Smollan has completed a large-scale migration from Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace, moving more than 9,000 users across 25 companies without operational downtime.
The global retail solutions company worked with Argility, the Google Workspace Premier Partner practice within Smollan Technologies, on the 547-day transformation programme, which was completed in June 2026.
The project involved migrating 9,064 users across more than 19 countries, eight languages and 24 time zones. In total, the team moved 7.01 petabytes of data, 2.4 billion emails and approximately 290 billion documents, achieving a 99.77% verified success rate with zero data loss.
The challenge
Smollan operates across more than 60 countries and employs more than 90,000 people globally, providing retail execution, sales and merchandising, activation, experience, data and technology services.
Its distributed operating model means teams collaborate around the clock across multiple geographies. As the business evolved, Smollan wanted a productivity environment better suited to real-time global collaboration and its plans to embed AI into everyday working practices.
The company decided to move from Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace. However, the scale and complexity of the organisation made a conventional migration difficult.
There could be no meaningful outage window because the business operates continuously. The migration also had to accommodate multiple companies, geographies, languages and time zones without fragmenting the organisation during the transition.
Data integrity was equally important. Petabytes of corporate information needed to be transferred and verified while users continued working.
The solution
Argility designed the programme around Google’s three-pillar framework covering technical deployment, change management and project management. Rather than treating these as sequential stages, the three workstreams operated in parallel.
Before users were migrated, the team conducted a full assessment of Smollan’s environment and designed the Google Workspace tenant architecture.
The migration was then divided into cohorts according to business unit, geography and risk profile, with a dedicated Project Management Office overseeing the programme.
A coexistence architecture allowed Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace to operate alongside each other during the transition. Dual-delivery mail flow was used to minimise the risk of lost emails, while each migration cohort had an active rollback protocol.
The technical environment incorporated Google Cloud Directory Sync, SSO and MFA, Google Workspace Admin Console and Data Loss Prevention policies. Pre- and post-migration integrity checks were performed, while a real-time dashboard gave Smollan’s IT team visibility into migration progress.
Change management was embedded from the beginning. Argility established a Google Champion Network and delivered multilingual training through virtual, in-person and self-service channels. A structured Gemini AI enablement programme was also introduced.
Each cohort received a minimum 30-day hypercare period following go-live, while Smollan’s internal IT team received Admin Console training to support the new environment.
The results
The programme migrated 9,064 users across 25 companies, more than 19 countries, eight languages and all 24 time zones.
Argility transferred 7.01PB of data, including 2.4 billion emails and approximately 290 billion documents. The migration achieved a 99.77% verified success rate, with zero data loss and zero operational downtime.
More than 8,500 support queries were resolved during the 547-day programme.
Beyond the technical migration, the project changed how employees collaborate across Smollan. Thousands of hours of training, demonstrations and support sessions helped users adapt to Google Workspace, while regional Google Champions provided peer-to-peer assistance.
David Smollan, Chief Executive Officer of Smollan, said: “A change of this magnitude is not something to be underestimated. However, after a very well-organised process, I’m pleased that we’ve managed to cross over and our entire technology estate is now truly cloud-native. This is an enormous competitive advantage for us as a distributed organisation and we’re excited about the possibilities of working on the Google platform further.”
Business impact
The migration has provided Smollan with a more integrated environment for global collaboration while strengthening connectivity and security.
Gemini AI is now embedded across everyday productivity tools, creating a foundation for the company to expand its use of AI while employees work within a common global environment.
For Argility and Smollan Technologies, the project also provides a reference architecture for delivering complex Microsoft 365-to-Google Workspace migrations for other multinational enterprises.
Japie Saunders, Managing Executive – Google Solutions at Argility/Smollan Technologies, said: “We didn’t just consult on this migration – we lived it. Rolling out Google Workspace on our own infrastructure gave us a level of scar tissue and confidence no whiteboard exercise ever could. Very few organisations anywhere have moved this much data, across this many users and countries, in one programme without downtime – proof that enterprise-scale Workspace migrations can be delivered from this region, for global businesses, to a global standard.”
Lessons learned
One of the central lessons from the programme was that technology alone cannot determine the success of a migration at this scale.
The Google Champion Network, training and peer-to-peer support proved as important as the underlying architecture. Maintaining Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace in coexistence also allowed Smollan to avoid a disruptive hard cutover and provided each cohort with a fallback option.
The phased approach demonstrated that a cohort-based migration model can be applied even across a highly distributed global organisation.
What’s next
Smollan is continuing to monitor Google Workspace adoption and expand Gemini AI enablement, with usage information reviewed and reported to leadership.
Chromebook adoption is also being considered as a potential next phase. With employees increasingly working within Google Workspace, the company sees an opportunity to simplify device management, strengthen integration and potentially reduce support and hardware costs across its geographically dispersed operations.
