A four-phase knowledge management roadmap. A Digital Workplace Steering Committee that runs the practice.

39 IT systems assessed. 6+ retired. $41,399 in projected annual savings.

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The situation

The situation we walked into.

Humanity United is a philanthropic organization working on peace and human rights worldwide. Their knowledge management systems were fragmented, their Microsoft 365 tools were underutilized, and the information silos that produced were costing the foundation real time and real cost. Seventy-six percent of staff reported spending more time than they wanted to looking for information. The leadership team knew the symptom by heart. What they needed was a roadmap that addressed the technology, the practices, and the governance together, because changing one without the others was the pattern that had failed before.

What we did

What we did.

We started with a discovery in January 2024. Forty-two staff survey respondents and thirty-one interviewees told us where the friction lived and what had been tried. The KM Advisory Group worked alongside us to validate findings and shape the recommendations. The work culminated in a multi-year KM and digital transformation roadmap, signed off across the organization in mid-2024.

The roadmap had four phases, each addressing a different layer of the practice: digital workplace optimization, KM standards, content governance, and cross-organizational information flows. Sequencing mattered. Trying to set KM standards on top of an underutilized M365 environment would not stick, so the M365 optimization had to come first.

We formed the Digital Workplace Steering Committee as the durable governance body. Cross-functional. Designed to outlive the engagement. The Steering Committee’s charge is to make sure every IT system gets selected, configured, managed, and used in a way that fits Humanity United’s mission, vision, and values. The committee is the mechanism that keeps the roadmap honest as it moves through implementation.

In the strategy and design phase, we worked with the IT and KM leaders to define the content and collaboration use cases that M365 needed to support, the content management policies that would govern them, and the future-state information architecture for Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive. We defined the scope and operating model for the Steering Committee, developed the change management plan to support staff through new tools and new practices, and shaped a CRM Core and Impact System recommendation grounded in Dynamics 365.

In the implementation phase, we piloted the migration to Teams and SharePoint and OneDrive with selected departments, in step with the organization’s move to Entra ID for identity management. We are building and testing prototypes of the CRM Core and CRM Impact systems with user testing built into every iteration, so the system that goes live is the one users helped shape. The Digital Workplace Steering Committee is in operation, providing the coordination and decision support the rollout depends on.

What changed

What changed.

The discovery surfaced thirty-nine IT systems in the existing estate. The future-state map retires six or more redundant applications, including Sync, Okta, Wrike, Calendly, and CrashPlan, for $41,399 in projected annual cost savings. The seventy-six percent of staff who reported spending more time than desired looking for information is now a baseline against which the roadmap will be measured. Dynamics 365 replaces Salesforce as the CRM, with constituent relationship management and program impact tracking on a single platform. Okta is on track to be replaced by Microsoft Entra ID, consolidating identity management inside the M365 footprint. The Digital Workplace Steering Committee is meeting and making decisions. The four-phase KM Roadmap is the spine of the work for the next two-plus years.

The human moment

The knowledge that Ideal State brings to the table across Microsoft 365, knowledge management, and change management is invaluable. We couldn’t have asked for a better partner.

Frank Williams, Director of IT, Humanity United

What sticks

What sticks.

The Digital Workplace Steering Committee is the most durable piece of what we built. It is the foundation’s permanent governance body for technology decisions, designed to outlast any single engagement. The four-phase KM Roadmap is owned by Humanity United’s IT and KM leadership, and the Steering Committee is the body that holds the roadmap accountable. The savings from the retired systems compound year over year. The Dynamics 365 platform replaces a stack the foundation was outgrowing. The information architecture and the change management practice that the staff went through together are the soft infrastructure that the next chapter of the work will compound on.

Lessons we carried forward

Lessons we carried forward.

Humanity United crystallized how we sequence combined M365 and KM engagements. The instinct is to set the knowledge management standards first because they are the prize. The better order is M365 first, KM second, governance third, cross-organizational flows last, with the steering body stood up early and given real authority from the start. We also learned how much of a difference an early-formed governance body makes to the durability of a multi-year roadmap. The Steering Committee was not an afterthought. It was the spine. We carry that pattern into every multi-year engagement now.

Connect with us

Have a roadmap that needs a body to own it?

Humanity United started with a discovery call about a fragmented knowledge management practice and ended with a four-phase roadmap and the Steering Committee that owns it. A 30-minute conversation with one of our co-founders is a useful place to start. No deck. No consultant-speak. No pressure.

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