CHEOPS Technology

Cutting AI Readiness Assessments from Days to Hours at CHEOPS

How CHEOPS Technology cut Microsoft 365 assessments from 5 days to 2 hours, laying the foundation for secure, scalable Copilot deployment.

Challenge: The Lack of Visibility Became a Liability

As a Microsoft integrator, CHEOPS Technology was already helping clients build and manage complex Microsoft 365 environments. But as they began expanding their service offering around AI, they needed a way to run more assessments without increasing the time spent on each one.

At the same time, they found that many clients didn't have a clear view of how their data was shared or accessed. Without that visibility, AI adoption could expose data that wasn't properly secured or labeled.

To address this, CHEOPS relied on manual AI readiness assessments using Microsoft tools and internal processes.

"It was a very manual process. It could take several days, especially with the time needed to prepare reports and presentations."

— Hugues Moccand, Systems Architect at CHEOPS

The process typically began with validating the customer's security posture — using available tools where possible, but often requiring additional manual verification within Microsoft 365 admin portals to review specific configurations.

Beyond security, CHEOPS also needed to assess data management across the organization, including how it was structured, shared, and governed. All of this information then had to be manually consolidated into a report that often combined findings from multiple tools and manual checks.

The result was a process that typically took five to ten days per assessment depending on the size of the tenant. But time wasn't the only challenge.

"Because we were using multiple tools and manual steps, there was always a risk of missing something important. Users often share files externally through OneDrive or Teams links, and it's very difficult to measure how much data is actually being shared outside the organization."

— Hugues Moccand

As demand for AI increased, this approach became harder to maintain. CHEOPS needed a way to run assessments faster while getting a more consistent view of the environments they were preparing for AI.

Solution: Structure Replaced Fragmentation

CHEOPS knew they couldn't deliver AI readiness assessments at a higher volume without reducing the manual work involved. So they turned to Cloudiway's AI Readiness Assessment to find the structured approach they were looking for.

With Cloudiway, CHEOPS could now run a single assessment that analyzes permissions, sharing configurations, governance controls, and overall security posture across the tenant instead of relying on multiple tools and manual checks.

"It was easy to connect to the customer environment because everything is set up automatically, including the creation of several applications to parallelize the process."

— Hugues Moccand

Once activated, the assessment runs independently, so no manual work is needed while it's running.

"For 450 users, the analysis took two hours. But we can run the assessment, have some other tasks to be done, and go back to the analysis when it's done and start to work on it, export, report, and so on."

— Hugues Moccand

The assessment delivers two types of reports — one for business stakeholders and one with detailed technical findings — giving CHEOPS a consistent way to review results and decide what to address next.

Results: Less Time, Less Effort, More Visibility

CHEOPS removed one of the main bottlenecks in their process with Cloudiway's assessment. What had previously taken five to ten days could now be completed in a few hours. Beyond speed, CHEOPS gained better visibility into areas that were difficult to assess manually.

"Oversharing was the biggest risk we were worried about. It's a relief to have this information included in the report, since it's something we would otherwise find very challenging to identify."

— Hugues Moccand

The platform helped CHEOPS introduce a more consistent way of evaluating environments. Moccand says the automated reporting eliminates time-consuming manual operations, while also providing more information (especially around data management) than comparable tools from Microsoft.

Each assessment produces a score from 1 to 5, along with detailed findings, replacing the manual percentages CHEOPS used before and making it easier to understand risk levels and prioritize actions.

Even the reporting structure itself changed significantly with Cloudiway, making outputs clearer, more actionable, and easier for both technical and business stakeholders to use.

The automated reporting also allows the CHEOPS team to rethink how its work is distributed, with junior team members now able to take on the assessment and senior architects freed up to focus on reviewing results and advising on next steps.

Overall, by replacing manual steps and separate tools with a single assessment, CHEOPS now has a process they can repeat across more clients without increasing effort.

"This will speed up the process and make our services more reliable. Because it's a single tool, we can industrialize our approach, meaning we can take on more projects, run more audits, and deliver better reports to our customers."

— Hugues Moccand

Next Steps: CHEOPS Is Now Ready to Industrialize AI Readiness

As CHEOPS expands its AI offering, the Cloudiway AI Readiness Assessment is becoming the first step before Microsoft Copilot deployments.

"We will encourage our customers to do an assessment before starting Microsoft Copilot implementation. We have a lot of demand for AI from our customers, so I think we will be using Cloudiway's AI Readiness Assessment a lot."

— Hugues Moccand

The structured reports also make it easier to identify and prioritize follow-up work. Instead of manually building reports, CHEOPS can use the assessment output to point directly to remediation tasks and next steps.

Beyond AI readiness, CHEOPS is also planning to use the same assessment for Microsoft 365 security audits, even for clients not planning to adopt Copilot.

"We will use Cloudiway's Assessment tool to do an AI assessment as preparation to implement Microsoft Copilot. But because it has very useful security information, even if the customer is not interested in Microsoft Copilot implementation, we can apply it in a general Microsoft 365 security audit."

— Hugues Moccand

This gives CHEOPS a way to use the same process across different types of projects, not just AI-related work. As demand for AI continues, the team expects to run more of these assessments as part of their standard approach.