The Solution
The main stakeholders in this decision alongside myself, were the department managers, headed by our CEO.
We had 3 key selection criteria for evaluating solutions. The right solution had to:
1) Be an all-in-one solution with both software and hosting from one provider. The bonus with this was the reduced cost as opposed to using a third-party hosting company.
2) Provide the core functionality required including a marketing calendar and document repository.
3) Be a proven out-of-the-box platform with ongoing vendor support including seamless upgrades and minimal IT maintenance for our end. The look and feel was the only component we wanted to customise.
And of course, it had to fall within our budget. The other main consideration that ultimately played a major role in choosing Elcom was that the annual subscription fee was less than other solutions we were looking at.
We deployed the intranet for our staff in head office and all our franchise stores. We now have additional users who previously didn't have individual access including board members and franchise store staff.
We have full control over who has access to the intranet and at what level, with the security permissions feature.
The intranet primarily acts as an information source and document repository where staff from across Australia can easily find their shared content and resources in a central place, from product information and the latest advertising campaigns to POS user manuals.
eLearning was the biggest activity we ran through the intranet and we used Elcom’s eLearning module for about a year after launching. It allowed us to easily deliver training modules online for in-store staff. We ran training on our bedMATCH program, an in-store diagnostic system that defines the best mattress for a customer.
The calendar module is great. It lets us display the Microsoft Exchange calendar over the intranet calendar and sync new appointments made in the intranet calendar to Exchange calendars. Users can filter the intranet calendar by appointment type such as trade fair/expo, marketing events and so on.
The corporate directory is helpful for quickly finding the direct contact details of a franchise or head office staff. Users can search for a contact by user or by department. The flexible organisation chart displays the line of reporting for users and clicks through to a profile page with their full details.
We also use the forms and workflows tool. Covering Helpdesk tickets, Annual Leave applications and Expense claims, all form part of a workflow through to a department or even integrating into third party software.