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Case Studies
Field Force Automation Provides Mobile Business Units with Reliable Communication and Collaboration
Project at a Glance |
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RDA created an employee portal for this U.S. bottling company to provide the communication and collaboration foundation for their mobile workforce. The workforce can now access reliable data in a timely manner and the data is much easier to discover due to the significantly enhanced search capability. |
About Our Client
RDA's client is one of the largest bottling companies in the U.S.
Background
Our client reorganized its business structure to more effectively leverage its Sales and Delivery business units. This initiative, commonly referred to as the "Field Force Automation Initiative," included the consolidation of the existing 52 branch offices into 20 regional logistic centers (RLCs) and the conversion of many employees from office-based to home-based status. These home-based employees needed to perform their job functions from virtual offices and/or mobile locations. The "Field Force Automation Initiative" was not a single project, but a series of projects focused on enabling the mobile workforce, which included:- Making relevant information more accessible and easy to locate
- Making relevant information available to the workforce in a timely manner
- Providing a reliable method for workers to synchronize with corporate servers
- Providing a reliable method for workers to communicate and collaborate with one another
Solution Detail
RDA and our client undertook the creation of a new employee portal based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 to provide the communication and collaboration foundation for the mobile workforce. The project was broken into multiple iterations to implement functionality in order of priority to the company's business need and to allow each successive release to build upon the domain of knowledge gained in the prior iteration. The iterations were as follows:
Iteration 1 - Install the necessary components of MOSS 2007 to immediately provide the benefits to the client as well as implement specific customizations to address specific needs of the Sales and Delivery user groups in advance of the closing and consolidation of the field offices.- Install MOSS 2007 Enterprise
- Install MS Forefront for SharePoint
- Targeted User Group is Sales and Delivery
- Set up Site Templates and Master Pages for Sales and Delivery
- Migrate Lotus Quick Place Content
- Migrate Sales Intranet Content
- Enable Enterprise Search
- Pilot MySite functionality to limited user base
- Expand User base to the rest of the departments
- Migrate remaining Quick Place and Wave Content
- Install and configure Rights Management Server
- Further enhancement of Branding and Site Definitions
- Establish Content Management Workflows for site content updates and publishing documentation
- Custom Web Part Development to more concisely push data to users
- Expand Search Content Sources
- Exposing Content to Corporate Extranet
- Explore Implementation of Excel Services
- Utilize Additional Features of MySites
Benefits
The response from the user community has been very positive and is impacting their ability to work more effectively now that the field force is mobile. MOSS 2007 has enabled our client to utilize data in a more timely manner. The administration of collaboration data and the Intranet has been significantly reduced. Users also report that data is much easier to discover thanks to the significantly enhanced search capability.
Technically Speaking
This project utilized MOSS 2007 Enterprise, SQL Server 2005, MS Forefront, numerous workflow enhancements, and improved navigation and master pages to model our client's corporate look and feel.
