Partner Solution Case Study

IT Firm Helps Customers Boost Collaboration with Intranet Solution

OverviewCountry or Region: RomaniaIndustry: Professional services—IT services

Partner ProfileSoftelligence, based in Bucharest, Romania, provides e-business and customer relationship management solutions and IT services to customers throughout Europe.

Business SituationSoftelligence aimed to help customers improve collaboration and document management processes while minimizing IT administrative burdens.

SolutionSoftelligence chose Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 as a foundation for building intranet sites for customers.

Benefits Improved collaboration,

communication Fast time to implementation, high

efficiency Strong adoption, better customer

relationships

“With the out-of-the-box capabilities and flexible, streamlined development tools of SharePoint Server 2010, we can build robust, enterprise-level solutions for customers in very little time.”

Deniz Gemambet, Business Analyst, Softelligence

Softelligence, a provider of e-business and customer relationship management solutions, wanted to help customers streamline business processes to lessen administrative burdens and achieve better results. To this end, Softelligence chose Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for building intranet sites for customers. One such customer is Romanian insurance provider Allianz-Tiriac, which Softelligence helped to deploy enterprisewide collaboration and document management. Now, Allianz-Tiriac users create content without help from IT, streamlining administration by more than 25 percent. Softelligence takes advantage of SharePoint Server 2010 to rapidly implement customer solutions. For instance, it deployed the Allianz-Tiriac intranet in less than two months. Softelligence SharePoint Server solutions lead to stronger customer relationships and help speed sales cycles by approximately 30 percent.

SituationFounded in 2006 and based in Bucharest, Romania, Softelligence provides software-based business process management solutions, such as its OMNi e-business platform, to more than 1 million customers throughout Europe. Customers include Allianz-Tiriac, Genpact, Vodafone, ING Bank, Deutsche Leasing, Ericsson, and MOL Refineries. The company also provides IT consulting and development services and helps its customers build web-based portal environments that are rich in functionality and easy to maintain.

Softelligence, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network, has extensive experience with Microsoft products and technologies such as Microsoft Dynamics, on which it bases its customer relationship management products. This led the company to choose Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 as a platform for enterprise collaboration and content management. “We evaluated various collaboration environments, but SharePoint Server 2010 was the natural choice. It fit with our Microsoft-based product line, and we felt that it offered the robust functionality and flexible development tools we needed to create solutions that would really transform our customers’ environments,” says Deniz Gemambet, Business Analyst at Softelligence.

One such customer is Allianz-Tiriac, a leading insurance provider in Romania and part of the Allianz Group (a worldwide integrated financial services provider). Allianz-Tiriac relied on an open-source and Linux-based intranet

solution, which included a Microsoft Visual SourceSafe environment for document version control. The company stored and managed documents such as insurance policies, standards, and corporate procedures on the intranet, but it had outgrown the environment. For instance, the Allianz-Tiriac IT department had to manually apply access rights to folders and place official documents in them, to ensure that they were viewed only by authorized users. The high level of IT involvement that was required meant that it could take up to two days to make a new document available on the intranet.

The Allianz-Tiriac Internal Communications department also found it difficult to take advantage of the intranet to communicate with employees. Business users could not post news announcements, such as a job opening or a change in corporate policy, or use the intranet to gather employee feedback. Employees also had to fill out paper-based forms to request vacation leave, or additional headcount in their departments. The process was time-consuming. “The environment was highly static,” says Iulia Paunoiu, Public Relations Specialist, Internal Communications at Allianz-Tiriac. The department wanted to involve and include employees more, to foster a sense of cohesion and keep company morale high. But to deliver dynamic, interactive tools such as surveys, polls, and web-based forms required a great deal of time and cost-prohibitive development work.

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“We evaluated various collaboration environments, but SharePoint Server 2010 was the natural choice.”

Deniz Gemambet, Business Analyst, Softelligence

In early 2010, Allianz-Tiriac prioritized the development of a modern intranet that would help the company to be responsive to the needs of its users. “Users were not satisfied. We felt that it was very important to improve communication and collaboration within the company, and we wanted to do it quickly,” says Marius Balica, Chief Information Officer at Allianz-Tiriac.

SolutionIn the spring of 2010, Allianz-Tiriac considered using open-source software to create an intranet solution in-house but decided that this would require too much custom development. Allianz-Tiriac then evaluated Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. “We felt that SharePoint Server 2010 provided the communication, collaboration, and document management tools we needed—without having to spend time and money developing everything from scratch,” says Balica. Allianz-Tiriac turned to Softelligence for help designing and developing the new environment. “Softelligence brought a creative, dynamic team to the project with excellent development skills and a great deal of knowledge about SharePoint Server 2010.”

Developing a New IntranetIn mid-2010, Softelligence began to create the new intranet. Developers used the Microsoft Visual Studio development system, including Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010, and many SharePoint Server features to customize the environment for Allianz-Tiriac. For instance, developers used SharePoint

Server master pages and page layouts to create website templates that include the company's site design and style guidelines, such as official logos and color schemes. Standardized site navigation is built into the templates.

Using these templates, Allianz-Tiriac content owners in the Internal Communications department and other departments can easily modify or create new webpages to broadcast company information. Content owners can edit directly within the context of a page using rich, web-based editing tools. Using the built-in workflows in SharePoint Server 2010, the Allianz-Tiriac Intranet Administrator ensures that content is reviewed, approved, and subsequently published in a consistent and corporate manner.

Building Collaboration and Communication ToolsSoftelligence also created templates that Allianz-Tiriac uses to easily deploy department and team sites based on SharePoint Server 2010. Each company department, such as Internal Communications or Human Resources, maintains its own SharePoint site and can also create team rooms, which are sites that employees can use to collaborate on specific projects or initiatives. Softelligence helped Allianz-Tiriac create a formalized process for users to request these sites and for administrators to provision them. Using a SharePoint custom list, the user requests a new team room (private or public). The request generates an email message which is sent to the Team Room Administrators group, who can approve

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or reject the request. Once approved, a new SharePoint site, which is based on the Team Site template, is automatically created and the user is notified. The user who sent the request becomes the administrator of the team room. Public team rooms are accessible to all users; private team rooms are accessible only to the participants added by the administrator.

On the new Allianz-Tiriac intranet, surveys and polls are easily published in order to solicit user comments through feedback forms and ratings systems. The forms, based on SharePoint Server 2010, help Allianz-Tiriac easily gather employee feedback and sentiment—for instance, the IT department recently conducted a survey to gauge user satisfaction. Survey data can be exported into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and shared in a dashboard view from a SharePoint site. Creating Dynamic Tools and ConnectionsSoftelligence helped Allianz-Tiriac integrate automated forms on its SharePoint sites. For example, in the new environment, the Human Resources department provides a number of forms, such as vacation requests, job applications, and headcount requests. These forms are based on SharePoint custom lists and have been used to partially replace the company’s former paper-based processes, which were highly manual.

Softelligence used SharePoint Web Parts to create interactive tools such as currency conversion and exchange rate

calculators that many users rely on in their daily work, and included them on the Allianz-Tiriac home page. The intranet also supports connection to line-of-business systems in the Allianz-Tiriac environment, through Microsoft Business Connectivity Services (BCS) in SharePoint Server 2010, such as its Oracle-based human resources system, which it uses to manage the profiles of all company employees, agents, and brokers. Softelligence helped Allianz-Tiriac make this connection, enabling users to search for people from within the SharePoint environment. “This and other connections to other systems helps to consolidate employees’ activities to the intranet,” says Marius Balica. “They don’t have to search for information in multiple locations.”Managing SecurityThe new intranet provides Allianz-Tiriac with great advantages in terms of document security. Softelligence helped the company invoke forms-based authentication in SharePoint Server 2010 to automatically validate each user’s credentials against information in Active Directory Domain Services. With this feature, the IT department can ensure that each document is viewed only by authorized users based on their membership in Active Directory groups. Furthermore, by using SharePoint Server 2010 audit logging capabilities, Allianz-Tiriac administrators can view, sort, filter, and analyze reports on the activity on each SharePoint site—for instance, to determine who has visited each site or accessed specific documents.

Later in 2010, Allianz-Tiriac deployed its SharePoint Server 2010–based intranet,

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“SharePoint Server 2010 has been hugely instrumental in improving our communication processes.”

Iulia Paunoiu, Public Relations Specialist, Internal Communications, Allianz-Tiriac

just two months after Softelligence began development. Allianz-Tiriac has retained Softelligence to provide ongoing support and development work, so that the company can continue to enhance and expand its intranet to take full advantage of SharePoint Server 2010.

BenefitsSoftelligence uses SharePoint Server 2010 to help customers create intranet environments for higher efficiency and improved collaboration and communication. These gains result in higher user adoption and satisfaction and stronger customer relationships for Softelligence.

Improved Collaboration and CommunicationSoftelligence helped Allianz-Tiriac take advantage of SharePoint Server 2010 to improve communication within and among its departments and employees. Users now have the ability to post announcements, conduct surveys, and solicit feedback without needing to rely on the IT department. Team rooms also provide a forum for users to collaborate on projects, share documents, and make use of forums to discuss ideas. “SharePoint Server 2010 has been hugely instrumental in improving our communication processes,” says Paunoiu. “The team room capability that Softelligence created lets us easily provide a collaboration workspace where teams can consolidate all of their information.”

Surveys and polls help Allianz-Tiriac understand its employees’ needs and experiences much better than before. For

instance, the survey that the IT department conducted revealed that more than 50 percent of Allianz-Tiriac employees are highly satisfied with the company’s IT operations. “We were able to share this data with the board of directors. It is very useful to have evidence like this to illustrate a department’s performance and accomplishments as we plan new projects and budgets,” says Balica.

Fast Time-to-Implementation, High EfficiencySoftelligence helped Allianz-Tiriac deploy its intranet on a very short timeline. In just two months, the company was using the SharePoint Server 2010–based environment to collaborate on projects, store and manage documents, and disseminate corporate information to employees. “It would have taken us three times longer to build the intranet without Softelligence,” says Balica . “The company knows SharePoint Server 2010 well, and the skill of its developers is impressive. Not to mention that their people skills are excellent. Our teams work well together—it’s a relationship based on mutual respect.”

Allianz-Tiriac has also significantly improved efficiency with its new intranet because content owners no longer need to coordinate with the IT department to perform updates. “With SharePoint Server 2010, I save 25 percent or more of my time. I can upload a news announcement in just seconds,” says Paunoiu.

The IT department also saves time. For instance, with SharePoint Server 2010

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“When we deploy SharePoint Server 2010 for customers, it inevitably leads to more projects and more consulting revenues.”

Deniz Gemambet, Business Analyst, Softelligence

forms-based authentication, user access to documents is managed automatically based on the user’s membership in Active Directory groups. IT staff no longer need to manually manage viewing rights. Other SharePoint Server 2010 features, such as surveys and prebuilt site templates, alleviate the IT department of development tasks because business users can implement these tools themselves.

As a SharePoint Server 2010 solution provider, Softelligence relies on the solution’s many features to deploy new environments rapidly. “With the out-of-the-box capabilities and flexible, streamlined development tools of SharePoint Server 2010, we can build robust, enterprise-level solutions for customers in very little time,” says Gemambet. Softelligence also finds that, by using SharePoint Server 2010, it can implement a solution and get customers up and running on it shortly, while continuing to enhance and extend the environment over time. “Web Parts, BCS, site templates, and other customizable and reusable features help us create new solutions, in the same familiar environment, and meets customers’ needs as they arise,” says Gemambet. Strong Adoption, Better Customer RelationshipsSince implementing SharePoint Server 2010, Allianz-Tiriac has seen its intranet usage increase significantly. “Twice as

many employees use the intranet now,” says Balica. “They find great value in SharePoint Server 2010 collaboration features. Employees feel more involved and more included, and their voices are more heard.”

SharePoint Server 2010 also helps Softelligence strengthen customer relationships because it helps the company deliver measurable results such as the increase in intranet usage, mentioned above. “When we deploy SharePoint Server 2010 for customers, it inevitably leads to more projects and more consulting revenues,” says Gemambet. “Allianz-Tiriac, like many other SharePoint Server 2010 customers, finds that its business users are more independent, they rely less on the IT department, they collaborate more effectively, and they have streamlined many business processes. We are able to implement these capabilities quickly—and that is a big win.”

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is the business collaboration platform for the enterprise and the Web.

For more information about Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, go to:www.microsoft.com/sharepoint

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Softelligence products and services, call (40) 31 425 19 08 or visit the website at: www.softelligence.ro

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published October 2011

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio−Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010−Microsoft SharePoint Designer

2010

Microsoft Visual Studio−Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

Ultimate