The Challenge
Skills Impact is the national Skills Service Organisation (SSO), funded by the Australian Government to support Industry Reference Committees in developing competency standards and qualifications for the VET sector.
Their Dynamics CRM environment had been heavily customised by a previous vendor: 24 custom application modules that didn’t follow Dynamics 365’s development model. The entire system needed to be migrated from Dynamics CRM 2016 to Dynamics 365, but the non compliant custom code made a standard migration impossible.
On top of the CRM, Skills Impact was running a patchwork of Excel spreadsheets, WordPress, and MailChimp, systems that needed to be consolidated.
What Evocate Delivered
Evocate took ownership of the Dynamics environment and executed a structured, low-risk migration, rewriting the non-compliant code rather than lifting-and-shifting it:
- Sandbox environment setup: a safe, isolated space to develop and test the rebuild before touching production
- Dynamics CRM 2016 to Dynamics 365 migration: a full platform upgrade onto a supported, compliant foundation
- 24 custom modules rewritten: every non-compliant module rebuilt to follow the Dynamics 365 development model
- Staged production deployment: a phased rollout designed to keep disruption to a minimum
Post-migration the platform delivered incident and case management, email marketing integration, meeting and visit diarising, an enquiry and ticketing system, third-party integrations, and reporting and analytics, consolidating a prior patchwork of Excel, WordPress, and MailChimp into one governed environment.
Outcomes
Skills Impact moved off an unsupported, heavily customised Dynamics CRM 2016 onto a compliant Dynamics 365 platform in six months, with all 24 problematic custom modules rewritten to the correct development model rather than carried forward as technical debt. Case management, marketing, diarising, enquiries, ticketing, and reporting now run inside one governed system instead of a fragile mix of spreadsheets and disconnected tools. The rebuild was solid enough that the relationship continued into a follow-on Incident Management System engagement.
Why This Matters
Inheriting a system a previous vendor built off-model is one of the hardest positions to be in: a standard migration is impossible, yet the business still depends on the platform every day. Evocate’s willingness to rewrite 24 modules to comply with the Dynamics 365 development model, instead of forcing a broken shortcut, is what separates a durable fix from a migration that fails on day one. For any government-funded or compliance-bound organisation stuck on ageing, over-customised CRM, this rebuild-to-standard approach is the path to a supportable platform that can keep evolving safely.
