Case Study

SharePoint Intranet Transformation

Client Background

The Client is a world-leading liquidity and data solutions specialist, with a team of over 5,000 employees working across many offices in different countries.

People are central to client’s success, so ensuring employees have what they need to get the job done is imperative.

The Customer recognized that their intranet wasn’t giving employees what they needed. They needed an upgrade – but speed was important.

Alif is a Microsoft associate Partner with many years’ experiences in SharePoint and has a reputation for developing successful SharePoint strategies and leading migrations.

Problem

The Customer recognized that their intranet wasn’t giving employees what they needed. They needed an upgrade – but speed was important.

They wanted to deliver high-impact, quick wins for the homepage whilst planning for more complex updates across the wider intranet.

The two core areas that needed attention were:

Branding

The old intranet homepage didn’t align strongly enough with the client brand. They wanted a fresh homepage design that was more visual, impactful, and engaging.

Most importantly, the homepage needed to make better use of brand fonts and colors, including more complex branding elements like gradients.

The internal team at client had experimented with how to do this with SharePoint’s out-of-the-box features but felt limited by SharePoint’s design capabilities.

Quick Links

The quick links section of client’s homepage is where employees go to find key tools and resources, like IT help and expense forms.

It’s the most used feature, and the reason why many employees visit the intranet each day.

However, employee feedback identified that it took up too much space and wasn’t customizable.

Client wanted a more visually appealing solution that employees could tailor to include the tools and resources that were most important to them.

Assessment

The first phase of the project focused on Discover and Design.

With a series of requirements workshops, we refined and validated the key areas of improvement in the existing intranet,

looking at:

navigation and structure,

the home page,

news and departmental site designs,

workflow designs.

With the insights gained from the workshops, we put forward recommendations and custom designs to best suit client’s needs.

Solution Delivered

Client reached out to us looking for SharePoint consultancy, seeking help on how to improve their intranet quickly.

We listened to their challenges, their needs, and suggested a product-based approach to deliver the high-impact quick wins they needed.

By layering our products Beacon and My Tools on top of SharePoint, they were able to transform their intranet homepage.

Getting Creative with Design

They were keen to push the boundaries, and really wanted to see the art of the possible.

As well as branding, and the inclusion of My Tools, the design also needed to:

Make use of multimedia content

Bring the content around strategy and values to life.

So, armed with this knowledge and a set of brand guidelines, our in-house UX and Design team got creative.

Engaging Headers

Multiple options for attention-grabbing headers, including full-width banners and carousels.

Directs employees to the most important content in an easy, brand-aligned way.

Branding at the Core

Showcases brand throughout, including fonts, colors, logos and gradients.

Brand elements configured and locked-in at the admin level, ensuring future content is always brand-compliant.

My Tools

Provides a personalized view by allowing employees to choose the tools that matter to them.

Accessible from anywhere on the intranet via the SharePoint app bar.

Interactive Content

Embedded key multimedia content including podcasts and videos.

Creates an interactive space for employes to engage.

Architecture Design-

Result/Outcome

Supported Self-Build

The great thing about this project is we didn’t build it. TP ICAP did.

Once the new homepage was designed, we wanted the customer to feel confident in using Beacon and My Tools moving forwards. So, we used the build phase as the perfect opportunity to get hands on.

TP ICAP took part in a supported build. This involved the internal team at client side and our product team sitting together on a Teams session and walking through the build together.

Using Beacon, the client put all the designs into place themselves, with some support and encouragement from our team.

We designed Beacon to be intuitive and easy to use for people who might not consider themselves as technical experts. And we’re happy to say client agreed.

The team were amazed at how easy it was to make SharePoint look great using our product.

Since launch, the new homepage averages 90% employee reach every week.

But beyond the numbers, the new homepage has instilled an attitude shift about SharePoint. It’s a big step to go from ‘We don’t want our intranet to look like SharePoint’ to ‘We want our website to look like SharePoint’ – which makes all the hard work worth it.

We’re already planning the next steps in client’s wider intranet overhaul, building on the foundation of a high-impact homepage.