Customer Stories /

Ibec

Sector:
Business Representative Group

Size:
201-500

Client Since:
2017

Main Services:
Lobby

Technologies Used:
Microsoft Azure Cloud platform as well as the Microsoft 365 platform

Digital Transformation Journey

Ibec is Ireland’s largest lobby and business representative group. Their purpose is to help build a better, sustainable future by influencing, supporting, and delivering for business success. With over 230 employees, Ibec engages with key stakeholders in Ireland and internationally through their six regional offices and their Brussels office, along with an extensive international network in the UK and US.

Ibec positions are shaped by their diverse membership, which range from small to large, domestic to multinational and their 38 trade associations cover a wide range of industry sectors. Ibec members employ over 70% of the private sector workforce in Ireland.

As well as lobbying, Ibec provides a wide range of professional services and management training to members on all aspects of human resource management, occupational health and safety, employee relations and employment law.

As Ireland’s largest lobby and business representative group, to stay competitive, Ibec needed to migrate to a scalable, flexible, and secure platform to manage the ever-increasing amounts of data and data sources of its members.

The Challenge

Legacy IT solutions can affect the ability of an organisation to adapt to modern productivity, security, and privacy requirements. To modernize their business processes and applications, Ibec migrated to a scalable, flexible, and secure platform using Microsoft technologies.

To assist them with this migration process, Ibec reached out to Spanish Point’s team on a Business Value Assessment program to design and build a solution that was easy-to-use, that would address document management issues, and that would allow Ibec staff to work anywhere in a collaborative way on a system that was scalable, flexible, and had a strong security posture.

As a result, Ibec has now embraced the Microsoft Azure Cloud and Microsoft 365 platforms.  Ibec staff now have the benefit of easy access to their colleagues and members, to a vast amount of information and knowledge, on any device, from any location. This has proved invaluable in the context of Covid-19 and the requirement to work effectively remotely to support their members.

The Solution

With Spanish Point as their partners, Ibec engaged in a Business Value Assessment program that resulted in a prioritised roadmap for business solution migrations to Microsoft’s integrated Cloud-based platform.

Spanish Point’s architects and software developers designed and built a solution that gave Ibec the opportunity to take advantage of the Microsoft Azure Cloud platform as well as the Microsoft 365 platform. Ibec now leverages Azure to scale their processing capacity as they need it, including:

  • A single sign-on experience for employees.
  • The hosting of their public and members websites
  • A Disaster Recover (DR) service for several business solutions.
  • An integration platform between the core back-office ERP system and other components such as Exchange and CMS.

Spanish Point also designed a modern intranet utilising Microsoft 365 ensuring all Ibec employees remain informed and connected with a go-to point for formal, informal, and social news that is available from their desktop or mobile devices.  This intranet also houses Ibec’s knowledge hub a system envisaged to capture and retain corporate knowledge and one that houses a vast array of employment, legal, economic and policy information that has a search and discovery, and that was configured and optimised by Spanish Point to support efficient finding of documents.  The system also manages the life cycle of different types of documents by ensuring tight governance around the holding data beyond specific time periods together with appropriate access controls.

Key Benefits

Disruptive innovation

Increased flexibility and security for staff

Tight governance and compliance

Additional capacity to meet members

Secure and collaborative environment

Increased scalability and faster deployment

The Result

Ibec embarked on a Cloud transformation journey that enables them to operate in an ever-changing world. The implementation of the Azure Cloud allows them to scale their processing capacity and continue to provide excellent support and new services to their members.

Ibec has also had the opportunity to adapt to challenging times by utilising a modern Intranet that helps their users work in an easy, collaborative, and efficient way no matter where they are located. As they experienced the benefits of this digital transformation journey, Ibec are planning to expand their use of the Microsoft suite of products because they believe people, processes and technology will play a significant role in helping them accelerate their development as a professional member services organisation, grow their membership and commercial services and allow them to influence, support and deliver for business success for a better and more sustainable future.

Digital Cloud Computing, Cyber Security, Digital Data Network Pr