Success presents in many different ways, but in the world of IT migrations to the end user, success looks like nothing and sounds like silence.

On a Monday morning, as staff and volunteers from Vinnies Canberra/Goulburn went to work across more than 40 sites and one head office, this was the outcome OPC staff waited for with bated breath.

They had spent Friday evening, one long Saturday and one long Sunday implementing a plan many months in the making to emancipate Vinnies Canberra/Goulburn’s entire suite of IT from the greater Vinnies NSW system.

This was the moment of truth.

“We were hesitant for a long time about making this jump, but I’m so glad we did,” Vinnies Canberra/Goulburn Executive Coordinator Special Projects Dani Kerlin said.

“We left on Friday afternoon and walked in on Monday, but we found there was really little impact on us as the end users. I had staff and volunteers coming up to me and saying how smooth it all was and what a great job we had done.

“I’d love to take the credit, but so much of it comes down to a provider with exceptional communication.”

Properly measuring the success of a project takes an understanding of the scale and scope of the project.

OPC CEO Clinton Henderson said Vinnies Canberra/Goulburn’s systems were intertwined in every way with its statewide parent.

A deep dive revealed an enormous number of applications, legacy systems, processes and policies that fell within the scope.

“All the emails, all the data, the backups, the POS (point of sale) systems for all the stores – all of it was tied to Vinnies NSW,” he says.

“In a nutshell, our mission was to make them independent in anything IT-related.”

This meant giving Vinnies Canberra/Goulburn its own domain name and email system and migrating everything over to its own Microsoft 365 tenancy. Every device – from POS to laptop or desktop computer – had to be wiped from the old domain and appear on the new.

All of it had to be done with minimal disruption to operations and no downtime.

It may seem a tall order, and while there is “always a measure of risk” with a mass IT migration, Clinton said the OPC team had good reason to feel confident they could pull it off.

“What looks scary – and yes, this was complex, with many moving parts – can be entirely seamless if you work with experienced professionals,” Clinton says.

“It boiled down to meticulous planning and robust, proactive communication, with Vinnies Canberra/Goulburn staff, volunteers and executives, Vinnies NSW and third party vendors involved in the community centres, to ensure we all worked in partnership,” he says.

“We had regular meetings to present the journey to the various stakeholders so that when the day came, everyone had a full understanding of what was to happen and how it would happen. We distributed how-to guides, training materials and new login details ahead of time.

“When it came time to deliver, we had a team of people on-site and on the service desks ready to field enquiries, and hung back until we knew every single staff member and volunteer was ok.”

The sheer spectrum of demographics of those staff members and volunteers added a layer of complexity.

With a jurisdiction stretching from Eden to Lake Cargelligo, Vinnies Canberra/Goulburn has about 320 staff and over 1300 volunteers supporting more than 40 retail stores, program sites and warehouses.

“One of the main reasons OPC was successful in the tender process was their human-centric approach. That was crucial for us because our staff and volunteers range in age from late teens to their 80s and beyond, and have different skill sets,” Dani says.

“It was overwhelming, but we were very much won over by OPC. They tailored their approach and their communications in a way that had a calming effect on us.”

It wasn’t uncommon for OPC to meet multiple times a week with Vinnies staff and volunteers in the months leading up to the migration to ensure everyone was fully onboarded when D-Day arrived.

“If everything went to plan, the end user would barely notice the changes,” Clinton said.

“In theory, they’d leave the office on the Friday and walk in on the Monday, and for all intents and purposes, except for a change in email address and different security around multi-factor authentification, it was business as usual.”

According to Dani, that was precisely the outcome. She said she was glad they took the plunge.

“We know IT journeys are an ongoing thing – the landscape is forever changing to meet new challenges,” she says. “After this step, I feel we’re in a solid position to ensure our systems continue to meet the needs of our organisation and its stakeholders.”

For more information, visit OPC.

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