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Top Ten: #9 - Collaborate & Accelerate
Strategic collaboration helps
1,000 people work as one
Getting ahead in business is easier and quicker when you pick the right partner and have the right tools. Close the gap between people, business processes and communication with solutions that help you manage and leverage information collaboratively.
Integral Axon's strategic, award-winning partnership with web and software development specialists Enlighten Designs brings clients high-quality, innovative information collaboration technology solutions, implemented by a team of skilled IT professionals.
Integral Axon and Enlighten Designs have collaborated on a number of key projects to date, leveraging each other's strengths and expertise to provide holistic, tailored solutions to meet customers' business challenges. Integral Axon's technical and infrastructure expertise, and strength in process, relationship management, project management and governance combine seamlessly with Enlighten Designs' information collaboration experience, Microsoft Office SharePoint expertise and application/system development and support skills.
In 2008 Te Wananga o Aotearoa (TWoA) engaged Integral Axon and Enlighten Designs for a large and complex 3-year Strategic Performance Data Project, comprised of a series of sub-projects.
TWoA is one of New Zealand's largest tertiary education providers. It operates from over 80 locations nationwide and has more than 1,000 staff members. The operating environment includes over 5,000 desktops and 80+ servers.
The primary objective for this project was to enable TWoA staff members to collaborate easily and effectively across all locations. TWoA needed to connect staff rapidly with information held across multiple sources and platforms, and refine the processes for managing that information.
The solution needed to integrate with existing legacy systems, while also being portable and flexible enough to cope with the demands of a changing technology landscape and shifting business requirements.
The Integral Axon/Enlighten Designs team provided scoping, development and implementation of a scalable, robust enterprise-level Microsoft Office SharePoint Server portal to aid organisation-wide collaboration and business intelligence. The team also provided vital user, trainer and administrator training to help all users make the most of the SharePoint tools and systems.
The SharePoint functionality, including document libraries, versioning, workflows and enterprise search, provided a framework for TWoA to gather, manage, and deliver consistent and reliable business intelligence information to all staff.
The Integral Axon/Enlighten Designs team has delivered several other solutions to further streamline processes, improve efficiency, collaboration, quality and access to business intelligence for TWoA's staff members. These include:
1. Streamlined course development and student enrolment: TWoA's course development application – Rakanui – was developed by another company but never met the organisation's requirements and was not released. Instead, the separate business units used a variety of unaligned paper-based processes.
Integral Axon and Enlighten Designs updated Rakanui to current technology standards and extended and integrated the application with other systems and processes, turning it into a centralised solution that replaced the disparate paper-based processes with a streamlined and robust process supported by technology and in line with TWoA's requirements.
Another custom system was developed to pre-qualify students and released as a hosted solution to be rolled into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server after user acceptance testing. This system is designed to help improve TWoA's student acquisition and retention.
2. Improved reporting processes: TWoA had a problem creating and presenting reports, as the underlying data was held in a variety of databases and some data required manual manipulation before it could be used to generate accurate KPI reports. The Integral Axon/Enlighten Designs team identified and replaced inefficient reporting processes, delivering a foundation for reporting that removes the need for manual manipulation and also allows greater visibility into business performance by leveraging the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Portal for report presentation.
3. Extensive, customised workflows were developed and implemented to replace paper-based systems. Workflows for HR, property procurement, and updating user information were developed.
The partners have used an Agile project methodology, allowing project scope to remain fluid and flexible as requirements were developed and discovered. As an Agile project the scope changed significantly from the original project vision, with items such as Microsoft Project Server 2007 being added.
Careful project management and requirements gathering by the Integral Axon and Enlighten Designs project team members ensured that the initial project not only delivered far more than originally anticipated, but was completed within the original project budget and expected timeframe.
Te Awananga o Aotearoa's Project Manager, Lindsay Baxter, says the Integral Axon/Enlighten Designs team has worked with commitment to deliver hardware and software solutions to meet the varied needs of the sprawling organisation.
"Integral Axon and Enlighten Designs' innovative SharePoint solution means our more than 1,000 staff members nationwide can collaborate and share information efficiently and effectively in a way that was not previously possible.
We are impressed by their commitment to understanding our business needs and finding and implementing functional, affordable solutions," she says.
The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server portal solution won the Integral Axon/Enlighten Designs team the "Partnering Award of the Year" at the 2008 Microsoft Partner Awards.
The ongoing collaboration on the TWoA project has again won the Integral Axon and Enlighten Designs team the "Partnering Award of the Year" at the 2009 Microsoft Partner Awards. Enlighten Designs was also a finalist for the "Business Productivity Enterprise Content Management Solution of the Year Award".
More information
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