A modern, AI-ready SharePoint workplace for a global manufacturer

The situation

Our client is a multinational manufacturing and supply-chain organisation running 31 or more facilities, with more than 500 people relying on SharePoint every day for collaboration, corporate communications, document management, quality management, audit documentation and the operational knowledge that keeps plants running. The trouble was that this had grown up over many years without a plan.

The SharePoint estate was legacy and fragmented. Departmental sites had been created independently, each with its own document structure and its own idea of how things should be filed. There was no standardised metadata, so search was weak and finding a document meant knowing where someone had happened to put it. Governance was thin and permissions were managed by hand, which is difficult to sustain and risky in an environment where SOPs, work instructions, quality manuals and audit records have to be controlled and traceable.

What brought things to a head was AI. As the organisation evaluated Copilot and enterprise AI retrieval, it reached an honest conclusion: none of it would work on the content they had. Good AI outcomes depend on well-governed, structured, searchable content, and their content was none of those things. Before they could adopt AI, they needed a digital workplace that deserved it.

What we did

We ran this as a large-scale modernisation with a clear order of priorities: migrate and rebuild the workplace, put a proper information architecture underneath it, and design the whole thing so that AI could be switched on later without a second restructuring.

• We modernised SharePoint end to end. We migrated off the legacy architecture onto modern SharePoint Online, structured around hub sites with communication sites and team sites hanging off them. Modern responsive pages, consistent enterprise navigation, corporate branding and a mobile-first experience gave 500-plus users across 31-plus facilities one coherent place to work, rather than dozens of disconnected ones.
• We built the information architecture as the foundation. Managed metadata services, an enterprise taxonomy, content types, site columns, document libraries and document sets gave every piece of content a consistent, metadata-driven classification. We optimised the search schema and managed properties so enterprise search actually worked, and so the content was clean and machine-readable, which is exactly what AI retrieval needs later.
• We engineered the platform in SharePoint using the SharePoint Framework, the Microsoft Graph API and the SharePoint REST APIs. Custom web parts and client-side extensions on the modern experience let us tailor the workplace to how this organisation actually operates.
• We secured it properly. Access is governed through Microsoft Entra ID with role-based access control, department-based permissions and security applied at both site and library level. We moved away from ad-hoc manual permissions to managed security groups, controlled access and least-privilege by design, with sensible permission inheritance so it stays maintainable.
• We put governance around the documents that matter most: quality documents, SOPs, work instructions, audit and compliance records, and engineering documentation. Version control, approval workflows, lifecycle management, retention and clear ownership give the organisation the traceability that a regulated manufacturing environment demands.

The thread running through all of this was AI readiness by design. A metadata-driven architecture, structured classification, a clean taxonomy, optimised search, strong governance and permission-aware access are precisely the conditions Copilot and enterprise AI need. We built them in now, so the organisation can adopt AI retrieval later without restructuring anything.

The outcome

The organisation now works from a single, modern digital workplace across 31 or more facilities and 500 or more users. Content is discoverable, collaboration and corporate communications are unified, and the estate is governed by role-based access control rather than manual effort, which cut administrative overhead and tightened security at the same time.

Standardised information architecture and controlled document lifecycles have made the organisation materially more ready for audit and compliance, which matters in manufacturing where the ability to produce the right, current, approved document on demand is not optional. Governance is stronger, ownership is clear, and the platform is built to scale.

Above all, the enterprise is now AI-ready. Because the content is well-governed, structured, classified and searchable, Copilot and enterprise AI retrieval can be adopted on top of this foundation whenever the organisation chooses, with no need to rebuild. Modern AI is only as good as the enterprise content it consumes, and successful adoption starts with a well-governed digital workplace. That is exactly what this manufacturer now has.