Vancity Credit Union

Credit Union Increases Productivity and Saves $40,000 with Enterprise Search Solution

Vancity Credit Union wanted a better way to search its intranet, so it worked with the Habañero Consulting Group to replace its Google Search Appliance with an Enterprise Search solution based on Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007. The organization now has the ability to fine-tune searches for more accurate, relevant results, and users are finding the information that they need more quickly and serving customers better.

 

Business Needs

Founded in 1946 to provide financial services to people from all walks of life, Vancity Credit Union and its subsidiary companies are committed to improving the quality of life in the community. The cooperative, member-owned organization strives to deliver the highest level of service possible, and it emphasizes giving its employees the tools that they need to succeed.

Our new search solution is built on technology that we already owned, and is integrated into our existing intranet framework, so it’s easier and much more cost-effective than Google was to have in our environment. Denise Lau Product Manager, Workplace Technologies, Vancity

One of the critical areas that Vancity targeted for improvement in early 2007 was its ability to share information among the organization and its subsidiaries. Vancity’s intranet was made up of content published by more than 100 authors, and navigation through the information had become increasingly convoluted. “We added so much information that, over time, finding the right content became extremely challenging,” says Denise Lau, Product Manager, Workplace Technologies, for the Vancity group of companies. “Employees were relying on search functionality rather than trying to navigate to the information that they needed. Searching our intranet grew more and more cumbersome—people weren’t finding the information that they needed quickly enough.”

Vancity delivered content to employees through a combination of technologies. It had a custom intranet solution to host its growing content and used the Google Search Appliance to find that content. The appliance was more complex than the organization needed, and although Vancity chose not to use the appliance to its fullest extent, system management still posed problems. “We only had one person trained to manage the Google tool, so each time Google produced an update, that person had to reprogram all our intranet sites,” says Lau. The process was so time-consuming that Vancity did not even implement the latest appliance due to a lack of programmer availability.

Solution

Vancity determined that it should implement a new intranet solution and take advantage of new technology that its IT division already had been testing: Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007. “Our employees, particularly those in our branches, had to open about 15 applications to get to all the information that they needed,” says Lau. “We liked that using Office SharePoint Server 2007 would eventually provide one container to hold everything and that we could eventually use it as the portal for all our applications.”

The organization worked with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Habañero Consulting Group to develop the enterprise search portion of its new solution. The joint group started with a series of proof-of-concept sessions to explore possibilities in terms of features and functionality. It began the project in earnest in June 2007 with the deployment of Office SharePoint Server 2007. Habañero handled many of the back-end tasks, such as customization of the user interface, the creation of a Web part to provide a glossary, the configuration of server computers, and the training of technical staff. “The Habañero consultants went out of their way to help us, especially when it came to expanding our knowledge of the product,” recalls Lau. “Habañero continues to be a strong partner for us.”

Vancity’s Google license was set to expire in November 2007, so the organization made sure to have its Enterprise Search component in Office SharePoint Server 2007 in place by that time. “Everything went surprisingly smoothly for us,” says Lau. “Our biggest challenge had to do with the newness of the product. At that time, it was sometimes difficult to locate detailed information to help us with our implementation, but Habañero identified some useful sources for us.”

As of January 2008, Vancity has 25 high-level team sites using Office SharePoint Server 2007. The organization is in the process of transferring information from its custom intranet solution; in the meantime, the company is using its new Enterprise Search functionality to search both portals.

Benefits

In addition to building a foundation for a more efficient environment in the future, Vancity is increasing its ability to provide employees with the information that they need to effectively do their jobs.

• Increased productivity for improved customer service. With the new Enterprise Search solution, Vancity employees can more quickly find information across the organization and the Internet from a single search screen. “We’re now able to fine-tune the relevance of our search results, and employees can search across content from all our team sites—both of which help us respond to our customers more quickly and with better, more accurate information,” says Lau.
  
  
• Familiarity for smooth technology transition. Because of its dispersed environment, Vancity tries to keep the need for training to a minimum, and it was pleased that the new search solution was intuitive for employees to use. “Change management is a huge issue for us, so it was nice to avoid lots of training because our solution had such a familiar look and feel,” says Lau. “All we had to do was send a straightforward e-mail message alerting employees to the additional features.”
  
• Cost savings of $40,000. Vancity is saving U.S.$40,000 every two years because it no longer has to pay for the Google Search Appliance license. “Our new search solution is built on technology that we already owned and is integrated into our existing intranet framework, so it’s easier and much more cost-effective than Google was to have in our environment,” says Lau.
  
  
• Flexibility for future changes. The organization is already enjoying the new Enterprise Search solution, and Vancity expects to reap its rewards for many years to come. “Using Office SharePoint Server 2007, we can customize our intranet solution without having to rework everything during upgrades,” says Lau. “We also anticipate that it will meet our needs as a single source for all our information and applications. We plan to customize the solution by job role to bring the information that people need right to their desktops for even greater relevance and productivity.”