How a national staffing company transitioned to an upgraded Cloud-based intranet system so they could better support the needs of both their internal teams and the clients they serve. Background Founded in 1978, PrideStaff’s mission statement has always been about helping people find meaningful new jobs and careers and creating world-class experiences for their clients. Since its inception, PrideStaff has helped companies across the nation reach their business goals as well as hundreds of thousands of people find work and received industry-wide recognition, as well as won countless awards. With over 80+ active offices, PrideStaff is recognized as one of the leading staffing agencies in North America. Struggling with outdated intranet services Despite the size of their company, PrideStaff’s IT team is small but mighty. Originally, their intranet set up used Windows Server 2012, but as their organization (and their content) continued to grow, their outdated system started causing parts of their intranet to fail. To get their intranet back to where it needed to be (in function, as well as content relevance, freshness, and quality), PrideStaff’s team knew they needed to sunset Windows Server 2012 and migrate to a newer intranet–one with the technical architecture to support their needs. Due to the sensitive nature of their client information, PrideStaff needed to be extremely mindful of any changes to data storage or content access, which could lead to data privacy breaches. With the personal and financial information that they’re privy to, between their clients and the organizations they partner with, they needed to be sure that their new system would offer better security, privacy, and authentication features than their outdated model. This realization led to internal conversations about migrating from the ThoughtFarmer on-premise software to ThoughtFarmer Cloud software. The transition would give them the freedom to leverage better built-in security, access permissions, content auditing, and maintenance features, at a reasonable cost. Using migration to create momentum Understanding that migration to ThoughtFarmer Cloud was a necessary first step towards improving their intranet, the PrideStaff team turned to ThoughtFarmer to lead the planning and execution of the transition. PrideStaff was working with limited resources, as well as a small IT team that needed to make all their preparations for the migration over the course of just 5 weeks. Adding to the complexity, PrideStaff’s existing platform required multiple stages of upgrades in order to transition their existing content to the most modern ThoughtFarmer Cloud platform. Thankfully, they had ThoughtFarmer’s support team in their corner to assist with the migration. “At one point, we weren’t sure if it was possible, but ThoughtFarmer made it happen. It took some extra development on their end, but they made it all work. It was really awesome not to have to split migration into two phases. They did it all for us.” said Samuel Pano, Junior Project Manager at PrideStaff. With responsive, expert support from the ThoughtFarmer team, PrideStaff was able to get everything ready for the transition on time and with minimal internal stressors. They were also able to integrate two-factor authentication for users, which supported their focus on improving security features. Best of all, while prepping for their content migration, the PrideStaff team was able to build momentum around revisiting and improving some of their intranet content and features. This meant their new intranet would have better navigation, improved search functionality, and greater knowledge management. Coupled with fresh content, as well as easier content reviews and updates, PrideStaff’s new ThoughtFarmer Cloud intranet was set up for success. Seamless migration for a frictionless transition As planned, PrideStaff’s migration to ThoughtFarmer Cloud went smoothly. The ThoughtFarmer team was there to quickly address any issue, large or small, during the transition; so, even when an obstacle did arise, they were quick to find a solution. Due to resource and manpower constraints, PrideStaff effectively leveraged the ThoughtFarmer team to help them successfully achieve their migration goals. ThoughtFarmer took charge of managing the infrastructure, coordinating release dates, and handling the necessary back-end preparations. “From my perspective, what was impressive was how fast things went, and how hands-off it was for my team,” said Horst Fahr, Vice-President of IT for PrideStaff. “We almost didn’t have enough time to update our documentation and training, it was so fast. So, it was a very good experience.” With all the assistance they received, PrideStaff’s team was thrilled with the migration process. When it came time to transition, they felt fully prepared to make the change and believe that ThoughtFarmer was vital in the successful re-launch of their new cloud-based intranet. Planning ahead to make work easier Now that their new intranet is up and running, PrideStaff’s team is looking ahead for ways that they can continue to improve their internal processes and knowledge management. Some features that PrideStaff plans to leverage to manage stale content are content audits, the content review tool, and the content dating features in the latest version of ThoughtFarmer, which weren’t available to them in the on-premise version. These features allow them to put processes in place to ensure fresh and relevant content by scheduling regular content reviews and setting expiration dates on specific pieces of content. This way, outdated pieces of content are automatically removed from the intranet when desired; rather than cluttering the intranet. The PrideStaff team is also using their intranet’s enhanced navigation, search, and knowledge management features to improve content access for both their on-site and remote team members. With PrideStaff being a franchise-based organization, these improvements are providing crucial support for their various locations, remote teams, and growth strategies. Ready to migrate your intranet to ThoughtFarmer Cloud so you can achieve the same levels of success? Contact ThoughtFarmer to schedule a chat.