Successful Microsoft consultancy with ambitious plans for the future...

WorkShares are a successful Microsoft tegnology consulting practice with ambitious plans for the future. Its founders and management team are amongst some of the most senior and experienced individuals in the industry today and have been working with the Microsoft technologies since 1996.

We very much by design, retain and promote the benefits of our smaller, more agile size and the flexibility and responsiveness this allows us to be for our wider range of clients. This in turn benefits our staff as they are able to enjoy more interesting and fulfilling roles within a familiar work environment.

For the right individuals we offer a competitive package, flexible working practices and access to the latest technology, as well as being part of a team that is involved with a variety of interesting and diverse projects.

We strive to deliver best results for our clients and partners. For that reason we are always interested in new talent and if you feel you have a strong profile that can add to our existing team, do drop us an email - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with a copy of your CV and short introduction letter explaining a little about yourself and reasons for why you think it would be great to have you on board the team.

Connected Government - Join us at the Round Table Discussion on 28th January 2019 in London, UK

WorkShares has gained a great deal of experience of working with many well-known organisations across the UK, from small businesses, start-ups, to larger enterprises; all of whom have had a common need to provide collaborative solutions for their staff, suppliers or clients alike using the SharePoint platform.

This seminar will demonstrate how local government can use the Microsoft platform to enable, foster and manage the breadth of enterprise information from ad-hoc conversations to MOREQ 2010 compliant records management and everything in between.

The Responsive Organisation

Understand how local government can learn and respond rapidly through open communication, experimentation, and working as a network. This session will explore strategies to move away from inefficient business practices and adopt new ways of working using Yammer and understanding Microsoft’s strategy to use Enterprise Social as a platform.

Enabling the Workforce

Many local government organisations still run a large proportion of their business on shared network drives and public folders, which invariably leads to risks around compliance with the data protection act, expensive and time consuming FOI requests, barriers to collaboration and difficulty finding information or sharing it securely within the organisation and across agencies.

Staff are used to far more modern ways of working using free tools such as data synchronization services (Drop Box etc), online storage (Google Drive etc) and large file transfer services (WeTransfer etc) that typically lack the controls IT needs to ensure compliance and could potentially be used without any oversight. This session will demonstrate how local government can use SharePoint and Skydrive Pro to overcome these risks and enable their workforce.

Cross Organisational Collaboration

The increasing need to work in 'virtual teams' across the organisation, (and or externally) to ensure compliance pressures or stakeholder engagement is successful, is not a new demand placed on public or private sector employees.

The ability to do it effectively and efficiently however requires not only a unified set of tools to be used in the right manner, but also tools that provide accurate and up to date information, from your organisations’ disparate systems, when you need it. This session will bring together those ‘unified tools and capabilities to demonstrate the powerful capabilities from the latest versions of SharePoint, Lync and Exchange.

Ensuring Good Governance To Aid, Not Hinder User Adoption

The most powerful feature rich and functional tools are worthless if they are not used properly and adopted in the appropriate manner across the organisation. This part of the session will move on from the capabilities to discuss the balance of ‘good’ governance measures needed to help both govern and facilitate your end user adoption.

RecordPoint - Compliancy & Records

The volume of information is exploding and a sharper focus on compliance obligations has made records management a major concern for local government more so than many other sectors.

But when implementing a solution organisations need to consider more than the traditional need to manage document based records. Challenges such as the Cloud, the demands of users to access content from different devices and the need to manage non-traditional records mean that organisations must now face a new and constantly changing landscape. In this session, senior representatives from Microsoft and RecordPoint will demonstrate how an integrated SharePoint based solution can be easily implemented and managed, and the benefits it can bring to your business both in terms of managing risk and increasing user adoption.

Agenda 

9:00    Welcome with tea/coffee

9:45    Introduction by Rob Denton of Microsoft

10:00  The Responsive Organisation & Enabling the WorkForce by Ceri Morriss of Microsoft

11:30  Q&A

12:00  Lunch

12:45  Cross Organisational Collaboration and Ensuring Good Governance to Aid, Not Hinder User Adoption by Boris Kapitanovic of WorkShares

13:45  Q&A

14:15  MOREQ Compliant Records Management Made Possible with SharePoint by Anthony Woodward of RecordPoint 

15:45 Finish

Session Overview

The Responsive Organisation & Enabling The Workforce

Understand how local government can learn and respond rapidly through open communication, experimentation and working as a network. This session will explore strategies to move away from inefficient business practices and adopt new ways of working using Yammer and understanding Microsoft's strategy to use Enterprise Social as a platform.

Many local government organisations still run a large proportion of their business on shared network drives and public folders, which individually leads to risks around compliance with the data protection act, expensive and time consuming FOI requests, barriers to collaboration and difficultly finding information or sharing securely within the organisation and across agencies. Staff are used to far more modern ways of working using free tools such as data synchronisation services (Drop Box etc.) and large file transfer services (WeTransfer etc.) that typically lack the controls IT needs to ensure compliance and could potentially be used without any oversight.

This session will demonstrate how local government can use SharePoint and Skydrive Pro to overcome these risks and enable their workforce.

Cross Organisational Collaboration and Ensuring Good Governance To Aid, Not Hinder User Adoption

The increasing need to work in 'virtual teams' across the organisation, (and or externally) to ensure compliance pressures or stakeholder engagement is successful, is not a new demand placed on public or private sector employees. The ability to do it effectively and efficiently however, requires not only a unified set of tools to be used in the right manner, but also tools that provide accurate and up to date information, from your organisations' disparate systems, when you need it.

This session will bring together those unified tools and capabilities to demonstrate the powerful capabilities from the latest versions of SharePoint, Lync and Exchange. The most powerful feature rich and functional tools are worthless if they are not used properly and adopted in the appropriate manner across the organisation. This part of the session will move on from the capabilities to discuss the balance of 'good' governance measures needed to help both govern and facilitate your end user adoption.

MOREQ Compliant Records Management Made Possible With SharePoint

The volume of information is exploding and a sharper focus on compliance obligations has made records management a major concern for local government a major concern for local government more so than any other sectors.

When implementing a solution, organisations need to consider more than the traditional need to manage document based records. Challenges such as the Cloud, the demand of users to access content from difference devices and the need to manage non traditional records means that organisations must now face a new and constantly changing landscape.

In this session, senior representative from Microsoft and Recordpoint will demonstrate how an integrated SharePoint based solution can be easily implemented and managed, and the benefits it can bring to your organisation both in terms of managing risk and increasing user adoption. 

Our tailored SharePoint support service will ensure you have just the right type of support when it's most needed.

WorkShares offer a wider range of support services for your SharePoint deployments with flexible plans that can bet tailored to meet your specific needs.

We have experience in providing typical 'core office hours' support right the way through to round the clock, 24*7 cover, 365 days a year. We will work with you to define new or tailor our own Service Level Agreements,  (SLA's) to meet the most demanding levels of availability and response.

In addition to that we can help you improve your own SharePoint Service Line (read more about our SharePoint Service Management capabilities).

Want to learn more? Contact us

We are proud of the work we have delivered using Microsoft 365 and Azure Cloud solutions for our clients

WorkShares has gained a great deal of experience of working with many well-known organisations across the UK, from small businesses, start-ups, to larger enterprises (with up to 600.000+ staff members); all of whom have had a common need to provide collaborative & productive solutions for their colleagues, suppliers or clients alike using the Microsoft solutions and services.

We have provided a few case study samples of our work as examples of the scope and scale of work we are involved with and hope you find them useful.

Hired to provide Programme management expertise to help define and deliver a new 23,000+ user Office Productivity platform based on Microsoft 365 and related services, which will draw together a number of existing projects and instigate additional projects. 

The Defra Group, which includes the Environment Agency, Rural Payments Agency, Animal and Plant Health Agency, Natural England), have embarked on a major programme of work involving rationalisation of their core infrastructure and IT services, (currently provided by Cap Gemini and IBM), as part of the UnITy programme.

Compass Group Holdings plc required a Global Programme and Global Service management & directing expertise that allowed the IT teams accross 50+ countries with 550.000+ users to utilise a variety of cloud services from Microsoft 365 to Atlassian online capabilites. Serving as a global governance and programme directing resources we enabled Compass to establish a global IT operational models and later transition them to Compass' offshore operations by setting up a new offshore global partner relationship with support and custom software development opportunities. The Office 365 deployment eventually became one of Microsoft's largest shared-tenant cloud services across the globe. 

Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and National Institute for Biological Standards and Control had been tasked by a UK Parliament Act to establish a mature electronic records management service. WorkShares led the delivery of Office 365 / SharePoint Online / RecordPoint based solution that became first UK public sector cloud based records management system hosted in the new Microsoft UK Azure datacentre in October/ November 2016.

After an attempt to introduce Office 365 Arriva plc decided to engage with WorkShares to guide their dispersed IT resources across 100+ sites in delivering the technical capabilities, and heading the business change across 14 in Europe.

CapGemini decided to subcontract the Office 365 service management at Burberry to WorkShares with aim to rebuild the service team and establish a viable operational governance & delivery model in all Burberry offices across the globe.

We continued to provide focused Project and Programme management expertise to help oversee the delivery of Office 365 based Mobile Device Management (Intune) based replacement service for legacy Blackberry estate, Windows 2003 server migration and secure SFTP platform refresh projects during 2015/16.

WorkShares provided London & Capital, a leading wealth management organisation in the heart of London, with an easy to use, Microsoft Office365 based intranet, in under 6 weeks. The new intranet was introduced to replace an ageing custom build platform that was difficult to maintain and limited in its capabilities.

Catering to a large number of diverse audiences within the firm, the new intranet provided a one stop location for frequently access material internally, with integration in Microsoft Lync and external tools like Twitter to provide a unified communications platform.

We provided SharePoint expertise to Brooks Macdonald, a leading wealth management business, to help design and create a document management and workflow solution for key business processes. The solution enables any user to create documents that are subject to workflow approval, whilst ensuring they also conform to appropriate FCA regulations.

Following on from this activity, we also provided tailored SharePoint training to staff across the organisation to help ensure they make the most of rich functionality. 

We provided this leading mobile telecommunications services organisation, with a new intranet site based upon SharePoint enterprise, with several department sites utilising a familiar home site with pre-defined layout template, themed to keep uniformity across sites.

To maximise its investment we utilised out of the box workflows and an Infopath solutions to capture and route approval requests, as well as providing iPad and other third party mobile app viewing integration. With full integration of mysites and active directory, we were automatically pulling through user’s details including pictures, ensuring a very much 'joined up' solution for the end users to make the most of, whilst in the office or out on the road.

The bank appointed WorkShares’ Microsoft Architecture, Programme, and Service Management services to re-architect the platform, in order to provide priority solutions, improve the overall operational maturity process on their SharePoint service line (onshore and offshore teams), oversee and support the delivery of all solutions and provision a platform management and governance framework.

This work included SharePoint 24/7 platform redesign with additional capabilities to develop business critical core applications, including Redesign of Information Architecture and migration of all content from the bank’s shared folders.

This leading financial organisation hired our SharePoint Project and Programme management expertise to help oversee and deliver a new intranet and collaborative working set of capabilities, and set of governance and adoption measures for this Microsoft SharePoint Enterprise based platform.

Liaising with several third parties, recruiting wider project and operational team members as well as leading on this business change initiative, this role involved managing a myriad of internal senior stakeholders within its individual business unit functions. The role ran parallel to some wider technology refresh initiatives that had to be aligned and were collectively aimed at an overall improvement in working efficiencies and change in working practices.

We provided Centrica with SharePoint architecture authority by planning, designing, and supporting the delivery of the projects based on SharePoint platform.

Projects to date include migration from existing SharePoint 2003/2007 platform with custom applications for 50,000 users, introduction of Business Social Networking concepts, Knowledge Management and Collaboration platform, Custom Developed Solutions platform and an overall Operational Framework.

Utilising our project management expertise, we were brought in to help Christian Aid launch a revamp of their Present Aid solution - www.presentaid.org; A successful on-line income generator the not for profit organisation. The project utilised an CMS and e-commerce platform, with heavy customisations to provide both individual supporter contributions, and also group donations, launching in time for busy seasonal marketing campaigns.

Following our original project in 2011 to help McDonalds Europe define and agree their strategy and process for implementing Microsoft Office 365/SharePoint Online across its operations in Europe, we were then asked work with the EU leads, their chosen London based web design agency and their US based 'centre of excellance' delivery team to help design and build a pan-European intranet for its core services and markets, including key editor and end-user related training.

We provided SharePoint 2003, 2007 and 2010 expertise to help the borough migrate its intranet platform to a completely new environment.

The project included the designing and deploying of a completely new underlying infrastructure to support SharePoint platform, refresh of the intranet information architecture, migrate existing SharePoint 2003 portal and 2007 team based content to single platform, updated branding and overall project management.

Following on from the intranet project, we then progressed with the solution design and development and delivery support of Microsoft Business Intelligence environment pillars for Management Information Services that will support core-business operations for across all British Gas departments.

We provided SharePoint project management expertise to QBE Insurance in London, work with stakeholders from Internal Communications, New Media and Claims areas, to help put together a proof of concept (POC) project, based on SharePoint aimed at delivering strategic web platform for QBE Insurance.

This involved working closely with QBE's own application architects and business analysts, as well as the strategic suppliers of IBM, EMC and HP and cover activities through both POC and production designs, determining impact and ramifications for PCI compliance and overall security requirements.

We continued to help Thomson Reuters in 2011 with a number of innovative projects showcasing advanced news and information publishing capabilities of the SharePoint platform for access by Thomson Reuter’s global on line communities. This includes providing 24*7 support and maintenance for several applications through our new SharePoint support service.

We provided strategic and operational guidance for McDonald’s Europe, to help them define their strategy and process for implementation and adoption of SharePoint across its operations in Europe. This included looking at hybrid options for using SharePoint Online (BPOS-D) and On-Premise deployments across all 40 markets in Europe.

The project involved working with McDonald’s global 'centre of excellance' SharePoint team to help define and plan for implementation and migration from a range of existing intranet application platforms.

We provided SharePoint project management expertise to define and introduce new platform governance and support arrangements with their service partners of Accenture and IBM. In parallel to this we helped coordinate and introduce change management processes and activities across their production and pre-production environments.

Working with managed service partners as well as internal stakeholders we helped push through new working practices. These activities enabled centralised support to commence, helped manage change and introduce multi layered governance on the Microsoft SharePoint based platform.

WorkShares provided both project management and SharePoint developer expertise to Thomson Reuters. We lead the development of an interactive global user community based content management application, for use in conjunction with Thomson Reuters market leading suite of news service offerings and its thousands of customers.

Liaising with offshore development and QA resources, we helped scope, design, build and manage the introduction of the new application. This included regular application enhancements from an evolving set of business requirements.

Building on top off an existing global SharePoint infrastructure supporting many tens of thousands of users, our experience in design and developing within the enterprise SharePoint environment, was paramount in securing and delivering this work on time and to budget.

During this time we provided wider SharePoint architectural guidance and delivery expertise to help introduce a secure business application, delivered on to an enhanced multi-farm environment, which supports collaborating working for an externally facing internet presence environment. One to one mentoring and support for existing IT staff including ad-hoc training also took place.

In early 2009 we provide ad-hoc SharePoint 2007 architecture, licensing and wider design guidance for the creation of an intranet and extranet portal. The solution needed to provide access to sensitive corporate information from outside of the organisation, with trusted 3rd parties in a secure and robust manner but affordable manner.

In late 2009, we were asked to review an existing disaster recovery configuration and associated documentation, before updating and testing the new recovery processes for a MOSS 2007 extranet and intranet farm deployment.

We then provided advice on wider best practice with patching, introducing new features, optimisation and end user support and adoption of SharePoint environments.

In the summer of 2009 we provided MOSS Architecture, design and configuration expertise to build a internal MOSS platform for testing custom client solutions and provide a base for the company Intranet “Bluepeople”. We also provided trouble shooting skills for Excel Services and general knowledge transfer.

WorkShares provided Capita Business Services with a combined Project Management Office & Shared Workspace solution to help manage their multi-million pound Business Transformation Programme of work with a key local government client.

Utilising Microsoft’s latest SharePoint® technology, the solution provides Capita Business Services and its client, the London Borough of Harrow, with access to a collaborative areas for the creation, storage and retrieval of key documents and information.

WorkShares provided SharePoint advice, design & build consultancy on the solution, which is hosted on a robust, dedicated server environment.

WorkShares assisted Kingston Communications with the delivery of a Project Management Workspace Solution, to help them better manage their large programme of work underway within the organisation, affecting several of its businesses in the UK.

The solution utilised the Microsoft® SharePoint® collaborative platform, via a hosted arrangement from Mistral Internet (owned by Kingston Communications). WorkShares provided the design & build consultancy and included knowledge transfer & training prior to making the service live.

Based around their bespoke deployment of the PRINCE 2 methodology, the reusable nature of the solution allows Kingston Communications to provide a central ‘Programme’ workspace in which to then manage the projects, each with its own workspace, but also utilising a consistent set of features and functions.

In the spring of 2008, WorkShares provided knowledge transfer and training sessions to Ernst & Young on Microsoft SharePoint 2007.

A subsequent proof of concept platform was then designed, built, hosted and supported by WorkShares, which looked into evaluating the platform as a strategic application framework for the global accounting organisation.

In the summer of 2008, WorkShares provided development advice, guidance and updates to a custom financial application based on Microsoft SharePoint 2007.

In the summer of 2008 and in partnership Paralogic, WorkShares designed a Microsoft SharePoint® based shared document workspaces solution for Ultimate Holdings. It provided a powerful collaborative document management environment across its three main European offices in the UK, Montenegro and Serbia in which to collaborate and store key working documents for its real estate investments.