A consumer protection and business accreditation nonprofit serving nearly 100 local and regional affiliates sought to modernize its operations through a comprehensive digital transformation, primarily focusing on migrating from its existing unstructured and traditional intranet to a unified, user-friendly platform that all its member organizations could use. Microsoft’s SharePoint Online served as the centralized information hub providing a comprehensive, integrated and secure knowledge management system, but transitions require intentional change management to ensure they are successful.
This transition aimed to enhance the organization’s capability to monitor baseline standards and success metrics across its member associations while delivering robust business intelligence reporting to ensure uniformity and the implementation of best practices.
Approach
The organization recognized its role as a model for its member associations and aimed to modernize its processes to promote transparency and collaboration. Key objectives included:
Enhancing internal and external digital communication and collaboration.
Creation of an information taxonomy and search schema to get the relevant information to the user based on role and responsibility, in turn improving the user experience to provide a more intuitive and user-friendly interface allowing employees to find the information they need.
Implementing a robust and secure platform for knowledge management and business intelligence reporting.
Increasing productivity by providing quicker access to common tools, documents, and information.
Integration to other key business applications to centralize information in a singular platform.
Enhancing security features including access controls and compliance to protect information based on user role and location.
To achieve these objectives, McChrystal Group developed a comprehensive solution leveraging several Microsoft technologies and platforms. Key elements of the solution included:
SharePoint Online: Central platform for document management, collaboration, and intranet functionalities.
Microsoft Entra (Azure Active Directory): Access management through a unified identity, identity governance and external identity management.
Power Automate: Automated workflows to streamline processes and reduce manual tasks.
Power Apps: Bespoke custom solutions that integrate with SharePoint Online to enable business requirements.
Microsoft Forms: Tools for data collection and feedback.
Power BI: Advanced business intelligence reporting for data visualization and analysis.
Viva Engage: Digital communities to allow coworkers and external collaborators to share ideas and organize around topics.
Results
The Intranet development and migration of all member institutions provided significant value and achieved the following outcomes:
Rapid Implementation: The agile approach enabled rapid implementation within months, managing limited resources effectively and causing minimal workflow disruption.
User Adoption: Approximately 1,600 users within the organization now utilize the new solutions, with nearly 40,000 visits to the site every month.
Single Platform Simplicity: The use of Microsoft 365 applications streamlined communication habits organization-wide and ensured the entire organization was communicating effectively and efficiently.
Data-Driven Decision Making: The integration of PowerBI dashboards and automated processes provided robust business intelligence capabilities, enabling data-driven decision making and information gathering in real time, resulting in alignment with best practices across all member associations.
Since the parent organization saw itself as the model for its members, it knew that modernizing its processes to enhance transparency and collaboration was necessary. The transformation reinforced the parent organization’s customer-first reputation while establishing leading practices for its member institutions to emulate and implement. The result was dozens of disparate legacy systems combined into a single unified ecosystem that all members could use seamlessly.
Resources
