iCrats Technologies

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm working as a COO while also taking care of the infrastructure services at my organization, Intel Ahead.

What challenge were you trying to address with iCrats Technologies?

We had the Exchange server and SharePoint 2010 in our organization for about 6 years, so I tried to migrate to Office 365 to use more of the cloud services — we went with that since it was also easier to manage. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

iCrats came in and helped us migrate all of our clients and all of the folders, files, and everything from SharePoint to Office 365. Moreover, they also migrated our email from Exchange to Office 365. Now, we have a centralized UI where we can have all the information at one location.

It was more of migrating from our servers and our network room to the cloud services from SharePoint and Exchange — our mails and documents went to the cloud.

What is the team composition?

We started with about 4–5 people, which then increased to about 8–9. They were made up of SharePoint Office 365 developers, a project manager, a couple of engineers, and I think one business analyst to understand our requirements.

How did you come to work with iCrats Technologies?

We were looking at multiple options. Our CEO happened to know someone from iCrats, so he introduced me to them. Once that was done, we did an evaluation on them, to understand their capabilities and made sure that their capabilities fit our needs — I was pretty happy with what they had given. 

I also evaluated a couple of other companies, but one of them was expensive and the other one didn’t give me any confidence that they could do the job. A couple of other companies didn't work for us, so we selected iCrats them.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested approximately $40,000 for the migration. We are also paying ongoing maintenance of around $4,000 every month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the migration towards November or December of 2019, and we were done by February 2020. After that work was completed, we became technology partners. iCrats is at this point in time managing any issues or challenges that come — they’re in an agreement with us for the next five years.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

One thing that I would like to say is that the whole purpose of our agreement with iCrats was the migration should be transparent to the users — users shouldn't go through too much pain when migrating from one site to another. Well, they handled that part really well, and it became transparent for most of the users moving the main boxes and SharePoint folders. 

The project was very well managed at a pre-declared timeframe. They informed everyone in advance and there was constant communication. That part went really well and that's one thing we were happy about.

How did iCrats Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They did well. Communication was good even though I wasn’t actually keeping track of the PMP files or things like that — they sent me only the big updates. During the migration period, we had a meeting call and they were giving the updates very clearly. They also had a dashboard kind of view created for me, because I didn't want to get into the nitty-gritty details. I just wanted to know their challenges.

Emails were the major way of communication. During the project period, we had weekly calls, and they used to give me the weekly dashboard.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were impressed by the intimacy and the client relations. I was clearly able to see the project through a dashboard view every time, so that was really good — the communication was also good.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't know, because I think they did pretty well in all the areas that we wanted them to, and that's one of the reasons I recommended them to take us as a technical partner. I don't know if they could do anything better for me, since they were kind of very upfront in all the things and challenges. There were challenges that resulted just like in any other program, but they communicated the challenges on time — that's what I liked about them. When I know about challenges then I can find or help them find the solution.

Any advice for potential customers?

When there are challenges on either side, we need to consider if it is our fault. Sometimes if a person in my organization didn't help them or didn't respond to their question, then I need to go back and make sure that they respond to them. So understanding and listening to their challenges is very important for the success of the program.