Perfect match! Rencore and Specialist Risk Group

Rencore’s best-in-class governance software was utilized to deliver a dynamic governance approach for Specialist Risk Group. It enabled their admins to identify, assess, and act on information swiftly.

Customer story

Specialist Risk Group at a glance

Specialist Risk Group is a specialist insurance broker in the UK and Ireland, covering everything from jewellers' insurance to trade credit and acquisition insurance.

The group has been acquiring specialist businesses to widen what it can offer clients, growing from 119 staff in April 2019 to 450. Every acquisition brings its own people, accounts and data into the Microsoft 365 estate.

Background

A cloud journey that started with a plan

Specialist Risk Group's cloud journey began the way many do: Exchange Online, a SharePoint Online intranet, then Teams and OneDrive. What was less common was the order of work. Strategy and governance planning came first, before the services were deployed.

That gave the group consistency across tools and a way to keep administration and compliance aligned across the business as it grew.

The challenge

More data, more services, more acquisitions

Teams moved from messaging and meetings to file management and collaboration, which pulled OneDrive in for personal storage and put significantly more corporate data into Microsoft 365.

Citizen-built automation Some employees had Power Automate and Power Apps to run core business processes. Those processes had to keep working, and IT had to know what was being built.
Cloud sprawl As more Microsoft 365 services came into use, the group needed confidence that they were used as the governance plan defined, with lifecycle management that held.
Two kinds of disabled account Acquisitions and leavers both produced disabled accounts, and the two had to be told apart so licences, access and group membership could be handled correctly for each.

The solution

A governance plan, then the tooling to hold it

Specialist Risk Group defined its Microsoft 365 governance plan with Rencore partner Yoko:10, then used Rencore Governance to monitor those decisions and support day-to-day administration of the environment.

Deployment took five working days, broken into three stages: quick wins first, then tenant identity work covering licences and security, then dashboards. Key stakeholders started from a demo of the pre-built Checks, which made it clear how to build dashboards per Microsoft 365 service and tie them to the governance decisions already agreed.

As with all organizations, we at Specialist Risk Group want to use every option available to ensure secure data in Microsoft 365 and minimize the risk of unauthorized access where possible. Most, if not all information, is available in the Microsoft 365 admin centers of the respective services, but there is no way to view it in one place in a simple contextual way. This is one area where Rencore's governance software excelled.

Greg Bowles Infrastructure Team Leader, Specialist Risk Group

The results

From static governance to acting in real time

One place to look With the information in a single portal, the team can review problematic or potentially problematic activity quickly.
Better housekeeping The group found where its general housekeeping and internal processes could improve, rather than guessing.
Room to mature Simple automation made the plan actionable, with scope to extend it as the group's governance approach develops.

In closing

Governance built in, not bolted on

Specialist Risk Group brought Rencore in early, while Microsoft 365 services were still being deployed. That gave it a cloud-first approach that scaled with the business and matched how its people actually work, and moved the group from static governance to acting in real time as the estate grew.

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