SharePoint Intranet for Effective Cross-Departmental Collaboration in a 45,000-Employee Bank

Client

Client is a Canadian company focused on development of world-class social business platforms and sites in SharePoint and other .NET technologies. The Company has over 10 years rich consulting experience working with dozens of Fortune 500 and world-leading brands – and more than 200 engagements to-date. Recently, the Client got a request from a Canadian full-service commercial bank for development of a corporate-wide intranet.

Challenge

The end Client is a banking organization with $400+ bln in assets and 40,000+ employees. Due to new offices opening, it became more difficult to maintain effective communication within the organization. Not only the interaction between separate offices and departments was poor, but internal business processes needed optimization.

Among multiple SharePoint consulting companies, the Client chose ScienceSoft, a recognized expert in delivering custom SharePoint intranets.

The solution is supposed to cover a number of requirements:

• Optimization of communication across all bank’s levels;
• Creation of unique environment for common work, share of knowledge and informal communication;
• Optimization of business processes;
• Promotion of corporate values, strengthening sense of community within the workplace;
• Involvement of every staff member into the corporate life

Solution

ScienceSoft thoroughly investigated the Client’s infrastructure, installed and implemented SharePoint environment.

After that, ScienceSoft's team successfully developed a SharePoint corporate intranet. During the development process both out-of-the-box features and customized web parts were used. The customized solution incorporates global Intranet site and numerous sub-sites with predefined functionality.

The corporate web page of bank is visible for all users. It displays exhaustive information on major bank activities through a number of links as: Community programs, Corporate Policies, Mission/Values, Organizational Charts, Corporate History, Employee Handbook and many more. The site also incorporates a calendar of events and corporate news.

In order to facilitate document sharing within the organization, a special component was crafted. This web-part displays links for applications, documents, Forms, Policies & processes and can be easily downloaded by each user. By typing a name of an interesting item in a Search field, the user can easily find it. The FAQ section of the component allows users to discuss actual questions on a forum.

Next, ScienceSoft created a dedicated workspace for each department. The workplace integrates all core activities of departments and automates internal processes. New resource provides staff members with all relevant materials in one place.

Intranet provides clear links to various department sites. Access to department web pages is only available to users from the respective department.

For a better involvement of every staff member into the corporate life, ScienceSoft set up individual pages for each employee. The part contains useful links, which offer opportunities for blogging, following colleagues, observing last user’s activities.

Informal interaction between users is even more encouraged by Social Village, which is a Yammer-like component. The feature allows staff members to post notes on the bulletin board, send pictures and collect likes, participate in lottery, leave comments, buy/sell items.

Portal was successfully integrated with Citrix applications. A SharePoint web-part displays Citrix applications that users can click on and get access to Intranet from the local client/Citrix. Integration with Citrix guarantees full-blown use of Intranet from mobile devices and complete control of portal content for IT department.

Next, the SharePoint developers optimized a corporate-wide portal for iOS and Android mobile devices. Mobile version has intuitive and clean interface and easily adapts to the most popular browsers: IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari.

The following step was elaboration of test cases for UI/functional/regression testing of Intranet. The solution was successfully tested against 4 browsers: IE 9, 10, Firefox 23,

Chrome 28, Safari 5.1.7. During project the dedicated team performed 10 cycles of regression testing. In addition, ScienceSoft’s dedicated team created and executed UI test cases for mobile: iOs and Android.

Finally, the branding effort was put into place using custom layouts and design elements to assure consistency of content as intranet usage and content increase.

Results

The Client was provided with a multifunctional user-friendly experience that addresses all his major needs. The corporate solution significantly facilitates collaboration between departments by offering them specific tools for sharing documents and storing corporate knowledge base. The solution also encourages internal communication and streamlines business processes across all the bank’s levels.

The Client notes that since the mobile version of intranet was launched, the employee productivity has greatly risen.

Technologies and Tools

SharePoint 2013, .Net, C#, JavaScript, jQuery, Visual Studio, SharePoint Designer.