Multi-Lingual Corporate Intranet for Global Company

Overview

Initially, our client sought our input on an existing plan for a new corporate intranet system. The company’s internal IT team desired a “sanity check” on the plan’s design and to receive additional advice and suggestions for enhancements. We dug into the planned design, offered a range of insights, and—in so doing—built up a level of trust with our client’s team that eventually led to their engaging us to build out the corporate intranet.

The need was to serve 15,000 “wired” employees worldwide with a multi-faceted, multi-lingual portal integrated into the online Office 365 platform. In addition to deployment work, we provided guidance on site governance and best practices for content management, including a content approval and publishing process to accommodate drafting and previewing before content goes live.  

Solution

Given the scale of the project, this work proceeded over the course of approximately nine months. During that time, we worked closely with our client’s internal team to develop custom features that are important to the business. For example, one specialized feature is tight integration of Bing Machine Translation: in the footer of all site pages is a switch and language selection, allowing users to quickly translate everything on the screen into their own language.

Another range of custom features is a set of applications that allow users to pin their own links and applications for content personalization. The user-friendly interface is also characteristic of the site in general: a clean and attractive design for intuitive use. Prior to our involvement, the IT team had design elements in mind; we were able to execute the design as envisioned.

Since the new site went live, we have continued to work closely with our client to extend the site to serve specific departments. So, having started with a core set of corporate services, we’ve now assisted with roll-outs to Sales & Marketing, Supply Chain, and other groups. In this way, the initial phase of the project paved the way—through design, governance, and execution—to bring these new sites online.