SOCO has been recognized as a WBA Winner for Digital Transformation in the World Business Awards 2022. The World Business Award for Digital Transformation [DTR] recognizes organizations that have successfully implemented initiatives that demonstrate excellence in digital transformation.

Founded in 2013, SOCO is one of Australia’s fasted growing IT Consultancies, delivering high quality digital transformation, information management, modern workplace and business application solutions and consultation. SOCO expertly guide clients through their digital transformation journey, by embedding modern technologies that enable workforces to excel in today’s competitive environment.

SOCO is 100% Australian owned and managed and has experienced >270% growth during the last 3 years. All staff are permanent employees based in Australia, many with security clearance and trained to work in protected, secure environments.

Committed to placing people first, technology second, SOCO’s goal is to become a trusted partner, working in the background to elevate clients and staff to become the heroes of their own stories. This is done by delivering transformative business outcomes with the intelligent and human-centred use of information technology.

SOCO works with clients across diverse industries. However, all have a common goal, the desire to get more value from their technology investment.

SOCO’s Cloud Advisory Service was developed to deliver digital transformation and Cloud migration projects. The goal being to efficiently remove organisations’ reliance on on-premises servers and onsite ways of working, providing access anywhere tools and enabling remote working options for staff.

SOCO’s Cloud Advisory Service has guided 30+ clients with digital transformation over recent years. Moving to Cloud services became a critical issue when the first Covid-19 lockdown was enforced, leaving hundreds of thousands of employees unable to do their jobs, due to technical limitations, geographical constraints, and childcare responsibilities, with very little notice.

One of SOCO’s Cloud Advisory initiatives was a federal Government Agency’s accelerated transition from Cisco and Zoom to Microsoft Teams as part of an emergency response to the COVID 19 pandemic.

For this engagement, SOCO used their proven Discover. Design. Deliver. Drive. methodology to ensure the project was successful.
• The Discovery phase ensured a shared understanding of requirements between SOCO and the agency.
• The Design phase documented the vision of the desired future state, tracing the direct connection between requirements and the solution.
• The Delivery phase turned this vision into reality and ensured the solution met quality, time, and budget expectations.
• The Drive phase provided ongoing value after launch, engaging and supporting users of the new technology.

Successful delivery required expertise in Cloud applications, infrastructure, architecture, governance, software licensing, agile project management and change management.

Teamwork, and effective collaboration between SOCO and the government agency was required to deliver digital transformation that was initially thought may take 6 months, in just 12 weeks.

Due to the impact of the Covid-19 crisis, changing the technology raised the potential of organisational change fatigue. To address this, SOCO and the agency worked together to design a program focused on high communication, and initial quick wins, to shift sentiment across the organisation and foster adoption.

The new solution quickly gained in popularity. User adoption and engagement exceeded expectations with 1,120% growth in chat messaging during a 6-month period. The high level of communication and collaboration resulted in substantially improved quality, efficiency and accountability of projects and issue resolution activities.

According to the agency, “Our IT team were at 100% capacity when the pandemic hit… our relationship with SOCO was instrumental in embarking upon such a transformational journey. …[The new system] launched seamlessly from day one. We would not have achieved what we did without the expert guidance of an experienced technology partner.”

Now, with many staff returned to the office, these new ways of working and their associated benefits have remained.

In the wider context, SOCO’s Cloud Advisory Service delivers outcomes such as:
• Enables businesses to offer reliable, remote working options to the 39% of Australians whose jobs can feasibly be done from home.
• Supports government agencies to continue to deliver critical services to the Australian public during the Covid-19 pandemic response and onwards
• Helps government agencies to comply with the Australian Governments “Cloud-first” policy
• Enables organisations to reduce costs by removing the need for on-site infrastructure and legacy information technology systems
• Increases productivity and workplace agility via 24/7, access from anywhere business systems and communications – resulting in improved productivity and workplace flexibility
• Enables the effective utilisation of software licenses already procured by businesses

SOCO are also a Microsoft Gold Partner with 11 core competency areas, ensuring high quality solutions and support for technical platforms including Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform and Azure.

For more information about SOCO and their Cloud Advisory Service, visit soco.com.au