Why the order matters
When a handover is friendly, you get documentation, passwords and backups on a planned date. When it isn’t, you get them late, incomplete or not at all, and the shutdown date doesn’t move.
The first days decide whether you lose data or just time. Secure whatever lets you prove ownership and get back in, before you improve anything.
The first 72 hours
1. Domain and DNS
Whoever controls your domain controls your email and your website. Check who the registered owner is and who can log in at the registrar. Make sure it’s your company, not the provider, and change the login.
2. Microsoft 365 admin access
Make sure at least two named people at your firm have global administrator rights, plus an emergency account that isn’t tied to any one person. Then review who else has admin rights, including the provider’s own accounts and any delegated admin access, and remove what you don’t need.
3. Licences and billing
If your licences are bought through the old provider, find out how and when they can move. Licences that lapse can take mailboxes and data with them.
4. Backups
Ask for the backups, but don’t count on getting them. Set up your own backups of Microsoft 365, servers and critical data straight away, and test a restore.
5. Firewall, VPN and remote access
Get admin access to the firewall and anything that connects your sites or home workers. If you can’t, plan to replace it: remote access you don’t control is a risk, not a convenience.
6. Remote management agents
The old provider’s management and remote-access tools are often still installed on every device. Remove them once your own are in place, so nobody keeps a way in.
7. Passwords and shared accounts
Collect admin passwords in a vault your firm controls, and change every shared password the provider knew.
Plan the switchover around your projects
Don’t switch everything at once on a Tuesday morning. Move what’s fragile first, test the way back before each step and put the disruptive steps into evenings and weekends. Tell your team in advance what changes on Monday and who to call.
When to rebuild instead of migrating
If nothing is documented, migrating the old setup means inheriting problems nobody can explain. A clean rebuild with the data moved across is often faster, and it’s the only way to be sure what you’re running.
That’s what we did for a 50-person engineering firm whose provider handed over no documentation and no backups. Read the case study.