Centrica Global Intranet – Design
Project Summary & Scope
Centrica’s Global Intranet Redesign was initially scoped to be a technology upgrade project.
The Global intranets provided access to critical support information for 35,000 staff members. These intranets supported all of Centrica’s domestic and international offices.
Efficient Information Retrieval for 35,000 employees
Originally, the project’s scope was centred around an upgrade to Sharepoint that supported the various intranets. From previous research, I knew the significant challenges faced by users in accessing key information from the intranet. Call centre staff members (numbering approx 10,000 users) relied on information located on the Intranet when interacting with customers.
Transforming this process from painful, slow and frustrating to efficient and easy was where the real strategic value resided.
I worked with the project manager and together we established an extended remit. The project’s additional priority became making access to key information straightforward for end-users.
High Level Approach
I located the content and information according to user expectations.
I developed the site organisation and structures through best-practice user research.
I applied smart and balanced information architecture principles. I reviewed the top-down options but also used a bottom-up approach to the content organisation.
This enabled me to determine appropriate site structures and navigation designs. This would improve the experience and efficiency of thousands of key workers throughout their working days.
We were previously informed by senior management within British Gas that just saving a second on average call handling time would save the company £1 million.
My responsibilities
My role was to research, design, validate and gain sign off for:
- the information architecture,
- navigation design
- and all UIs related to the project.
My working collaborations
To deliver across the project I collaborated with:
- project managers,
- business analysts,
- office liaisons,
- staff members across many different departments,
- business communication stakeholders
- the technical intranet team,
- solution architects,
- outside technical agencies
- and external design agencies
I was responsible for creating the key deliverables.
This enabled the business to build out the site’s 24 business unit individual intranets. These individual intranets also encompassed the core content which was common to all.
Definition of Scope, Governance of Project and Strategy
At the outset of the project, I worked directly with the Project Manager to determine the key aspects and workstreams that would be required to deliver the overall project.
Initially, we were the only two members of the delivery team for the project and we established the high-level areas that would need to be covered in order to successfully deliver the overall scope of the project.
Definition & Business Requirements Gathering – Agile User Stories
I ran sessions with the Brand Intranet Managers to gather the business requirements. We were working in an Agile manner and the requirements needed to be captured in the form of user stories.
This was a new approach for the Brand Intranet Managers. It required giving them training and instructions. This enabled the successful capture of the business requirements for the project.
The PM and I took on the role of running these sessions as we both had experience and training in capturing stories in this manner.
Convincing the business the value of user input into the project.
I worked at convincing the key stakeholders of the necessity and value of engaging users. This would ensure that user requirements and needs supplemented the business requirements.
Definition & Strategy
The first step was to engage the senior stakeholders – Brand Intranet Managers – to determine their appetite for user engagement.
I built the case for the potential scope of a user research programme. I looked to gain information about the informational needs of the 35,000 global users of the Intranet.
Understanding the current situation
Initially, I proposed as a starting point, creating a survey to understand the scope and nature of the challenges faced by users.
This was eventually rejected as there was concern that the survey from Brand Intranet Managers that the survey approach could provide embarrassing results as to the effectiveness of the current intranet.
This initial rejection, however, enabled me to push for an extension of the scope of the research. It enabled me to include more users across a wider range of roles and offices.
This first-hand qualitative research would provide more valuable insights. This would lead to more actionable improvements than the responses to the survey would have.