About

Our Story

We started Business Cloud Integration at a time when the contracting market was booming. We simply wanted to provide a better experience for SharePoint projects, and the SharePoint lifecycle, by maintaining long lasting relationships, rather than companies working through 3 to 4 contractors until the project was dragged across the line. We started with a highly skilled SharePoint team, each with different skills sets, who together were delivering projects on time, on budget and of real business value.

The landscape has changed so significantly and the technology too; our values are still the same;

  • Deliver Value – and don’t take on projects where it wont
  • Focus on what’s needed – not what’s possible
  • Be honest – let customers know when there is a better way (like saying no but nicer)
  • Think long term – develop scalable, robust and reliable solutions

From the very first discussion, be that ‘what is SharePoint’ to ‘how do we get it right this time’, we guide, plan, design, deliver, train and support. We founded the company to provide the true end-to-end consultancy model, ensuring SharePoint projects, a technology we love, are delivered and adopted well.

We select our team carefully, and only hire passionate people who are dedicated continuous learners. This is particularly important due to the speed and cadence with which Microsoft releases new tools and features. Everyone here is committed to staying up to date with the latest tools, trends, and updates. We keep an eye on future developments to ensure that we are delivering stable, scalable, and extensible solutions every time.

Our Founder

Sharon Sumner, Business Cloud Integration, SharePoint and Office 365 Specialists

Sharon Sumner

Founder, Business Applications MVP

Our Approach

Planning & Guidance

Our relationship should be a partnership. Exploring together what you are looking to achieve with SharePoint and Office 365, helping you to identify the right questions to ask, and understanding the “why” behind your requirements.

Based on this, we provide recommendations for which tools to use, when, and in what order based on your requirements, seeking to maximise the value you get from each tool.

Our Discovery and Analysis phase is a high quality, in depth engagement with your business. We look to understand the impact your chosen productivity tools will have across your entire organisation, in the context of your big picture. This helps you to plan for and achieve your goals for SharePoint in a stable and scalable way.

This engagement involves the analysis and informed consideration of the following as standard, but will always be tailored to your business:
  • A MoSCoW analysis clearly defining your requirements
  • Documentation of your existing state
  • A target end state statement
  • Introduction to considerations for planning:
  • Information architecture in SharePoint
  • Permissions and access rights in SharePoint
  • Configuration, development, or customisation requirements
  • Operational impact
  • Velocity, variety, and volume of data
  • Governance and control

Design

Information Architecture

A technical engagement with an architect will deliver the diagrams, sitemaps, permission trees, spreadsheets and drawings that will provide everything you need for the foundations and structure of your SharePoint platform. This is based on the output of Discovery and Analysis. Your Information architecture includes:

  • High level stakeholder requirements
  • Data classification
  • Clearly defined governance model
  • SharePoint technical audit
  • Migration strategy
  • Migration and adoption documentation
  • Administration

Together, we will engage with the business to provide clarity around who will have rights and responsibilities for managing your SharePoint or Office 365 environment.

This includes consideration of who will have the authority to create groups, teams, and project sites, and training needs analysis to ensure that your users are empowered to manage their platform confidently and securely.

In collaboration with IT, we will look at where permissions are administered from, and provide guidance on how to avoid permissions sprawl and maintain appropriate levels of control over the platform.

Templating and Automation

We aim to create templates and workflows to make features reusable, optimised, and self-service.

During the discovery and analysis phase we will have identified processes and functions that are suitable candidates for templating or automation.

Examples include document management, workflows, reporting, HR onboarding and so on. Wherever possible, we look to minimize duplication of effort (for both you and us) by leveraging templates and automation.

Build & Deploy

Development and deployment needs careful planning and consideration.

To ensure we deliver in the right way, we follow a few simple guidelines:

  • Build the solution in a development environment
  • Properly test and document the solution
  • Review the build before deployment into your environment
  • Optimise, taking over the best of the solution and leaving behind what can be left
  • Always adhere to best practice
  • Function first, the pretty stuff can always follow

SharePoint & Office 365 Training

Technology is nothing without adoption.

We deliver engaging and informative instructor-led, classroom-based, or virtual SharePoint & Office 365 training sessions, including:

  • 1-1 VIP training
  • Power/Super User
  • Small groups
  • Seminars for large groups.

Our training is always tailored to the culture of your organisation, and the specific impact the new technology will have on your business.

More info

Managed Services

Whether you need a partner to support your internal IT team through escalation, or direct support to end-users, we offer a range of services to suit.
  • Express – A simple portal-driven support service
  • Standard – Phone and portal support regular service reviews and reporting
  • Premium – Phone and portal support with proactive reviews of the environment and services, customised reports and a monthly service review

We are dedicated to supporting SharePoint and the wider Office 365 productivity toolset

More info

Combining great communication style with deep SharePoint technological expertise and business awareness, the team can be given some high level objectives and will do whatever is needed to ensure delivery. Thoroughly trustworthy and a great asset on any programme, I am always pleased to have them as part of my team

Peter Barnes, CTOReed Exhibitions