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Australian Construction Firm Benefits From Integrated Business Collaboration Platform“I believe SharePoint and Visio will change the way John Holland conducts its business. It will help us to be more disciplined in our processes approach.
It’s a big change agent for us.”
Les Oates, CIO, John Holland
John Holland is one of Australia’s leading and most diversified contracting, engineering and services providers, established over 60 years ago.
Employing over 6,000 people in multiple locations, and managing numerous concurrent projects, John Holland needs to create, store and publish a wealth of project documentation. Currently using Lotus Notes as its workflow management system, the company wanted to improve access, understanding and collaboration
by delivering information through a Web browser. John Holland partnered with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Stargate Global Consulting to deliver a Proof of Concept using Microsoft SharePoint 2010 as the delivery platform for its Joint Enterprise Management Solution. Using Visio Premium 2010 to publish and present visually its business procedures and processes, John Holland is changing the way the company conducts its business.
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Situation
John Holland is one of Australia’s leading and most diversified contracting, engineering and services providers, employing over 6,000 people across the country. Established in 1949, John Holland has offices in all metropolitan and major regional centers throughout Australia and delivers projects across
the country and in South East Asia.
The company’s experience covers a wide range of contracting and services capabilities, from tunneling to power, to water and communications and engineering and construction solutions in the energy and resources sectors; along with rail, contract mining and aviation maintenance services. These niche national skills are underpinned by industry leading capabilities in building and civil construction.
Within the dynamic industry in which John Holland operates, there are large numbers of procedures, processes and policies to manage the many different methods of construction. These documents need to be created, updated and then published for each project, so they can be made easily available to all project members.
John Holland’s IT infrastructure supports over 5000 users and is a mixed environment with both specialist applications and Microsoft solutions.
The company is using Lotus Notes as its workflow management system to store all procedures and processes that are developed in Microsoft Word 2003 and PDF files for both the company and for individual projects. As well as its Lotus Notes environment for storing and publishing documents, the company is running its intranet on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
Les Oates, CIO, John Holland, explains the limitations of John Holland’s existing system: “We have been using Lotus Notes for at least 15 years, and the key challenges we continue to face are how our people actually find the relevant policies and procedures, and understand how particular business procedures and process relate to their specific job.”
John Holland projects often involve joint ventures and alliances between multiple companies, requiring collaboration and access to shared project documentation. This means for each new project decisions need to be made as to whose system should be used, which metrics take precedence, and who will support the IT infrastructure. Oates confirms, “If we work with a company the same size as us, inevitable the first discussion that needs to be made is whose systems will be used, and who is going to support the IT. If our system is used then we need to install our applications on every user machine, and provide support.”
As well as issues of access and support, users found it difficult to search and locate the appropriate procedure, process or policy, and understand how this specific documentation fitted within the wide business procedure and overall project. There was no collaboration environment and the company heavily relied on email. To document its core policies and procedures as well as variations for each project, John Holland was using static Microsoft Visio text based static diagrams saved as PDF files and shared over email. “We weren’t able to visually present procedures and policies to ensure our users understood how these related to the entire project,” comments Oates.
The company has core business requirements that the IT department was defining and developing for end users. Each project can have subtle differences, requiring the IT department to make updates for individual projects, as well as produce reports based on the disparate information available. This meant John Holland was highly dependent on its IT department for development and reporting, which slowed its business responsiveness. Oates comments on this from a data perspective, “At the moment we have mountains of information sitting within our database. The users can’t get to it unless they ask for specific reports to be developed for them.”
In 2007 John Holland began building a Joint Enterprise Management Solution (JEMS) that will deliver a unified application and process delivery portal using a web browser interface. The portal will include many of the processes and applications the company currently runs in various Line of Business (LOB) systems and Lotus Notes. Oates explains, “The company’s JEMS strategy is designed to move to a unified system view of working with data and delivery occurring via the Web. With a web interface everyone can access and use the systems. That’s what this migration is all about.”
Solution
John Holland viewed Microsoft SharePoint 2010 as the market leader in providing an integrated platform to support content management, collaboration and information sharing across an organization. “Two years ago when we decided to move to a web interface we looked at the various products. We felt at that stage that SharePoint was one of the market leaders. And Microsoft over the last five years has moved towards a consistent interface approach which is something that’s been of great interest to us.”
John Holland chose to partner with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Stargate Global Consulting to deploy Microsoft SharePoint 2010 as its application and process delivery portal. Oates explains John Holland’s selection: “With numerous projects starting and finishing all the time and people rolling on and off projects, the training required, environment and end user interface are critical for us. We felt the way Microsoft has moved towards a consistent approach where products have the same ribbon user interface and are all integrated is a well defined strategy. That was one of the key reasons for our selection: the integration of SharePoint 2010 with other Microsoft products.”
The Proof of Concept began in January 2010 and will run for several months. SharePoint 2010 will enable John Holland to collaborate in new ways. The platform provides cross-browser Web access for any user, without the need for installing SharePoint 2010 or previous versions on user machines. The Web interface enables multiple John Holland project partners to access the same project information as long as they have an Internet connection.
With John Holland’s difficulty in being able to present visually its business procedures and processes at both the overall project level and for specific roles and tasks, Microsoft proposed deploying Microsoft Visio Premium 2010 due to its advanced diagrammatic capabilities, which includes new templates for Business Process Management Notations (BPMN), and its seamless integration with SharePoint 2010. Users can see real-time information in their browsers at a high level, right on the diagram, and click into the details even if they don’t have Visio 2010 installed.
As well as using the BPMN template, John Holland is using the SharePoint workflow template, Workflow diagram and the Cross Functional flowchart. All these templates are used to visualize high level processes as well as the more detailed sub-processes and to provide context to forms, policies and procedures. The Visio diagrams provide a visualization of the process for John Holland, and serve as a user interface to interact with the elements of a process.
Oates confirms, “We felt Visio 2010 would be a really good fit for us. We need users to understand what the business processes are in order to do their work. Visio 2010 allows users to click on a business process within the procedure to open up the forms they require to do their work. It’s a real advantage for us.”
With SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010 and PerformancePoint Services, users can now take responsibility for the unique configurable requirements for each specific project. With SharePoint 2010 being configurable, there is less reliance on the IT department for updates and changes, and the business is able to respond faster.
Visio Services and SharePoint 2010 integration means that users can now create their own visual mash-ups of actionable data and diagrams using templates for BPMN. Visio diagrams can connect to one or more data sources such as Microsoft Excel and Microsoft SQL Server, and the diagrams can be refreshed automatically in real-time. Users viewing the procedural diagram in their browser can click a shape in the diagram and immediately see related process information in a connected Web part, such as an InfoPath Form or SharePoint List.
In the past users have struggled to find the relevant business procedure, understand what the procedure is and how it relates to the overall business process. “Now users can search for a high level business procedure, it will pop up in Visio and show the full process flow and then from there users can drill down into the level and area required to complete their area of work. It’s a major step forward for us,” says Oates.
Benefits
Les Oates believes Visio 2010 integrated with SharePoint 2010 provides the power to change the way John Holland works. “I believe SharePoint and Visio will change the way John Holland conducts its business. It will help us to be more disciplined in our processes approach and to engage with our end users in understanding the business processes and requirements. It’s a big change agent for us.”
Increases Productivity
Previously users struggled to access information and make sense of it. The JEMS approach is designed to provide John Holland’s users and customers with an improved user experience and direct access to information. “At the moment we have other applications that we use as well as Lotus Notes and so the user experience is inconsistent and this decreases productivity. What we’re trying to deliver with SharePoint and Visio is a consistent interface approach for all information for the end user. The productivity gain will potentially be enormous because we can give users better access to information, which is a major benefit for the company,” says Oates.
Improves Collaboration
John Holland believes the more the company can move towards a Web interface for its access to information, the better it is for the business. Currently when the company has a project that uses particular applications, the IT department needs to deliver these onto individual machines for all project members. Now through SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft product integration, everyone has access. “It’s really to do with collaboration. We have projects that have anywhere between one user and right up to potentially 700 users, all using the same applications, having to complete the same business processes for delivery of a project. With a web interface, users all have access to one consistent look and feel for the entire product suite.”
Reduces IT Costs
John Holland can reduce its IT costs through SharePoint 2010 providing seamless integration and familiar contextual experience withother Microsoftproducts. Users are being empowered to configure procedures and processes as they need to. “We may have a major project that uses our core business processes, and we need to change say 20 percent of them for the project. Users can simply point and click, pick up those business processes, and then create a new version, which they customize for their own use. IT doesn’t need any involvement whatsoever,” confirms Oates.
Increases Ease of Access
SharePoint 2010 features a rich out-of-the-box capability of working with Web versions of Office Client applications so people can access documents, spreadsheets, presentations and notes
need products such as Visio or Excel installed. Microsoft bringing Office applications into SharePoint and allowing the end user to be able to use them through the Web browser – that’s a real advantage for us,” says Oates.
Microsoft Visio 2010
The advanced diagramming tools of Microsoft® Visio® 2010 help you simplify complexity with dynamic, data-driven visuals and new ways to share on the Web in real-time. Start by building your diagram with a diverse set of professional-looking templates and modern, pre-drawn shapes. Then, easily link your diagram to popular data sources (such as Microsoft® Office Excel®). You’ll see data automatically refresh right within your diagram, reflected in vibrant visuals such as icons, symbols, colors, and bar graphs. Finally, with just a few clicks, publish your data-linked diagram to Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2010, and provide access to others on the Web, even if they don’t have Visio. Together, simplicity, data-driven shapes, and Web sharing make Visio one of the most powerful ways to see and understand important information.
For more information about Microsoft Visio 2010, go to:
www.visio.com
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