Intranet Case Study

Buckles is a leading solicitor with six U.K offices and two overseas practices in Paris and Milan. With over 200 employees who work between both office and home, Buckles needed an agile IT platform that could securely store documents, provide access to the latest news and information, whilst streamlining company-wide communications.

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Background

The firm had been using a basic, static intranet that was out of date and off brand. It also had limited functionality and wasn’t very user-friendly, meaning employees would often email colleagues for information rather than trying to find it on the intranet.

“It was evident that we needed a new modern intranet to support our people with their everyday work and reduce unnecessary email traffic, regardless of whether they were working in the office or from home.”

Chantelle McDonald
IT implementation specialist

The SharePoint solution

In mid-2022 Buckles started investigating intranet options and as the company already used Microsoft SharePoint, having a SharePoint intranet built seemed the natural solution.

Following market research, Buckles chose to partner with intranet specialist, Sorce, due to the company’s extensive SharePoint knowledge and its desire to deliver a great customer experience.

“I was brought in to manage the intranet project in December 2022” says McDonald. “There were just four of us on the project team including two members of HR, allowing us to move quickly with the build.”

Chantelle McDonald
IT implementation specialist

The team at Buckles worked closely with Sorce on the design, this included a ‘Miro board’ workshop that enabled Buckles to map-out and visualise the layout of the new intranet. Buckles also decided to use BindTuning functionality as recommended by Sorce, in order to speed-up the build process and make it as accessible as possible for all employees, including those with visual impairments. BindTuning provides ‘out of the box’ SharePoint templates and tools that can be easily set-up and configured to take a basic intranet to the next level.

The plan was to go live with the home page, HR page and a learning and development (L&D) page. These would gradually be added to until all 14 departments had their own intranet pages.

On 11 April 2023, Buckles went live with its new SharePoint intranet to all employees. And with it being mobile-enabled, it can be accessed on any device, from anywhere, at any time using a standard web browser or the SharePoint mobile app. Strong security is maintained by providing multi-factor authentication (MFA) even when employees aren’t connected to the office VPN.

Information and support at employees’ fingertips

All employees can now quickly and easily access vital documents and information on SharePoint, which they may have previously emailed colleagues to obtain. There’s also up-to-date company news on the home page as well as regular updates from the CEO, together with ‘quick links’ to the most popular pages. A ‘people search’ tool makes locating colleagues’ contact details straightforward and forthcoming events are advertised in a prominent place.

Importantly, the HR and L&D sections are providing a level of employee support that wasn’t possible using the old intranet. For instance, there are now five distinct ‘hubs’ that are accessible from the HR section giving advice and guidance on benefits, recognition, wellbeing, recruitment and leavers.

The recognition hub, for instance, allows employees to give ‘shout outs’ to colleagues or nominate someone for a ‘Spot’ award for going ‘above and beyond’. The wellbeing hub provides advice, helpline information and resources, including details of mental health first aiders.

Plus, for the first time, employees can request training using a form on the L&D page, access training documents and provide feedback to the trainers. This is helping the L&D team to stay on top of training needs and make improvements to the courses using employee feedback.

“Colleagues are telling me how easy the intranet is to navigate and use. As such, email traffic is starting to die down as employees are realising that the information they need is easily searchable on SharePoint. Colleagues are also loving that every department will soon have their own intranet pages, communicating key information and news, ensuring everyone is kept updated and connected regardless of location.”

Chantelle McDonald
IT implementation specialist

It’s just the beginning!

Since the SharePoint roll-out in April, the intranet team has added a further two departments onto the intranet – IT and compliance – with 10 more to go, from legal departments through to the more administrative functions, such as finance and facilities.

There’s also a plan to introduce a ‘new starter hub’ which will support the onboarding process with training, resources and information, but will be ‘ring-fenced’ from a security point of view so new starters only have restricted access to SharePoint.

“We now have a really versatile intranet platform that can be easily altered and added to as and when needed. With the latest information, news and support instantly to hand, our teams have everything they need for efficient and collaborative working.”

Chantelle McDonald
IT implementation specialist

Download the full Buckles case study