Rodney Durrant from John Holland Group talked about “How You Can Transform SharePoint into a Strategic Asset: What Every Top Manager Needs to Know About Extracting Maximum Business Value from SharePoint.” Rodney is based in Brisbane, and is the Commercial Manager at John Holland, which is a change management and enablement role.

Key points:

• Rodney doesn’t like PowerPoint, so will be telling a range of stories. His three main points: (1) what is the role of the manager in today’s digital wave, (2) as a manager, you have to create a management system about how you will work, and (3) wants to show what John Holland Group did with SharePoint recently.
• A key interest for Rodney is tranforming business through technology-enabled change – using technology to do things quickly. Key point – you must first know the objective of a business, before looking at the technology.
• One project from a few years ago – it had a really bad start. Rodney came in to bring the project back on track. Three key aspects – Reporting, Integration, and Processes.
• Big conflict between technology and business – (a) technology as the driver – complex tools with multiple tools and versions, vs (b) business as the driver – use technology as an enabler to the business operating model. Rodney advocates approach (b) – business-led.
• Manager’s in the digital age – to employees: (a) clarity around work, (b) navigation for finding information and work faster, (c) fulfulment of basics, (d) usability, (e) speed – what they need when they need it, and (f) time – respect people’s time. Various frameworks – what / why / when / how / etc, systems thinking (input-process-output).
• The manager’s role is to create a management system – to control and improve the system over time about how work gets done. This will have performance measures, with lead/lag indicators.
• Rodney talked about process mapping, and the use of swim lanes with tasks oriented around roles (not people). With the use of SharePoint and Visio diagrams, Rodney was able to show the process to everyone on the team. Processes are clickable now, and offer transparency.
• An Information Management strategy – look at the process, and ask what data / information is required across the process.
• 6 steps – (1) identify the tasks to systemise, (2) determine who is going to create the system, (3) record the steps, standards, and guidelines, (4) test it out and tweak, (5) install and implement with training, and (6) monitor and improve.

Questions
1. A construction project will generate lots of content. How do you manage this within SharePoint? Strategy is to get SharePoint in as an Intranet; will then look at managing projects in SharePoint. Not there yet.