Intranet Portal On-Prem with File share Migration

Industry

Petroleum

Technology

Microsoft SharePoint 2016
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ss-sharepoint-onpremises

Customer

Customer is the proud pioneer of petroleum industry. Over the last 35 years, it has proven to be the UAE’s leading petroleum brand. Established in 1981 by the UAE government to market and distribute petroleum, and now supplies a wide range of allied products and services.

Challenge

With an impressive scale of employees, the company was still operating with no centralized document management, collaboration solution and automation of processes, which had a negative impact on the employee’s general productivity, especially when it came to cross-departmental interaction. Many processes within the 10 departments (for example: recruitment process, project development request, payment process etc.) were being conducted informally and were largely offline and paper based, leading to inefficiencies and errors. And the documents were stored in a local network file share. Due to this the challenges faced by their team were:

The challenges were:

  • Search - To search for documents of more than 2 years takes at least two or more days.
  • Once the files got deleted, it is difficult to regain.
  • Restriction in accessibility.

So with the help of Technomax, Client decided to migrate those file share to SharePoint. Wishing to create a unified corporate portal, improve internal communication and consolidate employees from different offices and departments, the customer turned to develop a solution that could meet these goals.

Solution

After analyzing the Client’s corporate structure and existing approach to project management, Technomax team offered to develop a corporate SharePoint intranet Portal, chosen as the optimal platform to address the Customer’s needs.

The intranet includes the following features:

  • Corporate Document Management -  In order to structure the document management process, all current documents were imported into the system. They were attributed with content types and arranged in libraries to build a logical and easy-to-use file storage. Custom document workflows were introduced to facilitate document processing.
  • Project Management -  The intranet became a centralized project management platform by providing dedicated workspaces for each project team and department. It now enables PMs to manage the entire project in one location, e.g. store project documentation, instantly share files with teams, discuss project-related issues in real time and distribute personal tasks during the project cycle.
  • Departmental Management -  The intranet includes a number of department sites that allow employees manage their activities without mixing them with those of other departments. Each department site is only available for users from the respective department.
  • Enterprise Search - Relying on the platform’s strong out-of-the-box search capabilities, Technomax customized SharePoint enterprise search to provide employees with an easy access to internal data and documents. The implemented system allows employees to make a quick search within the document libraries of the corporate intranet by criteria that are based on metadata associated with each document.
  • Technical Reference -  Due to the industrial specifics of the Customer’s business, there were a large number of standards and regulations to follow throughout the project cycle. Paper versions of standards and regulations were digitalized and placed into the dedicated reference database to allow the teams access necessary documents at any project stage.
  • Forums, Polls and Surveys -  To encourage internal communication, the corporate culture and team spirit, Technomax developed polls and discussion forums. To allow the department managers to assess the employees’ satisfaction and engagement level, the team also introduced a dedicated survey system.
  • Internal Corporate Portal and Associated Content Management System -   The corporate portal was developed as a central hub displaying the company’s activities: news, announcements, corporate events, organizational charts, corporate policies and procedures, etc. The user-friendly content management system enables easy content adding, editing and deleting. To ensure the corporate culture consistency, the portal was designed in compliance with the Customer’s corporate style.

Advantages of moving network file share to SharePoint:

  • Much greater search functionality.
  • Complete access, always.
  • Version history and backup.
  • Check files in and out to avoid confusion and conflict.
  • Access control and security.

Benefits

The implementation of the corporate intranet allowed the Customer to reach several goals:

  • Structuring of scattered documentation and providing employees with a single access point to corporate information via a reliable system for project and content management.
  • Increase in general productivity due to centralization of major working processes, which ensured quality communication with end clients and speeded up the project cycle.
  • Increased efficiency of information management processes boosted internal communication and higher adoption of corporate culture throughout the entire organization.