Transforming Employee Experience at a Manufacturing Organization: A SharePoint-Powered Success

Over the past several months, our team at Concurrency partnered with a metals and manufacturing company to deliver a modern, scalable, and user-centric Employee Portal – built on SharePoint Online – to unify communication, streamline access to resources, and elevate employee engagement across all plant locations.

The Challenge

This company’s legacy intranet lacked adoption and visibility, full stop. Initially taking a look at it during discovery, it was quite bare bones, with several missing/broken links and disorganized content. It was evident that this organization needed a solution that could, among other things:

• Centralize company announcements, policies, and events
• Empower organizational teams to manage/update content independently
• Support multilingual access for a diverse workforce

Our Approach

We kicked off this modernization project with a clear vision: to enhance company culture through a unified digital experience. From the outset, the project was designed as a collaborative and iterative journey, with the following phased approach:

1. Discovery – Partner with the client to understand the structure, purpose, and content expectations for each page.
2. Design – Our UX designer translates these insights into wireframes that reflect both functionality and user experience.
3. Feedback & Approval – Review wireframes with the client, gather feedback, and refine until approved.
4. Development – Our engineer builds each page directly within SharePoint, ensuring alignment with the approved design.
5. Final Review – Conduct a final walkthrough with the client to collect feedback, conduct testing, and secure approval for launch.

Beyond the development work itself, a critical component of this project was empowering the client’s workforce to confidently manage and maintain the site – whether that meant adding or updating content, creating new pages, or handling incoming support tickets.

Now, you might be thinking: “It’s just SharePoint – how hard can it be?” I’d encourage you to explore its capabilities firsthand – you’ll quickly discover that powering a modern, dynamic site involves far more behind-the-scenes complexity than meets the eye. And when you consider that technical fluency, especially with digital tools and platforms, isn’t always a central focus in manufacturing environments, it became clear that training would be essential to the long-term success of our work.

To support this, we implemented a comprehensive training strategy that included:

• Live sessions tailored for power users, site administrators, and internal trainers.
• Step-by-step how-to guides covering the most common workflows.
• A clear ownership model outlining responsibilities, tasks, and cadence for ongoing site management.

The Impact

Just one week post go-live, the metrics spoke volumes. Pages were seeing up to 1,500% increases in unique viewership, and the best part was that daily traffic has stayed fairly consistent since the announcement. Beyond the numbers, the portal has become a trusted hub for things like:

• Safety incident reporting
• Company competition submissions and archives
• HR policies, onboarding materials, and employee spotlights

What Made This Project Successful

1. UX-First Approach

We began with wireframes and mockups rooted in real user workflows. This approach accelerated decision-making, aligned expectations early, and minimized rework for our SharePoint engineer during implementation.

2. Train for Ownership

Long-term sustainability was a priority. By equipping content owners with training and clear documentation, we ensured they could confidently manage content, create new pages, and handle support needs independently.

3. Organizational Collaboration

Designing a company-wide hub that delivers consistent value requires broad representation from different locations, departments, and leadership levels. Success came not just from participation, but from fostering a sense of ownership: making sure everyone felt heard, involved, and empowered to contribute ideas that shaped the final product.

Looking Ahead

With a user-friendly portal now in place, the client is well-positioned to share key information, announcements, and resources across the organization. In addition, power users have been trained to confidently manage content and respond to support requests as they arise.

In the future, the company is exploring enhancements that will further elevate the digital experience, including:

• Copilot-powered chatbot to streamline employee support and surface relevant content on demand.
• Workflow automation using Power Automate to reduce manual effort and improve operational efficiency.
• Improved search accuracy through strategic metadata tagging, making it easier for employees to find what they need quickly.

If you’re considering a SharePoint-based intranet transformation, let’s connect!