Informa's worldwide
unified communication vision
Overview
Customer: informa
Website: www.informa.nl
Customer Size: 5,000 employees
Country or Region: The Netherlands
Industry: Media
Customer Profile
Informa is a global media company providing knowledge, information and specialist skills and services to academics, businesses and individuals. The organisation employs around 8,000 persons and operates in more than 150 offices in over 40 countries.
Software and Services
· Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
- Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013
- Microsoft Lync 2013 / “Indigo is Informa’s long-term unified communication vision on sharing information and collaborating across the globe.”
Isobel Peck, Group Chief Marketing Officer
“We are only at the very beginning of a new way of communicating, but for me the project has been 100% successful so far,” says Isobel Peck, Group Chief Marketing Officer. “Indigo will give us the opportunity to do cross-marketing and work together on product launches and events. We are definitely confident that the new communication platform will help us increase our revenue from both existing and new business, and add value for our customers.”
Jan van Deenen, CTO Group Marketing, adds: ”People adapt to Indigo immediately. They are able to share information and collaborate. They say it is easy, contains valuable information and has an appealing design. We built it with user experience in mind and seem to have succeeded.”
Situation
Even though diversity is key to Informa, the group felt the need to communicate and collaborate more efficiently and effectively across divisions and countries to increase revenue and create new business opportunities.
Solution
Once Informa CEO Peter Rigby had decided for a unified communication platform, Jan van Deenen and his Dutch team initiated the project. Jan: “We considered different packages with common intranet functionality. But we wanted more. We needed the platform to be customisable to our usability requirements, information access, corporate branding and awareness.
As part of our search for a future-proof solution Caesar Experts, with whom we have had a long working relationship, showed us the possibilities of using Sharepoint. Although many of our colleagues strongly advised against Sharepoint, because of its scale and assumed inflexibility, we decided together with our CIO Jonathan Earp that Sharepoint in combination with Lync Online was the best option to fit our Microsoft landscape.”
Proof of Concept
As the project was ambitious in scope, budget and time, Caesar Experts first developed a Proof of Concept to verify whether Sharepoint would really fit the requirements and meet Board approval. One third of the Board was not convinced that a new intranet was the best investment in a slacking economy. The Proof of Concept mainly focused on user experience and its value to the company. Eight weeks later, Isobel presented the Indigo prototype to the Board and demonstrated the corporate and company homepages, the staff finder, marketing calendar and the overall ease of finding information. Isobel: “Even the most sceptical Board Members were enthusiastic. The outcome? A unanimous ‘yes’ to Indigo, our next step in unified communications.”
Live on schedule
From the beginning, the design phase was separated from the development phase. A London design agency developed the user interface, based on best user experience for intranet. However, the original designs did not exactly match technical developments. Isobel: “Despite the setback, Caesar Experts was incredibly helpful in tweaking the designs into workable templates, so there was no delay.”
The deadline for going live was four months. Jan continues: “Just after we had presented Indigo to an enthusiastic global CIO Council, we went live on schedule, with 5,000 employees in two major companies: Informa Business Information (IBI), and Taylor & Francis, academic publishers. Quite daring for a pilot, but people love to work with Indigo and find it very user-friendly.”
Responsive to customer needs
When asked about Caesar Experts’ role in the success of Indigo, Jan is quite decisive. “Caesar Experts is highly responsive to customer needs. Informa is an ambitious company. We are very agile and work in short delivery cycles, which requires a lot of effort from all people involved. But in the end, we are quicker and cheaper. Caesar Experts has adopted this methodology and has geared their team into our working methods. They have proven that their approach works for demanding projects like ours.” Isobel adds: “Also, they quite rapidly had a good understanding of our complex business and the way in which we operate. They have made a real contribution to the success of the project.”
New era
Indigo is Informa’s long-term unified communication vision on sharing information and collaborating across the globe. The first phase is to familiarise the group with sharing functionality and consolidate this phase both from IT and business perspectives. The next phase will be to add team functionality to really work together within and between company branches. Jan: “I trust Caesar Experts will support us in this transition. With their close co-operation with Microsoft and their market knowledge they are on top of new developments. We know them as an organisation that proactively keeps us abreast of new developments. They are really different from other companies in that they partner with us and make us feel as a valued customer.”
SharePoint
SharePoint is the new way to work together. A simplified user experience helps you organize, sync, and share all your content. New social capabilities make it easy to share ideas, keep track of what your colleagues are working on, and discover experts you never knew existed.
For more information go to:
www.sharepoint.microsoft.com