This SharePoint governance case study follows a 10-week Microsoft 365 improvement program for an Australian consulting firm. Compuloop addressed site ownership, guest access, document structure and overlapping licences.
Project technologies and related platforms we support
The firm moved to Microsoft 365 four years earlier with a “just let people use it” mandate. That worked well for adoption and badly for structure. Each project, client and internal initiative spawned a Team. In turn, each Team had a SharePoint site. Staff also had their own OneDrive accounts. Nobody had ever deleted anything.
The presenting problem was cost. The finance director noticed licence spend had grown 28% in two years against flat headcount and asked IT to explain. IT could not, because there was no licence assignment record and no view of actual usage.
204 of 340 SharePoint sites inactive for 12 months. 61 sites with no identifiable owner — the creator had left the firm. 4.2TB of storage duplicated across OneDrive, SharePoint and email attachments. Reception and two admin staff holding E5 licences. Seventeen users holding three overlapping licences. No retention policy, so departed staff mailboxes and OneDrive accounts were retained indefinitely.
The cost problem was real but secondary. The bigger risk was information governance. Client project files — including commercially sensitive material under confidentiality obligations — sat in sites with no owner, no retention policy, and permissions inherited from a 2019 Team. In two cases, external guest accounts still had access to client workspaces months after the project ended. For a consulting firm that is a contractual and reputational exposure far larger than the licence bill.
There was also a productivity cost nobody had measured. We timed a sample of common searches during discovery: the average time to locate a specific project deliverable was four minutes twelve seconds, and staff often gave up and asked a colleague.
SharePoint document libraries bring files, metadata and views together. The case study explains how ownership and structure helped the client manage that environment.
Link permissions and expiry settings are part of a wider sharing policy. The project addresses who can access information and when that access should end.
Microsoft’s OneDrive version-history example illustrates how a previous file version can be reviewed.
A Microsoft product example illustrates moving files between OneDrive and SharePoint.
Full tenant inventory of sites, Teams, OneDrive, licence assignments and guest access. Built a cost and risk baseline: storage per site, inactivity, ownership gaps, external sharing, licence cost per active user. Presented to the executive as a single page.
Hub-and-spoke structure: firm-wide intranet hub, clients hub with one site per project, department hubs. Defined naming conventions, a site provisioning process requiring a named owner, and a permissions model based on Entra ID security groups rather than direct assignment.
Archived the 204 inactive sites to read-only storage pending owner confirmation, reassigned or closed the 61 ownerless sites, removed external guest access from closed engagements, and consolidated duplicated content into the new structure. Delivered in waves by department.
Teams and SharePoint lifecycle policies (inactive review at 12 months, archive at 18), retention labels for client project records, sensitivity labels for confidential material, app consent policy, guest access expiry, and external sharing restrictions by site type.
Right-sized 120 licences against actual usage: 23 users moved E5→Business Premium/E3, 17 duplicate assignments removed, admin staff reassigned to Business Basic. Role-based training, a site owner workshop, and a one-page “where do I save this?” guide.
The project also established repeatable processes. These controls support ongoing operation after the initial rollout.
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The following before-and-after figures relate to this engagement. The scope and starting position matter when comparing them with another business.
| Measure | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Active SharePoint sites | 340 (204 inactive) | 128 active, 212 archived |
| Sites without a named owner | 61 | 0 |
| Total storage | 11TB | 7.9TB |
| Licence SKUs in use | 6 | 3 |
| Annual licence spend | $312,000 | $234,000 |
| Avg. time to find a document | 4 min 12 sec | under 30 sec |
| Open external guest accounts | 94 | 31 (active engagements only) |
Average document search
Staff time recovered
Monthly licence admin
New site provisioning
Project-specific financial model. Avoided losses and productivity benefits are estimates, not guaranteed cash savings or returns.
| Line item | Value |
|---|---|
| Project investment (10 weeks) | $42,000 |
| Annual hard saving: licence right-sizing | $78,000 / yr |
| Annual hard saving: reduced storage consumption | ~$9,600 / yr |
| Productivity: 3,256 hrs at $55 loaded | ~$179,000 / yr |
| Avoided: further licence growth (14% y/y) | ~$44,000 |
| Avoided: confidentiality breach exposure | Not quantified |
| Payback | ~5.7 months on hard savings alone |
Background guidance: read the relevant official framework or product documentation. This explains the technology; it is not independent verification of this client project.
If this sharepoint governance case study reflects a problem in your business, start with a scoped conversation. Tell us about your sites, people, systems and current priorities. We can then identify the right assessment, the practical constraints and the evidence you need.
