Forterro is gradually expanding its network of companies around the world, and the business model adopted necessitates the rapid adaptation of acquired entities to the standards of the Group’s IT environment. The Microsoft 365 migration is the responsibility of Senetic, which as a global Microsoft partner is able to provide full project support from analysis to migration. To date, 8 companies of the company from 5 countries have been migrated. These numbers are still growing!
One of the companies included in Forterro, a global ERP provider, is BPSC, a Polish IT company that designs and implements ERP solutions to support business management. It is one of the largest providers of MRP II / ERP class systems in Poland. The flagship product of BPSC is an integrated IT system – Impuls EVO, designed for large and medium-sized production companies. In February 2017, following the acquisition of a majority stake in the company, it was incorporated into the Forterro Group. The group has been expanding globally for years, acquiring companies in different geographic latitudes. Such a business model entails the need for continuous, seamless integration of IT environments, especially within cloud solutions. It is to BPSC’s Microsoft 365 environment, that all of Forterro’s global resources are migrated. – The biggest challenges enforced by Forterro Group’s business strategy are related to the migration and consolidation of IT tools, which we need to centralize in a way that does not disrupt business operations. – says Jacek Wielgus, Director of IT User Support at Forterro – I am referring to both software, Cloud systems, hardware and, above all, IT processes, which require implementation in group standards and quick adaptation by newly acquired companies. – Jacek Wielgus adds.
Global migration
Senetic’s engineering team has been helping Forterro’s digital transformation and migrations of its portfolio companies around the world for four years. Senetic has so far supported the project in Poland, Germany, France, Switzerland, the US, and Sweden, among others. The cooperation between the companies began with the sale of licenses, but it soon became clear that the needs were much greater. – The global nature of our organization allows us to participate in projects on a global scale, not only because of our high engineering competence, but also through our knowledge of these markets, or the lack of language barriers, as we have local employees in each of these countries. – stresses Zsolt Potor, Microsoft Director at Senetic. We have employees with several years of experience with Microsoft, so our customers can be sure that we choose the best solutions, not only from the point of view of cost and security, but above all in terms of the needs of end users – adds Zsolt Potor.
On Senetic’s side are all design work, preparation of documentation and auditing of a company’s IT environment (Cloud and On-premise). The process begins each time with an audit that indicates the scope of work needed to be done and the individual challenges, as each new company coming into the group has its own environment subject to migration. Senetic carries out the migration process of individual elements of Microsoft and third-party resources: mail, data, video and other infrastructure components – local and online. It also prepares integration with third-party applications. – The audits showed that the environments of individual companies were very different, both cloud and onpremise. – says Tomasz Stojek, Technical Services Director at Senetic. – When performing mail migrations, it turned out that mail was in different locations and supported by different tools, as were directory services. Data migrations required collecting data from different environments: one drive, share point, or third-party applications. In order to have as little impact as possible on the company’s daily operations, we carry out the migrations on weekends, and the whole process usually takes us 4. to 5. weeks. – Tomasz Stojek tells us. The entire project was based on a large number of distributed topics and a wide range of directory services that had to be consolidated into one.
Process still active
The migration process is continuous and active throughout the project, with resources expanding as the group grows. Thanks to the support of a company like Senetic, Forterro’s entire extended structure has a unified and structured IT architecture. – We have been cooperating for several years and trust each other. – emphasizes Jacek Wielgus of Forterro Group – Senetic is flexible and responds to Forterro’s changing requirements according to current business and technological needs. It provides unique expertise by technologically supporting the internal IT team. Such synergy allows us to continuously improve IT processes both on the side of Forterro and Senetic – adds Jacek Wielgus.
Forterro Group has announced that it will continue the migration project with the support of experts from Senetic. Work is currently underway to migrate another company – this time in Sweden. By the end of the year, analyses are planned for more environments of the consolidated companies, which will go through the process of unifying the IT infrastructure and aligning it with the needs of the entire group. The project’s success is based on partnerships and the use of the Polish company’s highly specialized know-how. It is this expert knowledge and experience that allows Senetic to meet the needs of global companies such as the Forterro Group.
