Intranet Case Study

Allford Hall Monaghan Morris is an architecture practice with over 30 years’ experience, with a commitment to making buildings that are satisfying to use and beautiful to look at. AHMM was established in 1989 and now employs over 500 people in three offices in the UK and the US, operating around the world.

Find out more about AHMM

The Challenge

AHMM wanted to improve its digital workplace and considered an intranet to be a key component of this. Key business updates were starting to get lost through email communications, with internal communication needing work to help new starters. The practice also had a large amount of physical documents from projects that needed a digital solution to improve visibility. For a future intranet, AHMM wanted to find a solution that was customisable and to integrate other internal systems that were not being used regularly.

The Solution

AHMM launched its new intranet ‘KITE’ in 2016 with a focus from the start to use it to help employees know what was happening in other areas of the business and connect existing systems together. By working with Sorce, AHMM created an intranet that is an integral part of its business communications. A key purpose of the new intranet was to provide a central place for employees to access company information. AHMM wanted employees to know that their intranet was THE place to go for company updates, guidelines and project information.

KITE is a place where employees go to find and upload documents to help with their projects. Having a secure and user-friendly document management system was key to their intranet success. Before the new intranet was in place, the project manual, which consists of twelve chapters, was in a physical binder. It contains everything each department needs to run a project and is widely used by each team every day.

The document management feature allows AHMM to upload the project manual, detailing when it was uploaded, the latest version and making it easily accessible. They can also view the analytics to see which parts are and are not being read, allowing sections of the manual to be shared to the wider group if it’s felt that more people need to read it.

AHMM wanted to reduce the chance of important information being lost in emails. Email communications were causing problems where key project updates were missed or overlooked.

The Knowledge Management team solved this using their intranet’s microblog feature. Here users can submit text about something relevant to their work and share it with the intranet audience. The Knowledge Management team are also now repurposing content from emails and website blogs where key information is not always seen and posting this on the microblog for all to see. Staff can also now keep up to date by checking regularly for announcements on the microblog.

Another feature being used is image of the day. The feature allows intranet users to upload a photo to the intranet where it will be shared to all users. On KITE, this ranges from holiday snaps, quotes of the day, to home working. The projects team has also been involved and share what they’re up to, shedding light on areas of the business that don’t always get seen.

AHMM was also interested in Engage and Sorce at the beginning because of our ability to build custom features using our existing Engage functionality.

“We like customisation. Sorce offered flexibility and willingness to work on bespoke solutions to best suit our business and it has been a positive experience each time we work with them.”

Hannah Abbas Ghazvinie
Intranet and Internal Communications Coordinator

AHMM also liked the capability of the microblog feature but wanted to personalise it to suit business needs. The aim was to limit the amount of staff emails that contained questions and thought a feature that allowed users to submit and search a question on the intranet would help. AHMM launched the feature called ‘Brains Trust’ which allows their most technical questions to be answered. The feature is displayed on their homepage and is monitored by their intranet champions who answer questions when people are stuck or to redirect users.

A key benefit of KITE is the ability to connect with AHMM’s other systems that are either underused or hidden away. KITE has a quick links feature on the homepage, linking users to their other key systems. KITE also integrates with Cascade to import HR information to create contact cards, allowing employees to search for each other’s contact information through the intranet.

The Result

KITE has successfully helped AHMM bring awareness to business communication and ease access to other internal systems making their intranet the go-to place, assisting their projects and increasing their communications output.

Their site uses a variety of features and successful integrations to help their employees interact, but also have a greater understanding of what is happening in different parts of the business.

AHMM hopes to upgrade to the latest version of Engage and is currently exploring the possibility of the Engage mobile app and adding more integrations to the intranet.

“Any issues we have, like with some of our custom items, Sorce have been quick to help. They would put the work in and would embrace the challenge to help us. Sorce’s extranet, Resorce, is also very helpful to see what events are coming up and updates to the product.”

Hannah Abbas Ghazvinie
Intranet and Internal Communications Coordinator

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