The Situation
A weekly internal newsletter in Word format, and a non-existent central document system were high on the list of limitations facing the Northland Regional Council. Viewing an intranet as a powerful one-stop shop for information that would close several business gaps, the Northland Regional Council (NRC) literally went shopping around …
“We called for a rigorous parade of products and suppliers, looking for a complete package that would team a very good product up with a company to bring a full service attitude to meeting our needs.” Jason Dawson, Community Relations Manager, NRC.
The Pain
A widening information gap with no central source of data for all to use. A one dimensional newsletter that dated quickly and missed opportunities to build better staff culture and communication.
Project Express
NRC's team on Project Express all had experience of varying intranet products from their time in other organisations. Cost overruns and gaps in support were common pitfalls.
“In the quoting process, Intergen gave us a real picture of what was ahead, not hiding potential blow out areas, and provided specific answers where others perhaps painted just a broad outline. They demonstrated a lot of experience having led a lot of projects across local government.” Jason Dawson.
EPiServer was selected as the right content management system to sit within the NRC environment, being chosen predominantly for its ease of use. Jason Dawson puts it succinctly by saying, “We are communicators not developers.”
With over 110 staff spread across several departments and offices, NRC needed a product that would be easy to use and publish with, offered straightforward templates and custom workflow processes for editing, multi language ability, a strong search mechanism, had a great feel visually, and had plenty of scope to be an interactive experience.
Tracey Morris, NRC's Online Communications Officer plucked a few comments from the online survey showing how well staff have hooked into using Express - “User-friendly (even for the techno-phobe!)”, “A large amount of council info in one place”, “Very inclusive”, “Gotta love those hyperlinks”.
Express has proven to be an excellent balance of content and graphics. Corporate information sits comfortably with hands-on announcements/reviews/social areas/events calendar/news archive/timesheets and yes, a Super 14 sweepstake.
An off-the-shelf answer.
An aggressive four-week deadline was another factor in choosing the EPiServer product. As a pre-built answer it had proven functionalities that NRC could tick off from a lengthy requirements list.
The Gain
NRC now has a multi-dimensional experience that's good news on many fronts, whether it is pure business related or building NRC's internal culture. Friday's frantic deadline for the old emailed newsletter is history.
Around 75% of NRC's staff use Express on a regular daily basis with social areas getting high usage.
Express is a one-stop shop for information. And it doesn't stop there. What took hours is now up to the minute with EPiServer.
“We made the deadline because Intergen put the level of dedication it said it would into the project - across all areas. Being essentially a pre-built package, we could run with it quickly and we felt confident there would be no surprises in its delivery.” Jason Dawson