The integration of IT systems after a merger or takeover is always a challenging project, offering the potential for disrupting customer service and damage to reputation if the switch hits a problem.

When a leading bank bought a personal financial services company, migrating to the acquirer’s core banking system and unifying other key business applications such as email was a major priority.

Establishing mail connectivity across the merged group was relatively straightforward, especially as both organisations used Microsoft Exchange.

“The other piece of the jigsaw was how to give all staff throughout the new amalgamated Group visibility of each other in their email address books,” explained the IT Project Manager at the financial services company.

To achieve this address books belonging to the financial services company had to be updated with new parent’s email addresses and vice versa. Over 150,000 addresses had to be exchanged on a regular basis to reflect any changes of staff. Even a change in surname following marriage had to be captured to ensure staff had exactly the right email address to contact a co-worker in another location.

The Selection Process
With the help of a local consulting organisation, the IT team at the personal finance services company looked at the best strategies for tackling the address synchronisation task.

“A similar project they had carried out for a different organisation had involved several weeks of effort using Microsoft’s own directory synchronisation tools after which they still didn’t have a solution they were completely satisfied with,” commented the Project Manager. “They recommended that we use SimpleSyncTM from messaging specialists Essential Computing.”

About SimpleSync
SimpleSync provides a centrally managed service via which corporates can keep the vital information contained in the whole, or parts of different directories, resource databases - even spreadsheets - ‘in sync’.

Ideal for companies who have multiple divisions, emails systems, remote offices, or business partners, SimpleSync is an easy yet effective way via which contact and email addresses and other information can be kept up to date - either during a migration period or as a long term strategy.

Typical SimpleSync applications include:

• Assist with the migration or co-existence of multiple email systems or Exchange versions.
• Enable secure messaging between disparate organisations, where all staff can see the relevant addressees through their local address list.
• Company re-branding exercises, where a new email domain needs to be used for all external emails even though ‘old style’ email addresses are still used by legacy systems.

A Quick, Point-and-Click Solution
Using SimpleSync, an automated service that would synchronise 3 directory services within the Group was quickly configured.

SimpleSync’s point and click GUI made it simple to establish directory connections, map fields across the different directories and test the results of a synchronisation.

“With SimpleSync we literally had a solution within a few hours. In addition to making the synchronisation a robust, automated process, we saved at lot of time and many thousands of pounds. Our staff are also pleased as they can now simply select the email addresess of their counterparts across the Group from their local email address books,” concluded the Project Manager.

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