Falcon-Software specializes in eBusiness Website Design & Development, Web Content Management and eCommerce Solutions

Join us on Tuesday, January 11, 2011 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EST

Webinar Registration

When choosing a CMS or any software product, functional user and stakeholder requirements must be clearly defined. A structured methodology needs to be invoked to not only ensure that the proper vendor is chosen, but that the product has a productive lifespan.

With hundreds of intranet platforms on the market, picking the one that’s right for your business can be daunting. Many vendors, old and new, are more than willing to show you their wares through online flash demos, brochures and webinars. All of them seem to have great features and functionality. Some vendors boast of their extraordinarily powerful and flexible workflow and approval capabilities, one-to-one personalization, ERP/CRM integration, virtual repositories, robust search capabilities and the like. But are all these bells and whistles going to meet your needs?

Without defining those needs, the question is impossible to answer. Long before the question is even asked, a plan supported by a proven methodology needs to be developed. But determining business requirements is only half the process. The other half is determining if the technology can do what it says it can do. Knowing this, the value of a technology-neutral approach to picking the right platform becomes that much more important. An unbiased assessment of the platform’s strengths and weaknesses is essential to helping organizations see past marketing ploys and neatly-packaged products.

In this 60 minute webinar, experts Toby Ward from Prescient Digital and Heather MacFayden from Falcon-Software will present the findings of an unreleased whitepaper on how to choose an intranet technology platform. The webinar will be a practical approach to this topic, informed by the presenters’ day-to-day interactions with real clients and years of experience working in the industry. Both presenters are considered thought-leaders in their field and bring their own skill sets to the table: Toby’s expertise in strategic planning for global intranet projects coupled with Heather’s experience implementing technology solutions for hundreds of clients will ensure a unique perspective into intranet technology platforms difficult to find elsewhere. The webinar is a must for organizations wanting an insider’s perspective of what the technology decision process looks like from start to finish.

Why You Should Attend:

• Learn about the decision-making process for choosing an intranet platform as it occurs in today’s work environment, including the politics that underlie the decision.
• Hear from industry professionals the top factors to consider when choosing an intranet technology: cost, scalability, organization size and more.
• Find out why more organizations are moving towards Content Management Systems to power their intranet.
• Social media has crept its way onto the intranet and is changing the way we evaluate intranet technology platforms. Find out the implications of not taking Intranet 2.0 tools into consideration when evaluating intranet technology.

Who Should Attend:
This webinar has been developed for all internal communications professionals, including intranet managers, intranet steering committees, IT, HR and Marketing.

The Forzani Group Ltd. (FGL) is Canada’s largest national retailer of sporting goods, offering a comprehensive assortment of brand-name and private-brand products, operating stores from coast to coast. FGL’s corporate banners include Sport Chek, Sport Mart, Atmosphere, National Sports, Athletes World and Hockey Experts. The franchise banners include Sports Experts, Intersport, Atmosphere, Nevada Bob’s Golf, Hockey Experts, Fitness Source, S3 and Tech Shop. All stores offer brand-name sports and lifestyle products, as well as a number of private brands. The Company employs over 14,000 people in communities across Canada and trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Need

1. Improve communications between corporate and employees at both head office and the 229 stores.
2. To reduce the amount of email received by employees each day by providing them with a better channel for communicating ‘light’ information.
3. Help improve employee engagement at FGL and ideally improving the connection to FGL for store employees.

Challenges

The existing FGL Intranet site was unable to achieve new communication directives. Some of the major issues that contributed to the inflexibility of the Intranet site included:

1. An outdated look and feel of the Intranet.
2. The site consisted of 80% dead or outdated content.
3. The site’s code structure as well as its general technology backbone was severely flawed and required major rework as it lacked scalability. It was becoming increasingly difficult for FGL to support and maintain, let alone build upon.
4. Initial purpose of the Intranet, with its multitude of user groups had deviated since its creation and was being neglected in adding new features and technology improvements.
5. Due to the lack of content focus or ability to update the site, FGL had to resort to workarounds for internal communication (mass internal emails, paper communiqués, etc). This unfortunately resulted in a negative impact counterproductive to the Intranet’s intended purpose.

Solution

FGL was looking for a web development firm that specializes in content management software integration, providing services and support for all aspects of the development lifecycle of FGL’s proposed new Employee Intranet. Combining the information Falcon-Software collected during the discovery stage, discussions with FGL and Falcon-Software’s knowledge and experience developing corporate Intranets, we defined the scope of work for the project to include the following:

• Providing project management, expert knowledge and support specifically around the complexities of implementing a CMS driven Intranet site.
• Work with FGL’s graphic team and marketing team to create a user interface for the FLG Employee Intranet that provided a compelling user experience while effectively conveying the values and brand image of FGL.
• Work with FGL’s Information Architect to structure the Employee Intranet’s information architecture, taxonomy, and page layouts to focus on overall usability making it easy for everyone to use the Intranet, resulting in a high level of user adoption by employees.
• Architect and develop a scalable and flexible Intranet platform that will serve as the foundation for FGL’s Employee Intranet and allow for continuous improvements and advanced web services/applications to be integrated into the system in the future.
• Recommended potential features and functionality additions to the Employee Intranet Project for consideration.
• Provide sufficient training and ensure internal procedures are in place to secure a high adoption rate of FGL’s internal users of the CMS.
• Provide support services to FGL’s staff during the project and post-project release.

Key Achievements

• Bilingual Intranet – With stores across Canada, providing content in both English and French was very important.  The CMS allows FGL to translate all content that is presented on the Intranet.
• Active Directory Syncing – A key challenge of this Intranet was managing the employee profiles and login credentials while minimizing the effort required.  User data, including profile and login credentials, are synced from FGL’s internal Active Directory to the CMS. 
• Content Scheduling – With content scheduling, FGL is able to prepare content ahead of time and determine when that content will be visible on the website.  This allows FGL to keep the Intranet content fresh while minimizes the effort required by content administrators.
• Community Bulletin Board – The bulletin board allows FGL store employees from across the country to communicate with each other.
• CEO Blog – Another system geared to creating a sense of connection between the employees and executive management.

Result

Falcon-Software provided an Intranet solution that allowed FGL administrators to easily create and modify content in multiple languages keeping the Intranet fresh, current and relevant to their thousands of employees across Canada.