Summary
After a leading gaming company in Australia merged with another organization, they needed to quickly integrate teams, information and systems. Funding and a fresh approach enabled them to dive headlong into Microsoft 365 starting with intranet, document management, and team collaboration.
Originally intending to build a Classic SharePoint intranet, the gaming company worked with Circle T to pivot to Modern SharePoint due do it’s more nimble and future focused attributes, while solving for current shortcomings.
This player is one of the few in Australia to be using the Modern version of SharePoint for an extensive intranet.
Challenge
Operating across wagering, media, and lotteries, the gaming company faced a multifaceted challenge merging two intranets: one on SharePoint Classic, and the other a Mango Apps front end with SharePoint workspaces sitting behind it. Users had access to one intranet or the other, and neither platform was available via mobile devices – an issue most prevalent for the many employees on the road.
The existing ‘Mango apps’ intranet was quite social, with 2-way communication more part of the culture than the existing SharePoint platform. Bringing everyone together as one team meant keeping and even enhancing the potential of these strong engagement qualities. The company wanted to ensure a smooth transition to the new intranet, while also creating more chances for team members to connect and engage across a bigger and more diverse company.
The new solution needed to be a one-stop shop of all employees regardless of role. It needed some personalization so that employees could maintain links to legacy systems, while providing overall unity. Mobile first and future proof were also crucial considerations to allow for a rapidly changing environment and workforce.
Another challenge the organization faced was integrating as many systems and processes as possible after the merger. Microsoft 365 does this naturally, but the new intranet needed to create space for certain applications to deliver their full potential.
Strategy
The gaming company worked with Circle T to evaluate their options and deploy a new intranet solution. The team discussed both SharePoint Classic and Modern and mapped out the benefits of each solution. Ultimately the company decided to ‘go Modern’ as an investment in the future, backing the clear current benefits such as mobile first and simple off-the-shelf webparts while betting on future features and enhancements.
Circle T encouraged a solution that minimized customization – reverting to it only when there was a functional need and when it could not be solved by the out-of-the-box options in the short to medium term.
Examples of this included an individual welcome message, with Circle T header including a megamenu.
The team designed and built the intranet using pre-built Circle T Kasama ‘intranet in a box’ components – but with focused support for specific needs-based components such as design to ensure some continuity for existing users, and optimize integration with Microsoft 365 and search.
Circle T led the information architecture piece including document management – with documents located according to their type, sensitivity, and future proofed to enable relevant permissions, flows, compliance, and auditing needs on different types of documents, but presenting to the end user from a single interface to which they were accustomed. Extensive filtering helped users identify a single source of truth for key groupwide documents, while being able to search the entire environment.
A clean and contemporary look and feel was crucial to reflecting both a new companywide brand and business. Therefore, the team modified Circle T webparts to accommodate the overall requirements.
Results
The customer was able to successfully launch a unified, contemporary platform available anytime, anywhere, on any device. The several weeks of piloting resolved any minor fixes and employees were greeted at launch with not only their name and roll up of Office 365 documents, but also quick links to their most used systems and tools. On launch day the site was visited more times than there were employees in the company, showing strong repeat traffic and good signs for the future.
