PZ Cussons boosts deployment speed by 60 percent thanks to Casper365 SharePoint management, ‘an absolute game-changer’

Without governance, site sprawl and abandonment run rampant

PZ Cussons is an international consumer goods business founded in 1884 that champions the wellbeing of people, families, and communities. With headquarters in Manchester, UK, its products are available in over 100 countries across Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific, and Africa. Its 4,000-plus employees are using Microsoft technologies to collaborate internally as well as to run external customer projects.

PZ Cussons began a partnership with BCI with a migration project from SharePoint on-premises to SharePoint Online, in which BCI enabled metadata movement and/or conversion to the right SharePoint sites based on a complex set of rules facilitated by BCI-created platform Casper365.

In its legacy on-prem SharePoint environment, PZ Cussons struggled with site sprawl as employees freely created redundant, unused sites without governance. This chaotic structure carried over as it migrated to SharePoint Online, jeopardizing digital workplace vision. PZ Cussons needed to introduce control and structure to prevent recurrence of sprawl as PZ Cussons moved toward cloud productivity. Lack of templates, taxonomy, and lifecycle management made site abandonment and findability issues rampant.

Casper365 increases PZ Cussons’ deployment speed by 60 percent

Using Casper365, a SharePoint provisioning solution for Office 365, BCI provided a dashboard that functioned as an app built into Microsoft Teams. Fully tailored to PZ Cussons requirements, users could now navigate carefully structured tabs to see their active projects. They could also access project templates, planners, and bespoke channels. 

Next, BCI created a set of templates serving a number of predetermined project types and methodologies. Each template had a set of fields and attributes as set by the customer. For external projects, for example, Casper365 allows the users to determine criteria for which users can access the site, drastically reducing the input needed by any internal IT team. 

Having chosen the right template in the app, users create a site request and digitally submit it for approval with the customer’s Centre of Excellence team. The CoE team at PZ Cussons can easily verify whether the new site is required, grant permission for creation or redirect the user to the correct existing site, if appropriate.

Casper365 provides measurable benefits for PZ Cussons. The onsite IT team has seen a huge reduction in workload and an increased speed of deployment which ensures that the business keeps moving. 

“The self-serve functionality provided by Casper365 for the already-robust features of SharePoint has increased deployment speed by 60 percent for PZ Cussons, which has been a significant return on the investment made,” said Sharon Sumner, CEO, Business Cloud Integration.

‘An absolute game-changer’ built on SharePoint and Teams

Business Cloud Integration is a long-standing champion for Microsoft technology, and SharePoint in particular. From real-time document collaboration and robust version control to strong security measures for data protection, Microsoft scales to support businesses as they grow. SharePoint facilitates centralized administration, offers workflow automation tools, and provides mobile accessibility for on-the-go productivity. Additionally, its powerful search capabilities and a supportive community make it a preferred choice for many businesses seeking to streamline their operations and improve team efficiency.

With all site requests at PZ Cussons being pre-approved, the business has complete autonomy over its SharePoint and Teams site creation; the dashboard even provides clear reporting for compliance purposes. As the large numbers of unnecessary sites are no longer even being created, Casper365 freed up the IT team to focus on other tasks. Team collaboration is at peak performance.

"Casper365 has been an absolute game changer for our business. The ability to request and manage our own SharePoint and Teams sites has been essential for our data lifecycle management. The team at Casper365 have been fantastic in empowering us to make the most of the platform, and their bespoke templates, including folders, channels, planner and lists, have allowed us to truly collaborate in a way that we never thought possible. We couldn't recommend them enough," said Chris Gilmartin, Head of Digital Workplace, PZ Cussons.

Casper365 is designed by the team at BCI to evolve, and grows with the requirements of the customer. BCI now additionally support PZ Cussons in their journey to develop and manage their Power Platform estate. PZ Cussons feels supported as a business with bespoke requirements, BCI can add new features and custom developments to the Casper365 platform as needs arise.