Intranet Case Study

Invaluable SharePoint integration at Boulting Group

Boulting Group is a multidisciplined engineering solutions provider, operating in a diverse range of industry sectors in the UK and internationally.

They provide a wide scope of project services from project management, design, fabrication and installation to commissioning and ongoing maintenance services and they have strong in-house resources in all the major Engineering Construction disciplines, including; Mechanical, Electrical and Instrumentation, Technology, HVAC/Sophisticated Environments.

Boulting Group combines innovative design and engineering excellence to provide a fully integrated solution tailored to client needs.

Find out more about Boulting Group

The challenge

To introduce a new intranet that would dramatically improve communication within the group. The new site would replace an old SharePoint based intranet that was static, unengaging and difficult to maintain. To bring office based staff and remote site workers together in one central location; providing access via any device. To devolve some responsibility for the site away from IT to others within the organisation who weren’t necessarily technically minded.

The solution

Following the completion of an internal study that was carried out by a third party, it was identified that communication channels could be improved and modernised. The decision to implement a Sorce Engage Intranet with the Sorce SharePoint Connector was made.

The connector gives employees at Boulting Group real time access to their SharePoint content which is displayed through Engage. This integration has proved invaluable; they have been able to utilise the power of document management within SharePoint without the overheads and technical knowledge required to maintain their out of date and unengaging SharePoint Intranet.

The IT team at Boulting Group have created their very own travel application which is like Trip Advisor for employees who want to find out about the project sites they are visiting. There are many different sites that employees may have to visit and often they need to stay away from home. Before they choose where to stay or what to eat they can read their colleagues hotel and restaurant reviews and pick up tips about the local area.

“Our travel application has proved to be very popular indeed. The application is really engaging; it is growing all the time, with loads of reviews and ratings about the best and maybe not so good places to stay and eat that are local to our project sites. The application saves employees time as they don’t have to do their own accommodation research and makes the experience of having to travel and stay away from a home a bit more interesting.”

Janice Hornby
Internal Communications Officer

Boulting Group is committed to maintaining an excellent award-winning health and safety record. The Health and Safety page on the intranet is an enormous benefit to the company. Employees can now be certain they are accessing the most up to date health, safety, environmental and quality documents from one central location. This page is the most visited of all pages on the site, it is imperative that documents are quick and easy to find.

Other pages within the site provide invaluable company information. For example, there is a page dedicated to all Health & Safety, Environmental and Quality related matters and a page that provides general access to Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) for group sales and health and safety performance.

Engage has also done a fantastic job to improve social engagement within the group. There is a whole page dedicated to social events and activities. The company summer ball was promoted via the site, all the bookings were managed online and lots of photos were shared after the event. Company charity fundraisers are shared on the page as well as promotions from individuals seeking sponsorship to raise money for their own personally supported charities.

Quicklinks have been made available on the homepage to provide fast and direct links to many business tools. Employees now have access to everything they need on one page, there are links to the holiday booking application, timesheets, online email, HR systems, finance systems, the sickness application, to name but a few.

Connect’s contact directory has been structured to store both Abbeyfield direct staff and contacts from its membership societies. Approval functionality has also been added for membership society contacts to agree or disagree to their details being shared within contact searches. A directory of homes enables users to search for a home and find key information about that location, including all the key contacts.

“One of the reasons that our intranet is so successful is that we give our users access to the tools they need to do their jobs, useful and important information, directly from the home page. Communication across the group is now easy and staff can quickly and efficiently access the information they need. There is now one central space with many tools just a click away.”

Kara Doble
Marketing Manager

Company news, important messages, new documents and polices, updates about health and safety information etc. were all previously delivered to employees via group emails. There were problems with large attachments, people receiving news at different times and important messages not reaching employees. This information is now readily available to all employees via Engage. News stories are updated at least once a week and daily messages are broadcast via alerts.

Within the intranet you will find advertisements for internal job vacancies, newsfeeds from the corporate website, important up and coming dates to note, award announcements and regular tips from the IT department.

A companywide competition was launched to find a name for the new intranet. The competition helped to generate awareness of the new site whilst ensuring that everyone was getting involved with the site right from the beginning of the project, even before launch.

The name BEN was chosen, a brilliantly engaging name that has given the site its own identity. BEN stands for Boulting Employee Network. The team created a friendly robot character called BEN who appears on the site, and as the character is not associated with any specific job role within the group, could be related to by all.

The launch of BEN was celebrated with BEN branded mugs (Have a brew with BEN), pens and lanyards for all employees. A survey carried out after the launch of BEN, via a poll on the homepage found that 83% of employees were ‘extremely happy’ with their new intranet. Such a high figure is testament to the meticulous planning and preparations that took place pre-launch to ensure that the intranet would be a success from the start.

The results

Built using the latest Engage technology BEN is a truly inspirational intranet.

Communication has been dramatically improved across the whole group and employee engagement has increased. Improvements have also been seen in productivity as business tools are quick to access and the Sorce SharePoint Connector is providing easy and seamless access to documents.

Though overall responsibility for the intranet is still that of the IT department, there are now lots of people from other departments attributing to the success of BEN by regularly publishing relevant, engaging and useful content to the site. The IT department team are self-sufficient when it comes to site developments and create their own tailored functionality without the need for help from Sorce.

BEN is a fresh, modern looking intranet with a brilliant design. It is easy to use and easy to administer. BEN will continue to evolve as the company continues to rapidly grow.

Download the full Boulting case study