The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town's working harbour attracts 20 million visitors each year. It offers exciting retail venues, entertainment facilities, office locations, world-class hotels, and luxury apartments.
Historically, the company administered these venues with disparate paper processes and IT systems. To increase team working and reduce duplication of effort, it deployed a new server, workstation, and networking infrastructure based on the latest Microsoft technologies.
This deployment has allowed the company to enhance employee efficiency and collaboration, streamline IT management, reduce downtime, and make it easier to access the IT help desk. The new infrastructure also supports fast access to key corporate information and eliminates expensive paper and printing requirements.
Situation
Situated between Robben Island and Table Mountain in the heart of Cape Town's working harbour, the Victoria & Alfred (V&A) Waterfront attracts 20 million visitors each year. Against a backdrop of magnificent sea and mountain views, exciting shopping and entertainment venues are intermingled with imaginative office locations, world-class hotels, and luxury apartments in the residential marina.
More than 500 employees at the V&A Waterfront Company manage all properties in the harbour in terms of letting, security, cleaning, maintenance, marketing, and administration. Areas under management include restaurants, coffee shops, taverns, seven quality hotels, an aquarium, 240 speciality stores, cinemas, art and craft markets, office space, and more than 500 apartments.
To administer these commercial and leisure facilities effectively, the company provides a range of administrative services. These were previously based on paper transactions and a number of disparate IT systems.
Chris Lazari, IT Manager, V&A Waterfront, says: "We worked with three server domains running on Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0, Windows 2000 Server, and Windows Server 2003. At the same time, we ran a number of disparate databases and an unconnected Web site built on Linux. This disparate approach was not conducive to sharing information effectively across the business."
To address these issues, V&A decided to build a new intranet, where employees could access key information and communicate effectively with colleagues. This was designed to create a community atmosphere and increase understanding of activities across all departments, as well as drive productivity.
"We recognised we needed to redesign our IT infrastructure to support better information sharing," says Lazari. "With support from Microsoft Certified Partner, Airborne Consulting, we migrated all our server domains to Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition. We then upgraded our network, refreshed our workstation software, and began planning the deployment of our new intranet solution."
Sean O'Connell, Managing Director, Airborne Consulting, says: "When we began the project, there was no effective, secure communications infrastructure in place at V&A. By standardising the environment using the latest Microsoft technologies and best practices, we were able to create a new, highly-collaborative way of working from the ground up."
Solution
The V&A infrastructure has now been upgraded - based on Windows Server 2003, the Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 messaging environment, and the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database - and the performance of the network is monitored by Microsoft Operations Manager 2005.
O'Connell says: "We moved from a fragmented IT landscape to a state-of-the-art network that is attracting international recognition. With this stable, scaleable infrastructure in place, V&A became the first company in Africa to deploy Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. This supports excellent employee collaboration, seamless information sharing across the business, reduced need for printing paper documents, and fast access to frequently used line-of-business applications."
Office SharePoint Server 2007, which is the foundation for the new V&A intranet portal "Splash", was selected on the strength of its built-in workflow functionality and ability to integrate departments internally. The Splash home page, which is now set as the default home page for all V&A employees, gives people access to a range of key information, including links to all departmental sites, messages from executives, and photographs and profiles of colleagues.
In addition, the home page allows employees to access commonly-used applications quickly and easily and provides links to a "magazine page", with real-time information such as news headlines and announcements.
Key information, such as HR documents, is now available to 800 V&A employees directly from the portal, reducing administrative workloads significantly. This information will soon be extended to users without their own computers, such as cleaning operatives, using intuitive touch-screen terminals.
V&A employees also use Splash to log help desk requests. These were previously registered by phone and managed manually by IT professionals using spreadsheets. Now, requests are sent electronically, and an automated response is generated. IT professionals then pick up service requests, and employees follow them to resolution online. O'Connell says: "Because the system collects statistics on common IT issues, IT professionals can also reduce the overall number of IT issues and drive up service availability."
Once Splash was deployed, Airborne Consulting took responsibility for driving rapid end-user adoption, launching an e-mail marketing campaign to educate users on the benefits of the portal. In addition, reporting features of Office SharePoint Server 2007 were used to poll employees on features they liked or preferred to see changed, ensuring that the resource continued to deliver excellent value.
Benefits
Splash is helping V&A personnel to access a range of information and services that promote effective working. In addition, it provides a community forum that supports enhanced employee collaboration across the business.
Lazari says: "Technology is now seen as a key business driver at V&A Waterfront. The new portal, for example, is creating a community feeling among employees, helping IT professionals manage the network more effectively, reducing paper and printing costs and providing new opportunities to work more closely with colleagues."
Enhanced company-wide communications
Major company announcements can now be disseminated instantly using the Splash home page.
This ensures employees feel included in the continuing success of the company and that strategic objectives are always communicated clearly.
Brian Harding, Marketing Director, Airborne Consulting, says: "We created a specific place on the home page for company announcements, including animation to draw employees' attention. Because a group policy sets Splash as the home page for every employee, there is now a tool for instant communication across the company."
Fast track to IT help desk
The new portal provides a fast, simple way to access IT help-desk services. This ensures that end-users can log service requests and receive attention in the shortest time possible, reducing downtime and improving satisfaction.
It also collects data to address common networking issues proactively, reducing calls to the help desk and allowing IT professionals to work more productively.
Lazari says: "Because help-desk services are available through the portal, they are only ever a click away. This has delivered a marked improvement in terms of issue-resolution times and helped IT professionals and end-users enhance their personal productivity."
Rapid access to information
Previously, it was difficult for employees to access information on basic company policies and procedures, such as HR forms. Now, they can understand their rights and responsibilities quickly and easily using prominent links to key documents.
In addition, employees can access lists of names and contact details, helping them collaborate with their colleagues more effectively.
Harding says: "When we were designing the new portal, we wanted to empower employees with the information they need to work effectively. As a rule of thumb, we have tried to give them access to any required document in just three clicks from the Splash home page. The results have been a greatly increased sense of community and tools to work more productively."
Anthony Peters, Executive Manager for Finance and Central Services at V&A, says: "The newly implemented system helps us provide access to information on a more proactive basis, and users no longer wait to be fed critical information. Because users can drive their own requirements, they are achieving greater efficiency and enhanced communication. We are also seeing more interaction between multiple users."
Document management cuts costs
The electronic document-management system that underpins the new intranet allows documents to be created, uploaded, and shared effectively. Lazari says: "Previously, 150-page reports were printed out and delivered to 22 senior managers each month, by administrators in the finance department.
"This has become unnecessary because documents can now be uploaded to the intranet and shared centrally in real-time according to the access rights of users. The results are significant savings in terms of stationery, printers, and paper."
Electronic documents can also be searched quickly and effectively by V&A Waterfront employees. Lazari says: "With the enterprise search functionality built-in to Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system, employees can find the information they need very easily. Saving documents in folders on computers may soon become a thing of the past, because the latest Microsoft technologies can even search documents on the intranet based on words in attachments."
Streamlined IT management
The new infrastructure has reduced the administrative workloads of V&A IT professionals. Lazari says: "Before, we had seven different software brands, different device drivers, and different operating systems, making it difficult to train engineers and time-consuming to fix problems.
"In addition, engineers often walked 20 minutes to a workstation and 20 minutes back to fix a problem that should have taken just a couple of minutes to resolve."
By contrast, the new infrastructure supports remote issue-resolution from a centralised management console, allowing four members of staff to support 300 end-users.
"By logging on to Remote Assistance, an IT professional can resolve an issue in just a few minutes," says Lazari. "This has reduced workloads for the IT department, cut service downtime, and significantly enhanced the end-user experience."
User surveys give employees a voice
Splash contains a survey function that allows the IT team to poll employees on their views on key business issues. "We wanted to find out what people thought about a particular HR issue," says Lazari. "Using Splash, we were able to send a survey to staff and collect their responses in just 50 minutes."
In addition, Splash has been used to poll employees on their perceptions of the new portal and its benefits. In addition to helping the IT team make continual improvements to their own service delivery, the survey function builds community spirit at V&A.
Harding says: "We've already used surveys to collect feedback about Splash itself. This found that the percentage of people with good awareness of other V&A departments has increased significantly and people are much more aware of the IT help desk than before. Respondents also recognised the value of the portal as an online notice board and information-sharing tool."
Rapid development of scalable infrastructure
The first phase of the intranet deployment was completed by two engineers in just one month. Yusuf Dawood, Business Development Director, Airborne Consulting, says: "The functionality that comes with Office SharePoint Server 2007 is so rich that it requires very little customisation in most business scenarios. This allowed us to roll-out the technology quickly and cost effectively."
Although it was deployed quickly, the intranet is scalable enough to support a range of future IT initiatives. Lazari says: "The infrastructure will allow us to create an extranet that serves V&A tenants, allowing them to access key information and communicate with our employees.
"Once we have achieved this, we will deploy an additional Web site on the new system, integrating our entire online presence in a single, easy-to-manage environment."
Rapid user adoption
V&A Waterfront and Airborne Consulting wanted Splash to ripple through the entire enterprise. O'Connell says: "The project didn't finish with the deployment. Instead, we wanted to help people identify with the portal and begin using it.
"To achieve this, we worked with representatives from each department to ensure the portal would meet the needs of all employees. We then mounted an e-mail campaign to show employees the benefits of the new information resource."
Lazari says: "The results have been rapid user adoption and positive feedback from end-users across the company. As well as helping employees work more effectively, Splash is creating a community spirit among our people that was previously impossible to achieve."
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