Family Building Society enlists Trustmarque for Sharepoint intranet rollout

  • Cloud , IT Innovations , Technical
  • 09.01.2017 08:30 am

Trustmarque Solutions Limited (part of Capita PLC) has completed a project with Family Building Society (FBS) to develop a cloud-based intranet based on Microsoft SharePoint.

The intranet will be used by more than 160 employees; it is designed to help FBS reduce the volume of internal emails and improve staff collaboration across the business. The project was delivered in an eight-week agile development project; giving FBS a central portal for all employees to communicate quickly, access forms and documents, and share data. Trustmarque migrated FBS’ existing data to the intranet and integrated it with Microsoft Active Directory, providing a seamless and secure experience for users. SharePoint licensing was procured through Trustmarque’s Cloud-ESP, ensuring maximum return on investment and allowing FBS to easily control and manage costs.

Due to rapid growth, the number of employees at FBS grew from 90 to 160 in under three years. This expansion meant legacy communication systems and processes were inefficient; staff were sharing documents via email and spending time searching for information on a central network drive. At the same time, a growing number of employees meant the volume of email increased dramatically, putting staff productivity at risk. FBS wanted to create its intranet using SharePoint, but with a small development team, it lacked the time and resources to develop the intranet in-house. It therefore engaged Trustmarque to consult with FBS, and to develop its intranet. Trustmarque also delivered a series of workshops to FBS, in which it demonstrated the potential of SharePoint; it also worked closely with FBS to help it understand how it could benefit from the technology.

FBS purchased SharePoint licensing required via Trustmarque’s Cloud-ESP, which simplifies the purchase and management of cloud services. This enabled FBS to benefit from monthly billing, giving it the freedom to upgrade to SharePoint Plan 2 at a time convenient to the business, rather than waiting for the 12-month renewal. The intranet is used to host documents, manuals and policies that staff frequently access, and has led to a much more collaborative way of working. It is also a space for staff to coordinate the many social activities they are involved in. An initial implementation review of FBS’ employees received extremely positive feedback. FBS plan to extend the use of the intranet further in 2017, to add more collaborative workflow functionality.

“The intranet is the first thing staff see when they switch their computers on, and in just a few clicks they can be collaborating easily with their colleagues,” commented Head of Business Change, FBS, Michael Feather. “This simplicity means our employees can communicate quickly without being snowed under by email. Trustmarque understood exactly what business outcomes we wanted to achieve and delivered an intranet that met these aims; providing the necessary consultation and training on the way. By helping consolidate some of our existing legacy systems, Trustmarque has helped us ‘future-proof’ the intranet, and has also shown us the potential benefits of moving other services to the cloud in the future.”

“Office 365 offers more than just email, something that is often overlooked by many companies,” commented David Nicholson, Director at Trustmarque. “In FBS’ case, using SharePoint to power its intranet was an ideal way for the company to foster greater collaboration and simplify communication. The work we have done with FBS in delivering the intranet and meeting its objectives, is testament to Trustmarque’s end-to-end IT service capabilities and our expertise with Microsoft products and licensing. Facilitating easy collaboration and communication also leaves FBS free to concentrate on continuing to provide an excellent service to customers.” 

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