Challenge.

MAGENWIRTH is known above all for the Magura brand accessories. The hydraulic brakes are the signature of every good bike. Riding downhill without Magura? Unthinkable! A lot of heart and passion go into making Magura products—characteristics that are also tangible at the other MAGENWIRTH Holding companies. Only the best is good enough for the customers and employees of the traditional company from the south-west Germany, and one way of ensuring this is by having IT that is not only young and dynamic, but easy to manage. But above all, it had to meet the requirements of the companies within the holding that were no longer being met in the offices by Lotus Notes.

With the HanseVision high-level concept, Bechtle was able to give us exactly the performance we needed. After professional preparation work including employee and admin training, our IT made the switch from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Office 365 is just one weekend. We are fully mobile with our IT now as well.

Sven Schrade, Head of MWT IT Competence Center Infrastructure, MAGENWIRTH Technologies GmbH

Solution.

MAGENWIRTH was looking to switch the entire holding’s IT to being based on Microsoft Office 365 over the course of just one weekend. This, of course, required preparation. HanseVision, a subsidiary of the Bechtle Group, has over 20 years of experience in such projects and knew that, with correct planning and a well-thought-out roadmap, this was absolutely achievable. The Bechtle IT System House in Rottenburg and HanseVision collaborated to carry out an initial analysis of all existing applications, interfaces and additional requirements to unearth any potential issues that could arise.

 

One of the biggest challenges was the fact that only certain holding companies were to be switched from Lotus Notes to Office 365 while the others were to continue using their existing infrastructure. However, Bechtle found a way to separate the individual companies’ access to the existing Notes servers from each other and then migrate each, one at a time. The project team then agreed all other framework conditions step by step with MAGENWIRTH. During this process, it became clear that the MAGENWIRTH CRM system may pose a challenge. It needed to be migrated to Microsoft Dynamics to ensure collaboration with Microsoft Outlook, which MAGENWIRTH were able to do before migration to Office 365. Employee mailboxes were migrated by Bechtle using the Quest Notes Migrator and all data such as e-mails, contacts, appointments and particularly recurring appointments could be migrated without issue.

 

To make sure that nothing was overlooked, Bechtle created a virtual migration environment, which they could thoroughly check, and which quickly showed that there would be no additional problems with Microsoft Exchange and the existing applications. HanseVision’s high-level concept was given the green light. MAGENWIRTH was assigned all necessary work packages so that all employee roles and responsibilities during the migration process were clear and were prepared in such a way that MAGENWIRTH was able to be introduced to the Microsoft world one step at a time. This included a three-day administrator course, training end users and follow-up support that was only actually used for three days thanks to the excellent preparation work.

 

Business Benefits.

Bechtle didn’t just provide MAGENWIRTH with a new software environment. The high-level concept covered everything from technical aspects and the rollout of Office 365 with Exchange and Outlook to user training. Bechtle took charge of the change management process at MAGENWIRTH, created intranet marketing campaigns and took on the responsibility for winning over the users.  To do this, Bechtle used realistic everyday situations in its training courses, which meant that the migration from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Office 365 was completed within three days. MAGENWIRTH is now fully equipped to handle whatever the future holds.