12 Feb 2020

Case Study: Energy Company Increases Employee Engagement and Company-wide Communication Through Office 365-based Intranet

Challenge/Opportunity

The legacy Intranet was an in-house and dated web application, maintained by the IT staff. Updating the content on the Intranet was only possible by the IT admins, documents were stored in local shared drives, and company information was not easily accessible or searchable by employees. Emails and bulletin boards served as the main forms of corporate communication.

Optimum’s Involvement

After conducting an initial assessment of the company’s document management and collaboration needs and goals, Optimum designed a SharePoint-based Intranet solution, as well as workflow automation solutions using Power Platform, enabling company-wide and departmental communication, collaboration, document management, and knowledge-sharing.

Results

This new and modern Intranet solution allowed for streamlined communication, centralized maintenance of departmental content, improved document and electronic content management, and better searchability and knowledge sharing across the company and departments, resulting in improved productivity and increased ROI and adoption of the Office 365 platform.

An Oil &Gas client engaged Optimum to establish the company’s Office 365 and SharePoint environment, develop Information Architecture and Document Management structure and processes, define SharePoint Taxonomy and Office 365 Governance, and develop a SharePoint-based Intranet and Power Automate solution.

Working with the client to understand the current and desired state for both the organization and each department, Optimum’s team of Office 365 and SharePoint experts designed and developed a modern and intelligent Intranet and Document Management solution, in the Office 365 and SharePoint Online environment, that made information and documents accessible to all employees based on the security requirements of the organization. This solution also established a platform for easy and streamlined corporate and departmental communications, collaboration, and knowledge management.

Assessment and Governance Model Build-out

An assessment of client’s existing Intranet and their on-prem SharePoint environment was conducted to identify the current and desired information architecture, document management procedures and workflows, and security needs and requirements. Each department was also assessed individually to define the future content and information management needs and the department owner’s roles and responsibilities in creating and maintaining their content.

Optimum then developed the content and document taxonomy and identified the key metadata, created the Office 365 and SharePoint Governance Model, user roles and responsibilities (to create, update, delete content), and security groups and requirements of the new Intranet.

Intranet Design and Implementation

Then a design plan was developed which included high-level architecture and design of the new Intranet, such as content and information architecture, UX/UI designs and mockups (layout, look & feel, branding navigation, and user experience), and the detailed scope items for the development of the new Intranet platform.

Optimum used SharePoint Online Modern Sites (Team and Communication sites) as well as webparts and secured document libraries to build the departmental pages. We also utilized the Power Platform (Power Automate and PowerApps) to develop approval workflows for publishing company news and updates by the page admins. Light custom coding (spfx) was also done to customize the look and feel and the user interface of the pages according to client’s requirements and needs.

After the successful development of the new Intranet in Office 365, Optimum migrated the content and documents from client’s legacy Intranet and shared folders to Office 365, ensuring proper metadata and searchability of the documents and enabling a smooth transition to the new environment.

About Optimum

Optimum offers a full suite of software services and solutions, including Software Development and System Integration, Office 365 and SharePoint Development and Consulting, Business Process Automation and Optimization, Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Warehousing, Work Automation and Project Management Software Solutions, Blockchain and IoT Solutions, and IT Staff Augmentation.

Contact Us to speak with one of our Office 365 and SharePoint experts and schedule a free discovery session.

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