The cloud & digitalization don’t stop at healthcare.
Without the file server analysis and bs one: workplace from baliosoft, the project wouldn’t have been possible within such an ambitious timeframe. We didn’t have the expertise and wouldn’t have been able to fully leverage the potential of the cloud migration. With our current setup, we’re well positioned for the future and will continue to count on our collaboration with baliosoft.
EMVIA Living GmbH (Hamburg, Germany)
EMVIA LIVING stands for safe, dignified, and high-quality care, combined with joy, warmth, and a strong sense of community. Around 4,300 employees across 52 care facilities put this philosophy into practice every day. A small in-house IT team, together with synaforce as IT infrastructure provider, ensures the necessary technical foundation.
EMVIA improves collaboration across locations with Microsoft 365 and bs one: workplace
Not starting from scratch, but
Successfully prepared for the cloud with bs one
Anyone who works with computers knows how easy it is to lose track in a file system without consistent organization. In organizations like EMVIA, where more than 1,500 employees have access to IT systems, document structures can quickly become complex and difficult to navigate.
When the Controlling department required a sharing system to improve document-based collaboration, Head of IT Michael Meyer knew that a simple one-to-one migration was not an option. Migrating from a file server to the cloud offers the opportunity to eliminate legacy structures and data.
After deciding to move forward with Microsoft 365, he contacted baliosoft on the recommendation of synaforce. The team’s SharePoint expertise and bs one, the Microsoft 365-based workplace that consolidates tasks, projects, and actions from all systems, proved to be the decisive factors.
File server analysis with unexpected findings
As a first step, a security framework for cloud-based systems was implemented using the baliosoft guideline to ensure secure operations in the future. In parallel, the team began analyzing the folder and document structures, which at first revealed nothing unexpected. Nearly 135,000 duplicates and folder hierarchies reaching up to 24 levels were not unusual among roughly one million documents spread across 52 sites. Reducing duplicates, outdated and unused files was one of the key findings of the analysis.
However, the analysis revealed that restructuring the cloud storage setup would be advisable to prevent such issues in the future. Instead of maintaining the previous department-based workspace structure in bs one, baliosoft recommended a location-based approach. The proposal initially caused Michael Meyer some concern, but he quickly saw the key advantage: “Location-based workspaces strengthen collaboration.”
Successful implementation
Various approaches were evaluated in multiple pilot projects, revealing that a combined model offered the most effective solution. The results were presented to management, and the new approach received full approval.
The new structures were then set up, subject-specific folders created, the metadata concept finalized, and both mapping and migration completed.
Since August 2025, Microsoft 365 with SharePoint as the central platform and bs one: workplace as the front end for business processes has been live. Not all employees have fully transitioned to Microsoft 365 yet. Using best-practice examples, IT and Controlling are currently working to ensure that everyone benefits from the new environment.
„Thanks to tagging and full indexing, document searches have become significantly faster. Creating new structures, including all permissions, is just a click away in the digital workplace, thanks to the built-in standards of bs one. And finally, teams can collaborate on documents without running into error messages. We will continue to expand the use of bs one together with baliosoft,” concludes Michael Meyer.