Northcott, one of Australia’s largest not-for-profit disability service organisations, has launched their new intranet, built on the Elcom Digital Transformation Platform. The intranet, named Nula, supports a network of 2,500 staff providing services across 160 metropolitan and regional locations throughout NSW and the ACT. Nula equips staff with digital tools to provide empowering, personalised services to over 13,500 people with disability, their families and carers each year.
In November 2017, Northcott was selected by the NSW Department of Family and Community Services to manage more than 100 specialist disability accommodation services. This opportunity enabled Northcott to extend their positive impact to people with disability and their families throughout the community. It also, however, highlighted the inability of the previous intranet, NIGEL, to effectively support frontline staff members working at these services. Staff couldn’t find critical information on the intranet or access NIGEL unless they were on domain, affecting the efficiency of care and support they could provide customers. This triggered the business directive for a new intranet that could be accessed from anywhere at any time.
Northcott engaged Vikki Hsieh from BeyondIT Consulting to assist with the intranet project. Vikki conducted extensive interviews with staff across the organisation, explaining, “Staff spent a considerable amount of time searching for both information and the right person to contact. Managers and the Northcott Customer Service Team were spending valuable time supporting staff because information they need is not readily available or out-of-date. Northcott is all about people. The quicker staff can get their work done, the better support they can provide to customers.”
Northcott went through a rigorous vendor assessment process. Each shortlisted vendor was ranked with an internal score card by a large team, including IT and the project sponsor, to provide an objective assessment across all the vendors. From this, Elcom emerged as the clear vendor of choice. Josh Anstey, Customer Solutions Director at Elcom explains, “We enjoyed working with the Northcott team through the delivery and launch of the Intranet. We look forward to working closely with Northcott for years to come. There are enormous opportunities to build a supportive and accessible digital workplace on Elcom to help their staff access much needed resources and efficiently support their customers.”
The new intranet, Nula, delivers an intuitive information architecture (IA) for staff. It is accessible from anywhere at any time, supporting their head office, as well as their mobile workforce. Nula currently attracts over 15,000 sessions, 12,000 unique pageviews and 800 document downloads every week.
A key tool on Nula is the Supported Independent Living (SIL) form and workflow which enables Northcott to efficiently manage the quoting process to request funds from the NDIA for SIL customers. This workflow has numerous paths and touch points of approval through it, before being sent to the NDIA. Administrators can easily monitor all forms submitted and see where each form is in the workflow, providing governance that the right people are approving it at different points along the way. For instance, touchpoints could include the assigned contact who is responsible for overseeing the process, house lead, financial reviewer, senior manager and the claiming and compliance team.
Madeleine Donkin, Communication Manager at Northcott, explains, “Enterprise search, people search, service locator, online forms and workflows, intuitive IA, team workspaces, these are intranet tools that solve real problems within the organisation. The new intranet does a great job at supporting our large and geographically diverse workforce. This in turn helps our staff optimise and maximise support and services for every customer, while furthering our purpose to build an inclusive society where people can live the life they choose. We wanted something out-of-the-box that could be set up fairly quickly and we're really pleased with the progress so far. We look forward to adding more social tools, richer content and integrations to take it to more of a collaborative hub.”
Read the Northcott Intranet case study for more information.
About Northcott
Northcott is one of Australia’s largest not-for-profit disability service organisations, providing services from 160 metropolitan and regional locations throughout NSW and the ACT. Northcott have more than 85 years of experience and expertise in the disability service industry. A registered NDIS provider, we employ over 2000 staff and provide empowering, personalised services to over 14,500 people with disability, their families and carers each year. For more information, visit the
Northcott website.
About Elcom
Elcom has a long history of collaborating with not-for-profits and healthcare organisations to deliver compelling intranet, portal, website and training solutions that meet their evolving digital needs. The Elcom Digital Workplace Platform empowers non-technical users to easily manage content and web experiences. Elcom is the technology partner of choice for a number of organisations including Heart Foundation, WWF Australia, Cabrini, The Benevolent Society and more. These organisations benefit from improved operational efficiency, as well as increased donor, customer and community engagement, connection and awareness. For more information on how Elcom works with organisations to achieve their digital objectives, visit the
Elcom client showcase.