Our Managing Partner, Business Intelligence Manager, ICT Partner and I were the key people internally on the project. The initial project phase included stakeholder interviews with different users across the firm. From those interviews, which were about an hour each, we looked at what we actually needed and what seemed to be the recommended areas that people really wanted to see. From this research, we created a suitable information architecture and wireframes for the design.
Elcom’s Project Manager and Designer worked with us on the design process. This was a very collaborative process, ensuring that the design helped deliver an engaging and personalised experience on the intranet for users.
Our Project Manager was wonderful and really proactive. The designer was outstanding. He really listened to what I wanted and was able to take that feedback on board and work it into the design. I really felt that was excellent. Overall, I’ve been very happy.
We launched a new modern intranet, Compass, for our staff. Compass supports the idea of a single source of truth, so files can be uploaded in one place and then shared across multiple sections of the intranet. The homepage, for example, dynamically updates to display content from other sections such as the Latest News. Federated search also pulls in results from our public website, so we don’t need to double handle information.
Knowledge sharing is much easier. We’ve put all our staff policies up and made it searchable within the policies section and across the site. We also have an area for Standing Instructions. We have a lot of clients, and this area provides all the necessary instructions on how to work with any given client on day-to-day and non-standardised transactions including contact and billing preferences.
During COVID-19, there’s been more of a focus on training. It's been helpful to have a central training and development area with resources such as training materials, videos, webinar recordings, external links and calendars. Previously you had to search for presentations in different areas within our file management system or ask a colleague to assist you. This has made it a lot easier to find resources.
We have staff working across different offices and from their homes. If you wanted to access information about colleagues such as staff codes, photos or whether someone is out of the office, you had to use different systems. The Staff Directory pulls all that information into the one place, making it much faster to access. Integration with Active Directory also means new employees are automatically added to Compass.
Compass helps us highlight the FB Rice culture. We can easily share updates around social niceties and celebrate successes from a central interface. We can also display the many calendars on the intranet and combine them when needed, with filters and tabs to refine what is displayed. We then embed them onto articles and can set the privacy so that only certain or all members see a calendar. Staff can easily see what events are happening or who is on leave.