The Situation
The client is one of the largest privately owned construction firms in the UK with offices in the UK, Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East.
Their current intranet was not currently widely used due to a lack of functionality and perceived interest to many end users. Many processes and practices within the business are taking longer (and costing more) than they should due to a lack of central focus or collaboration.
They also needed to better disseminate learning and best practice across their organisation and to encourage a wider community to make use of their knowledge management initiatives.
The Solution
WCI worked with the client to build a replacement for their intranet system with a new portal on Sharepoint 2003. The main aim of the new intranet portal was to create wider adoption and usage through out the company by providing a central focus for many activities including business news, news feeds and information, collaboration, simple workflow processes and data stores, and also a knowledge management portal to foster a wider use of common processes and re-use of good experiences and solutions.
WCI worked closely with the clients own technical teams, as well as the wider user base of end clients, to build a range of functionality into the new solution utilising out of the box Sharepoint 2003 facilities as well as custom built modules and web parts where necessary. Key to the success of the custom functionality was that it was all seamlessly integrated into Sharepoint to give a consistent look, feel and functional style to the end user.
WCI also developed a bespoke CMS solution based on the Telerik application to enable the Corporate Communications team to manage and update news and fluid content on the portal and to make optimum use of graphics to attract a non-technical audience.
WCI also undertook a branding exercise, in conjunction with the clients own internal communications and design team, to implement an appealing and functional look and feel for the new portal including custom controls and navigation methodologies. The close working of the two parties enabled this to be completed without the need for the client to employ an external design agency.
Since then, WCI has been helping the client to make broader use of the portal in an extranet environment with key suppliers and designers, and to explore project document management capabilities within the SharePoint 2007 platform.
Benefits
The new portal has promoted much wider adoption and usage through out the user base since its launch. The fluid and frequent content updates enabled by the CMS capabilities and other news feeds/information has made the portal a compelling place for users to visit regularly.
The tangible benefits that the portal now provides to many end users within their day to day working environment has promoted greater interest in the portals capabilities and requests for extensions and wider usage of the collaboration capabilities are now being more widely driven from the user base, rather than a technical push out.
The knowledge management functionality has enabled the client to provide an easy to use central store for processes and procedures which is already attracting a lot more attention globally and fostering much greater collaboration between once disparate parties.
For further information on this case study please contact:
janet.waplington@wcigroup.com