AIS has leveraged the SharePoint platform to build custom applications for global companies and the U.S. government since the product’s launch. Our industry-leading teams have applied their SharePoint expertise on many projects ranging from custom workflow applications to award-winning intranets and websites. After initially architecting a new SharePoint document management solution for Chemonics, AIS was asked to help consolidate multiple corporate intranets from across the organization into one new, global SharePoint intranet called DailyChem. Learn more about how this user-friendly intranet promotes better management of company information, assets and global resources.
Background
Chemonics provides project management support for international aid projects. Working in conjunction with USAID, other government entities and private industry, Chemonics manages projects that promote meaningful change around the world to help people live healthier and more productive, independent lives. The company has a full-time staff of around 500 employees and a network of partners that reaches 3,500 individuals across the world — from metropolitan areas to remote villages. In order to support their development missions, Chemonics required an efficient, scalable and globally-accessible knowledge management system. This system needed to empower managers to rapidly assign best-fit human resources on-site, and at the same time provide them with access to the expertise and experiences of the entire Chemonics organization.
Challenge
Prior to working with AIS, Chemonics had invested in a SharePoint solution for collaboration and document management, but it was not really reaping the full value of Sharepoint’s capabilities. Initially the application served solely as a file-share site that held data related to the organization’s proposal and project management processes, but the system was slow and made it difficult to find information. As a result, the application was not well-received by the organization and its users were not readily engaged to improve upon it. Unhappy users aside, the system held all the data related to Chemonics’ entire proposal and project management processes — including each project’s documentation and deliverables – making it absolutely critical to their business. Simply put, Chemonics’ staff used this solution because they had to—and they complained loudly. Additionally, the company’s primary Internet site was on an antiquated system and made it difficult to update content – which then became out-of-date and irrelevant.
Solution
The AIS team came in to evaluate Chemonics’ current implementation in order to plan the most effective migration strategy. AIS found numerous problems with the existing configurations and immediately architected a better solution (including a testing and staging environment phase
pre-launch) that would scale to meet Chemonics’ growing data needs. AIS was tasked with consolidating multiple corporate intranets from across the organization into one new, global SharePoint intranet. AIS determined the business needs and daily usage scenarios and built a visually appealing, collaborative intranet known as DailyChem. DailyChem is a successful and
easy-to-use intranet that promotes better management of company information, assets and global resources.
The AIS team then added SharePoint’s MySite functionality to the DailyChem intranet, creating a more social experience for users, complete with newsfeeds and search capabilities fed by user input. The addition of MySites also helped Chemonics resolve an ongoing issue of finding the right human experts at the right time. Previously, company leaders held multiple meetings to discuss human resource availability and expertise in order to effectively staff projects. With the information built into individual MySite profiles, the search for expert resources is now automated, saving search time and getting projects staffed rapidly.
With internal information management processes standardized and working for all employees, Chemonics turned their focus to their Internet site. Chemonics’s website was outdated, with a cumbersome content management system that required support from the IT department for every update. The team wanted a dynamic and modern site that would give the outside world a glimpse into Chemonics’ unique company “personality” and attract high-quality consultants as well as long-term staff. Within three months, AIS helped Chemonics completely rebuild and launch their new website—also on the SharePoint platform. Because the marketing communications team was already familiar with using SharePoint (thanks to DailyChem), they can finally make content updates in real-time without having to call in IT resources. The new site allows Chemonics to keep information fresh and relevant to their audiences.
Results
DailyChem, including MySites, enables users to quickly find documents and people with the expertise needed to complete humanitarian missions, which in turn saves everyone in the organization time. “We’re now starting the shift away from an email-dependent culture,” said Michelle Millard, Director of Strategic Programs at Chemonics. “We’ve moved from communicating to employees with 20 emails-a-week to sending a single email that points people to DailyChem for all of the latest updates.”
Chemonics’ users are now actively engaged with groups and seek out ways to have their successes highlighted on the site. From a metrics perspective, time now spent on the site is up 92 percent and the bounce rate is down 40 percent. “Through this process we learned a lot about SharePoint,” said Millard. “We were regularly surprised at the way it could be customized to do what we needed it to do. The entire organization of the site is simple and elegant.” The Chemonics’ corporate intranet redesign and launch of DailyChem was recognized as a Silver Inkwell Award winner in the Design/Most Improved Design category.
AIS also utilized SharePoint to help the organization reach its goal of becoming ISO 9001 certified. This designation is widely accepted by Chemonics’ partners and customers as proof that the company ensures the highest levels of customer satisfaction while meeting customers’ regulatory requirements.
Technology
- SharePoint
