It’s increasingly vital that teams in every organization maximize their efficiency to match the standards of a world where every second counts. The officers at the Richland, Washington Police Department understood this criteria and decided that to properly protect and serve the people of Richland, they needed to upgrade to Office 365. Integrating into the cloud, Richland police hoped to keep their officers more visible out on the field, instead of keeping them cooped up in the station.
While they were sure about their decision to upgrade, the Richland Police Department faced a challenge: it was important to them that they have the system ready to go before their next budget cycle began, and they lacked a dedicated IT department to focus on deploying Office 365 as quickly as possible. In order to tackle this, they turned to Microsoft FastTrack – Microsoft’s customer support group dedicated to ensuring fast, reliable transitions into the cloud. FastTrack helped the Richland officers stay organized, and worked with them to make sure that their aggressive transition plan could be seen through.
Tony Striefel, Professional Standards and Technology Division at the Richland Police Department, commented on this transition as a guest writer at the Office blog, telling the story of how FastTrack cut down significantly on the time and resources necessary to upgrade to Office 365. “If we hadn’t used FastTrack,” Striefel noted, “we would have needed to do well over 12 months of research before we could have even begun the actual migration. With FastTrack, we saved at least nine months of valuable time because we could take on the project but keep a flatter learning curve.”
Striefel ended the post by noting that the success of the project was due in no small part to the resources available at FastTrack’s website, including training videos and documentation. If Richland’s success with FastTrack is anything to go by, then it seems like this service should be the go-to for anyone who intends to make the move into the cloud any time soon.
Further reading: FastTrack, Office 365
