Dale from Porirua City Council is talking about her work at the council with their Intranet. Talking about three projects …
– (1) Business Processes A-Z
– (2) Business Excellence, and
– (3) Corporate Planning

Business Processes A-Z
A-Z was a project in 2008 to combine three public-facing counters into a one-stop customer services center. The call center become a Contact Center, and re-focused more on outbound communications. Before A-Z, information was all over the place, with no organization and coherence. No definitive source of the information. Lots of time consumed searching for information. Lack of documentation of many processes.

Objectives for A-Z:
– Centralize the information
– Document it for quick reference
– Give standard responses to customers at first point of contact
– hand over to next level of expertise for technical advice
– Free up officer time for back office functions

Project steps:
– Consultant managed and facilitated the process
– Template based on the intranet
– Held workshops with process owners … Dale got involved in the project, typed notes directly in the meetings with process owners. Had to stop people from using Word documents to capture this.
– Gathered resources and links
– Built intranet pages … with content ownership assigned to certain people
– Launched A-Z
– Now adding new processes

The outcomes:
– Centralized and accessible on Intranet
– Consistent scannable layout
– Simplified processes
– Includes links to other information
– Formalizes previously informal processes
– Fills in the missing gaps … didn’t allow “it depends” answers

Business Excellence
The CEO wants “business excellence” to be thought of as “business-as-usual”. The Council has appointed a Business Excellence Coordinator, and are putting together the Business Excellence section of the Intranet.

Before business excellence:
– Lack of information, tools and resources
– Only CEO and management team knew what Business Excellence was about

Objectives:
– Will use the Intranet as a portal to resources on Business Excellence
– Provides complete finished product on launch
– Some pages simple and static
– Core pages will be Projects list
– Two interactive diagrams for added interest … people can click the diagram and go off to the right web page.
– Provide opportunity for feedback

Launch strategy:
– prepare the communications plan
– get feedback from staff

Corporate Planning
Very frequent question, “When is the report due?” (there are reports due all the time)
– New corporate planning staff coordinator … “How do I know what’s right?”, “How do I know who is doing what?”

Before Corporate Planning:
– You had to be in the loop to know what was going on
– Information was located in many locations and in different formats

Objectives:
– To make the information visible
– Make communications easier and save time
– Help staff follow processes and meet deadlines

Many types of documents … formats and uses (templates, agendas, meeting minutes, etc.)

Many risks … document corruption, loss of documents, inconsistent information, unsuitable format, version control

So … created a new Intranet structure for corporate planning … with dates, instructions, templates, and more. Created and printed a visual calendar for sharing upcoming dates.

After Corporate Planning:
– Centralized location
– Fast and easy to use
– Links to source documents
– Makes communication and planning easier
– Minimal updating required