities within the organisation iManage resulted in the need for a more structured and inclusive online environment.
To address this situation, Microsoft’s SharePoint Online product was chosen to provide a complete and extensible Content Services component for the practice.
To enable this quickly and smoothly, McAllister Olivarius chose Proventeq’s Migration Accelerator software and an extensive migration service program to provide a timely, end-to-end solution.
The Complexities Of Migrating From Imanage Worksite To Sharepoint Online
- The Creation of a new ‘tree-like’ hierarchy file structure required flattening a large number of nested folders and then mapping these to the new system. Each legal matter required a standardised folder structure and this migration project brought an opportunity to cleanse folders in existing matters and make them compliant with the new structure. With three sister organisations, files were located in the same flat system that required a segregated configuration where each organisation had their own workspace.
- More than 500,000 files required accurate migration from iManage. This included ensuring all the important case assets retained their relationships and integrity.
Solving McAllister Olivarius’ Unique Challenges
Proventeq worked with McAllister Olivarius to meet these unique challenges:
- Thousands of Matter (i.e workspaces) in iManage were migrated to their individual sites that were especially designed to facilitate improved and collaborative ways of working for the law firm.
- To minimise the impact to the busy law practice both in the UK and internationally, the final migration had to take place over a 48-hour period. This was successfully executed and delivered.
- A review of the existing information architecture was needed to determine necessary mapping and transformation rules based on the metadata required for migration.
- An audit trail and metadata reports were required for the entire migration to ensure all the items scoped for the migration had been moved across correctly and could be admissible in court.
Our Five Stage Migration Solution
Proventeq’s migration experts worked closely with McAllister Olivarius to design and implement a five-step migration plan that enabled a smooth transition to their new SharePoint Online environment.
Discovery & Analysis
After meeting with the client’s team to understand their particular migration requirements, a full discovery and analysis of their content was performed to identify inconsistencies and potential issues before the migration started.
Information Architecture Optimisation
The existing information architecture was optimised to classify content in ways that met the demands of accessibility and navigation within the SharePoint architecture for all four separate McAllister Olivarius entities.
Migration Design & Configuration
The client had a complex information and records structure consisting of nested folders that required flattening so that the new hierarchical structure could be incorporated into the target SharePoint environment.
Pilot Migration
A pilot migration was conducted for the content to be fully mapped prior to live migration; keeping their firm operational on their existing ECM system prior to the final go-live to SharePoint.
Incremental Live Migration
Proventeq migrated all 500,000 files and numerous user IDs over a 48-hour period. Integral item audits took place during the process to ensure that any errors were instantly noticed and rectified, and each item was migrated safely.
The Results
Data consistency and reliability
As McAllister Olivarius had a high number of legally sensitive files to be migrated, frequent item-level audits were carried out on asset integrity and to preserve important case files. This ensured that McAllister Olivarius maintained the flawless degree of data consistency required and meet the challenges of internal governance and regulatory control.
Practical content structure
By professionally tailoring a new structuring system that matched the brief, Proventeq enabled McAllister Olivarius to effectively separate content from each of the four entities, which make up the organisation. Additionally, each corporation was disconnected and remapped into its own digital landscape.
Minimal impact to business
Migration Accelerator’s trial function created a detailed map for the content and was therefore able to be completed to an extremely strict timescale. This ensured that both the migration process itself, and the switchover between platforms, did not impact the client’s business negatively.
