Challenge
After a period of rapid growth at the company, document management and keeping track of policies and procedures had become a challenge. It wasn’t easy to surface information for critical processes, such as tender management. The burden fell on the Quality and Compliance Manager, who, as the person most familiar with the company’s document management, spent around 5 hours a week helping people find information.
In addition, internal communications were fragmented across email, Microsoft Teams and an old intranet homepage. People were relying on file shares, email and native SharePoint to manage and share information, making it difficult to govern and track whether information was being efficiently used.
The company wanted a new way of working that would empower its employees and keep pace with its growth. They wanted to improve the communication of processes and information. This included enabling people to contribute, own and share their knowledge in a structured and easily searchable way.
Solution
The organization was considering developing a custom solution in native SharePoint when their technology partner referred them to ClearPeople and Atlas. The fact that Atlas fits squarely into, and enhances, Microsoft 365 and SharePoint was important as it meant people wouldn’t have to learn a new system.
Culture was a key consideration, too; the company wanted to break down silos, give people ownership of their processes and ensure everyone can access the information they need – and decided on Atlas to achieve this.
Other boxes Atlas ticked included:
- Access at any location, so people can work from home, in the office or at a construction site.
- Access on all devices as the previous system was accessible via laptop only.
- The ability to customize to meet each department’s needs, providing quick access to relevant news, events, external insights, or Microsoft Forms as required.
- Atlas enhances the Microsoft Teams user experience, simplifying collaboration and communication processes.
- A branded, personalized intranet platform that improves internal communications.
Implementation
Taking resources into consideration, the rollout was done on a team-by-team basis and led by 2 internal Atlas administrators who collected feedback and made modifications as they went.
Atlas has proved to be a simple, elegant and flexible solution. Even with a small internal team managing it, the rollout was smooth and took just 5 months from a kick-off meeting to having the first team onboarded. The Digital Projects Manager describes the support from ClearPeople as exceeding expectations.
Results
Atlas has given the organization a branded, collaborative workspace and intranet and a document and knowledge management system where:
- Everyone is now able to find the information they need.
- People can now move from simply searching for information to improving information quality and use.
- People enjoy customizing their workspaces and owning their content.
Highlights
A key result are the significant improvements in productivity that the company has realized. Atlas’ search functionality and capability frees up at least 20% more time for higher value tasks.
This is a particularly important change for the Quality and Compliance Manager who used to spend at least 5 hours per week finding information. Atlas has reduced this to about 1 hour per week – saving over 200 hours per year – and that time is now spent on quality assurance and refining reports.
The future
The company is now looking forward to even more significant time savings and productivity increases as Atlas becomes fully embedded in the company culture. Project management, onboarding and induction and capturing lessons learnt are three additional areas where they see Atlas providing particular benefit in the future.
