Business Value Case Study - Posted 12/12/2006
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Promoting Western Australia to the World With Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Tourism is big business in Australia and this is no exception in its biggest state, Western Australia. Tourism WA is the organization charged with promoting Western Australia to the world. Vital to its success is the ability of its staff to find relevant information quickly – to support internal processes or to pass information to travelers, tourism companies, other businesses and governments. Tourism WA wanted to consolidate information from a variety of systems into a single intranet and make it easier for staff to publish and update content. The organization worked with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Dimension Data on a pilot project that trialed Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 as the platform for a new intranet. Independent analyst BearingPoint found switching to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 would improve internal communications, reduce staff downtime and enhance the ability of Tourism WA staff to meet compliance obligations. Having better access to information would increase staff efficiency, saving time and money for Tourism WA.
Situation
With approximately 150 staff located in Perth, offices throughout Western Australia and a marketing presence in Sydney, London, Munich and Tokyo, Tourism WA plays a central role in Western Australia’s booming tourism industry. Tourism is a major economic driver for WA, generating A$4.3 billion in visitor expenditure in the 2005 financial year and providing 72,000 jobs. Critical to Tourism WA’s success as a service organization is the ability of its staff to find the information they need quickly. This information may be needed to support internal processes or to be distributed to consumers, the tourism and event management industries, the business community or the government. One of Tourism WA’s current projects is to deliver a sector-wide initiative called the Tourism eMarketplace – a single portal for all Tourism WA and other tourism-related Web sites in Western Australia. The Tourism eMarketplace will include a blend of information, products, services and industry knowledge relating to tourism in the state. However, this project has been hindered by Tourism WA’s outdated and static intranet. The intranet had been built by an external consultant more than five years previously. Business unit managers and staff at Tourism WA had no simple way of creating content for the site; all development and publishing had been done by technical staff. Tourism WA Chief Information Officer, Colin MacDonald, says the organization of only 150 people could not dedicate a staff member to resourcing, supporting and enhancing the intranet, which left some information outdated and unreliable. “Staff also found the intranet hard to navigate,” MacDonald says.
Solution
As the initial step in developing the Tourism eMarketplace, Tourism WA wanted to trial the technology and plan the overall architecture and approach to online publishing. Tourism WA worked with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Dimension Data to develop a pilot project that used Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 as the basis of a new intranet. Office SharePoint Server 2007 gives organizations better ways to manage their electronic content, speed up their business processes and make better decisions. As part of the pilot, Dimension Data helped Tourism WA migrate existing corporate information into the new intranet, produce a human resources site that handles existing paper-based forms electronically, build a single source of corporate policy information and create a ‘How do I?’ section to deal with the most common business requests for information. The organization also updated its Microsoft Active Directory system to make it a unified corporate directory.
Benefits
As part of the pilot project, Microsoft engaged independent business analyst and consultant BearingPoint to measure the potential impact of Office SharePoint Server 2007. BearingPoint found that the pilot project achieved time and cost savings from improved operational efficiency; reduced risk to the business from greater compliance with government legislation and internal processes; and improved Tourism WA’s ability to meet its strategic objectives.
Time and Cost Savings
The pilot project demonstrates Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 has the potential to reduce the amount of time staff spend searching for information and responding to requests for information, thus improving the turnaround time for requests for services and reducing the time spent by the IT department responding to requests to publish intranet content. In quantifying the time and cost savings that would result from the deployment of the pilot solution, Bearing Point revealed the anticipated benefits available to Tourism WA. These included:
- Cutting the time business unit staff spent searching for internal information such as publications, policies and checklists, saving 500 minutes – or A$270 – per week across the organization.
- Reducing the time IT staff spend responding to requests for information, saving up to six hours or A$192 per week.
- Using online forms to eliminate lost applications for services such as travel requests and expense claims, saving about A$34 per week.
- Turning building maintenance requests over faster, saving up to A$204 per week.
- Halving the HR department’s involvement in requests for information on policies and procedures, saving up to A$262 per week.
The total potential cost savings for Tourism WA generated by the new solution are approximately $48,000 per year.
Improved Service
The new Tourism WA intranet provides a single repository for all the information staff need to do their work, such as documents relating to policies and procedures and information to support workforce management. “Faster access to knowledge will reduce demands on the time of support staff and reduce the time employees spend looking for information,” says MacDonald. “We anticipate that a ‘How do I?’ section will eliminate the majority of information requests from business unit staff. This translates to a considerable financial saving per week for each business unit and saves the time of valuable information management staff that can be spent on higher-order activities.” The intranet allows users to create and edit content using simple page layout templates. Subject to review and sign-off, they can publish content themselves, without the need for any technical help. This improves the relevance and timeliness of the information on the intranet and allows IT staff to focus on value-adding work. “The new intranet helps staff to avoid fruitless searches and reduces the number of occasions they have to call on support from Information Management, the HR department or the library,” says MacDonald. “Everyone can be confident that the information on the new intranet is the most recent version. They can rely on it as a sound basis for decision making or for offering advice to others.”
Meeting Strategic Goals
The pilot project also helped Tourism WA update its body of corporate information. The intranet generated interest across the organization in updating and publishing content, which led to the review and renewal of all policy information. “Staff are being trained in how to change the way they conduct their daily business by using the intranet as a tool to help them work more efficiently,” says MacDonald. “A strong interest in the project by people across the organization revealed that, from a staff perspective, Tourism WA needs to be a modern organization focused on the future.”
Reduced Risk from Greater Compliance with Regulations
By making it easier for staff to access corporate policy information, Tourism WA has enhanced organizational compliance with external regulations as well as with its own corporate procedures. The availability of a comprehensive and dynamically updated central repository of policies will give Tourism WA staff the support they need to comply with such requirements, reducing the risk of non-compliance for the organization. The versioning capability in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 keeps track of draft content during its review and retains earlier versions when content is updated. “We have improved how we create, access and monitor information by using Office SharePoint Server 2007 for our intranet,” MacDonald says. Tourism WA has plans to fully integrate the intranet with its document management system. This will provide a strong information management approach by combining the accessibility of by Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the compliance capabilities of its existing document management system.
Microsoft Office System
The Microsoft Office System is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact. For more information about the Microsoft Office System, go to: www.microsoft.com/office
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com For more information about Dimension Data products and services, call (612) 8336 5100 or visit the Web site at: www.dimensiondata.com.au For more information about Tourism WA products and services, call (618) 9262 1700 or visit the Web site at: www.westernaustralia.com
