Moving 300,000 students worth of content to SharePoint without slowing anyone down

The challenge

Cornerstones Education produces curriculum materials used by 1,400 schools, 20,000 teachers and 300,000 children across the UK. Behind those products is a large and constantly growing library of documents, assets and content that needs to be organised, findable and accessible to the right people.

Their existing file server had been holding things together, but it was starting to buckle. The only way to organise files was by putting them in folders, so there was no way to add metadata or tag content with useful attributes. Finding the right asset for the right product meant knowing exactly where it lived, and as the library grew that became harder and harder. On top of that, the more routine corporate document needs of the business were not well served either.

What we did

We worked with Cornerstones to migrate their documents and assets from the legacy file server to SharePoint Online and Office 365, and made sure the transition was set up properly from day one.

Our focus was on making the platform genuinely useful rather than just technically complete. That meant working closely with Cornerstones staff to understand how different teams worked and what they actually needed access to. The result was a SharePoint environment where content creators could tag and organise assets with rich metadata, find what they needed through proper search, and stop hunting through folder structures.

For the wider business, the same platform handled corporate document management aligned with their ISO 9001 processes, with the right permissions in place so that people could access what they needed for their role and nothing more.

What it delivered

SharePoint gave Cornerstones things their file server simply could not: version control on every document, the ability to label assets with metadata that actually meant something, and a search experience that worked.

Crucially, we kept the solution straightforward enough that content creators could stay focused on creating content. The platform supported their work rather than getting in the way of it. The in-house team came away with a solid understanding of how to manage and extend it themselves, which was important given how quickly SharePoint as a platform continues to evolve.