4-page Case Study - Posted 7/10/2007
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Leading Defence Research Company Puts 24-Hour Information at Scientists’ Fingertips
Scientists and engineers at defence research company QinetiQ use intellectual capital from internal and external systems to support their revolutionary scientific developments. But libraries were underused, and information often difficult to access. The Enterprise Portal, based on Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007, is a result of the research company’s work in building a central repository for information and collaboration. Enterprise Search is part of this. It offers a highly secure search across all systems, helping people find the information they need quickly. Now, scientists can collaborate regardless of their location across 40 sites. New recruits can find any scientist among 7,000, based on their expertise. Employees have performed 40,000 searches in one month, and scientists are supporting their developments by accessing 40 per cent more external information than before.
Situation
Our everyday lives are enhanced by the developments of scientists and engineers working in the defence sector. Mobile phones were invented as defence communications technologies, microwaves are a result of work on radar technology, and package holidays are made possible by the jet engine.
QinetiQ, a leading defence technology and security company, is responsible for many of these developments. Its transition from the public sector to the private sector gives its customers in defence, security, technology, and other commercial markets the benefit of 60 years of national investment in technology research. QinetiQ has 8,000 employees in the United Kingdom (U.K.), most of which are scientists and engineers working on revolutionary studies that affect much of how we live and work.
Vast amounts of intellectual capital drive the business, forming the basis of all scientific development. This information comes from a variety of sources. Many QinetiQ scientists at more than 60 sites across the U.K. have knowledge and experience that’s valuable to other teams and individuals. Information also comes from external books, publications, and academic references subscribed to by QinetiQ for industry insight and complementary research—as well as internal reports and records held in central archives.
Sharing and distributing information in this business is central to the work people do. And, as a leader in its field, QinetiQ is always looking for ways to help employees do their jobs more efficiently. Carl Taylor, Corporate Systems Architect, QinetiQ, worked with his colleagues to devise a strategy to make the vast amounts of information around the organisation available quickly and professionally.
This strategy involved:
•Making information more accessible. “Until recently, we were only collecting about 50 per cent of the intellectual capital that was available,” he says. “The information was there, but not easily available to scientists.”
•Meeting employees’ demands for electronic provision of resources and replacing the under-used bricks and mortar libraries that housed books and publications.
•Capturing more knowledge from external sources with the same system as that used for internal information.
•Providing better, more consistent information-resources support to help people find high-quality information faster.
•Offering a full, electronic research service to all employees, rather than just a few. Industry demands play a large part in the organisation’s need for a more future-proof, scalable information centre than its existing services.
At QinetiQ, records have to be available to scientists many years after a product has been developed. Lewis Doyle, Managing Director of Managed Services and Group Chief Information Officer at QinetiQ, says: “The U.S. aircraft the B52, for example, has a product life—from conception to disposal—of around 150 years. These planes were first conceived in the 1930s, are still in service today, and may be for another 30 years. People with input into aircraft design and build need to maintain those records for all that time in case they need to refer to them in the future.”
Solution
A cultural transformation is taking place at QinetiQ. The “Enterprise Portal”—based on Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007—is the product of the organisation’s work in building a central repository for information and collaboration that scientists can access from anywhere in the organisation.
The portal also offers an access point to the QinetiQ information framework, which spans all data sources with a single search function. Employees can pull in any available information on a subject. The Enterprise Search provides a secure point of entry for searches across corporate networks, desktops, and the Internet.
Through the information framework, the portal also offers a feature that searches for people by their knowledge, expertise, roles, and relationships in the business. The solution does this by making the relationships between people and its intellectual capital the central focus when indexing content for importing into the SharePoint Server 2007 environment.
The Enterprise Portal is helping QinetiQ to meet the needs of several key areas of the business:
•Communities of practice: QinetiQ is made up of numerous employee communities—from technical directors to graduates. These groups often need to get together to share information. Using the collaborative tools in SharePoint Server 2007, they can now form discussion groups and share best practice or knowledge at any time. Taylor says: “Through our re-organised library function, we can also push information into those communities, helping to distribute information far more widely in the organisation, rather than just to individuals.”
•Projects: QinetiQ IT team is currently deploying Microsoft Office Project Server 2007. QinetiQ can be running 3,000 or more projects at any one time and is building a new site for each. Taylor says: “Employees will not only be able to run projects more efficiently, they will also be able to use the search feature to locate the information they need within these projects.” Also part of this, a Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2006 implementation is set to help the organisation make corporate reports searchable by integrating disparate records management tools.
•Organisational sites: These offer spaces defined by department or job role, so people working in similar environments can communicate more efficiently.
•Market sites: People will be able to go to these sites to find information and resources relating to industry needs and challenges. Scientists and engineers can use this to understand their customers better and apply science to real-world situations.
•Personal sites: From their own sites, individuals will be able to take advantage of real-time communications with their colleagues, using features such as instant messaging. “Users can also use this space to store useful information in a way that suits them, set up links to documents and Web sites, and let their colleagues know how to communicate with them,” says Taylor.
•Delivery of business services: Vital company information is made available to employees, such as human resources advice on booking processes, forms, finance information, room booking, and reception details. Amjad Farooq, Head of Business Improvement, QinetiQ, says: “Ease of use was important to give users what they need quickly and efficiently, and this system can provide that.”
Benefits
QinetiQ has created an online information framework, which helps employees to capture every piece of available information from different sources, with a single search function. It has now closed most of the physical libraries, freeing archivists and librarians to work in more proactive insight and analysis roles, helping people get the most from the new system. Doyle says: “The libraries are no longer just reading rooms. They’re now completely online and accessible 24 hours a day.”
Forming Communities for Collaboration
QinetiQ employees, recognised internationally for their role in world-class scientific research, now have the additional support of a system to help them locate the information they need quickly and easily. Doyle says: “Whether they are researching aerodynamics, composite materials, nanotechnology, or any scientific discipline, they can pull in information from internal and external sources. The Enterprise Portal is marshalling data in a way that’s available to everyone.”
Within the different communities at QinetiQ, people are already forming virtual teams to share this information with one another. Some of QinetiQ’s sites are hundreds of miles apart, making it difficult for people to meet. Farooq says: “In the past, someone may have had to try and hold an effective meeting after a two-hour drive.”
The virtual groups reduce the need for people to travel. Taylor says: “An employee’s manager or an expert they need to contact may be situated elsewhere, but they can still discuss problems and share information. We are now truly getting people to talk to each other.”
Helping Graduates Tap into Experience
New recruits make up a valuable community at QinetiQ. This group is the future of the business, and making sure its members have everything they need to develop and grow was a priority for the organisation. Its graduate management scheme is called Cortex. It ensures they are mentored on a day-to-day basis to give them grounding in the industry and aid the transition from academia into effective engineering and science.
Peer support and senior management support is vital in helping graduates develop their careers. They can now perform simple search on the portal to identify subject matter experts who are willing to mentor them, have discussions, and share ideas and projects. Taylor says: “We can put the knowledge of all our scientists, both past and present, at a graduate’s fingertips and give them the means to interact in near real time. This system truly represents the culture of science and innovation within QinetiQ.”
Easy-to-Use Search Adopted Quickly
Scientists have welcomed the search tool, which helps them to keep abreast of new industry developments from across the world. Doyle says: “In the last month, employees have performed 40,000 searches, and 4,000 of those have been from unique staff members. That’s a great result.”
Taylor says: “We’ve also seen a large spike in the variety of information people are now using to make their scientific decisions. There has been a 30 to 40 per cent increase in the amount of information being accessed from external sources, a far higher penetration than before.”
Accessible but Secure Information
Open access for every employee was key. But it was critical that the technology be secure enough to handle distribution of highly sensitive material. Farooq says: “We’re delivering science, technology, and innovation to the defence and civil markets. When we’re looking at strategies in the organisation that involve IT networks, security is a prerequisite to anything we do.”
The IT team is completely confident that the solution can offer the levels of security needed to protect the company’s intellectual capital. Taylor says: “We chose to build this solution on the Microsoft platform because we know there’s a very tight security model in place, from the operating system to the information layer.”
Supporting Science into the Future
The technologies are providing the flexibility and scalability to help people manage and maintain information in a way that will provide more accurate insight to scientists in the years to come. Already, the organisation is seeing a huge difference in the way people work, paving the way for future generations of QinetiQ scientists to benefit from the more efficient way that knowledge is captured and used today.
Doyle says: “The solution forms part of a gradual culture change toward delivering tools that support people, helping them spend less time looking for information and more time applying it to their work. It is also helping people to provide a more effective service to our customers by opening up new opportunities and helping them to do their jobs to the best of their ability.”
The People-Ready Business.
A people-ready business is one where people can apply their unique skills, insights and experience to create new products and services, work responsively with customers and partners, and drive operational excellence in every aspect of the business. People-ready businesses support people with knowledge, practices and tools so that they can add the extra value that helps differentiate successful organisations in a competitive, fast-moving global economy.
www.microsoft.com/peopleready
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published July 2007
