Beetroot Consulting
Three suppliers in, and the migration still was not done
Beetroot Consulting had been through roughly three suppliers trying to move from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365. The environment was unstable, people could not reach what they needed, and revenue was going out of the door in unproductive hours. We treated it as an organisational recovery rather than a migration to finish.
- Sector
- Technology and organisational change consultancy, working with the public sector
- Services
- Microsoft 365, Cyber security, Managed IT support
Most migration stories are about moving data. This one is about a business that had nearly stopped working.
Beetroot Consulting is small, entirely remote, and works on technology and organisational change with public sector institutions and larger organisations. They decided to move from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365, partly to sit in the same environment as their clients and partly to build something more connected for their own team.
It went badly. By the time they reached us they had been through roughly three other suppliers, the environment was unstable, and people could not get at the things they needed to do their jobs.
Why that is worse for a small business
A large organisation absorbs a bad migration. A ten person consultancy does not. The people are the delivery capability, so unproductive hours are not an inconvenience, they are the product not being made. Client delivery slipped. The stress was considerable, and it landed on the person who was also running the business.
What we did differently
We treated it as an organisational recovery rather than a technical task to finish.
That sounds like a slogan, so here is what it meant in practice. We worked around live client commitments instead of asking a working business to stop. We helped them make decisions about licensing and configuration rather than making those decisions for them. And we kept asking whether people could actually work, which is a different question from whether the migration was complete.
Then the part most people skip
Once it was stable, the real work started.
Beetroot handle sensitive client information with a fully remote team and no internal security specialist. They had internal teams, partner teams and client teams, all needing different access to different things. Getting that wrong in either direction either exposes information or stops people collaborating.
We worked through it with them, tested configurations, and changed what did not fit. The deliberate part was teaching them to read the reporting and notifications themselves. Security is not a project that finishes; their people and working practices keep changing, and they need to be able to see where they stand without ringing us first.
Where it got to
They can work. They understand their own security position. And the thing their CEO values most is not the repair, it is what the repair made possible: the confidence to make braver decisions about what the business does next.
That is the whole argument for having one team on IT, security and software. The migration, the security work and the ongoing support were not three suppliers handing a problem between them. They were one conversation that kept going.
The challenge
- A move from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 had been attempted by roughly three suppliers before us and was still incomplete.
- The technical environment was unstable and people were losing access to the information and systems they needed to do their jobs.
- For a small consultancy that is immediate: the people are the delivery capability, so when they cannot work, the business cannot function.
- Revenue was being lost through unproductive hours, client delivery was affected, and the stress across the organisation was considerable.
- Everyone works remotely, on different patterns, with very different levels of technical confidence. There is no internal IT and no internal security specialist.
What we did
- We inherited the half-finished job: part-migrated data, previous configurations, and decisions about how the environment should work that had never been settled.
- We worked around live client commitments and patchy availability rather than asking a working business to stop.
- We helped them decide, rather than deciding for them, on licensing and configuration that suited how they actually work.
- Once stable, we moved to security: access for internal teams, partner teams and client teams, each needing something different.
- We taught them to use and read the tools instead of quietly configuring everything, so they can see where they stand without ringing us.
Results
What changed
- A working business again
- The measure was never a finished migration. It was whether people could do their jobs consistently, which they now can. Kanika Selvan describes reaching the point where she could finally exhale.
- Security they understand, not just security they have
- In her words, the difference between having controls in place and knowing how those controls actually work for the business. With sensitive client information and a fully remote team, that distinction does the work.
- Confidence to be ambitious
- The outcome she values most is not the fix. It is that the security position now lets her make braver decisions about what the business does next.
- A partner rather than a supplier
- Still working together: a roadmap, visible improvements, and the technical debt from the bad migration being worked through rather than lived with.
By the time Select Group came to us, we'd been through three other suppliers, our migration was still incomplete, and we were losing revenue because people couldn't access the systems they needed to work. Select understood that we needed more than a completed migration; we needed our business functioning again. I often say that if they hadn't come along when they did, I genuinely don't know whether Beetroot would still be here today.
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