Intranet Planning and Migration Support Helps Biopharmaceutical Derive Maximum Benefits from SharePoint 2010
Project at a Glance
RDA provided guidance and planning assistance to a global biopharmaceutical company, enabling the organization to focus its SharePoint 2010 implementation efforts on the brands and units that will experience the maximum benefit without the need for custom development. This allows the organization to grow into its use of SharePoint 2010 and spread naturally, building on successful initiatives over time that demonstrate value and help drive adoption. RDA also provided strategic consulting for migrating from the eRoom platform to SharePoint and training on FAST Search for SharePoint. As anticipated, our client is benefiting from improved capabilities in collaboration, workflow and search for its teams as SharePoint 2010 is implemented across the enterprise.
About Our Client
RDA’s client is a global, research-based biopharmaceutical company that manufactures and markets products in several therapeutic classes.
Background
In order to take advantage of the many collaboration, workflow and search capabilities of Microsoft SharePoint 2010, our client decided to establish that platform as its standard to support information needs throughout the organization. The global unit planned out the environment from a high level, produced branding guidelines and developed general governance for the system. However, specific implementation decisions were entrusted to its divisions worldwide.
Our client’s US operation wanted to leverage the new platform, but needed an experienced SharePoint partner to provide guidance with regard to addressing specific business problems and understanding how the global policies would best be implemented within its various brands and units.
Solution Detail
RDA partnered with our client to guide them through the discovery and planning process around the following key areas:
- Evaluation of global branding & policies
- Integration opportunities with other available productivity tools
- Collaboration with external partners
- Support for current initiatives
- Collaboration for ongoing product launches
RDA worked with the many stakeholders and end users to identify high-value implementations of SharePoint that could be accomplished essentially “out of the box,” without the need for custom development. These implementations focused on targeted brands that would experience the maximum benefit from SharePoint 2010. This would allow the organization to grow into its use of SharePoint 2010 and spread naturally, building on successful initiatives over time that demonstrate value and help drive adoption.
RDA delivered an implementation roadmap document outlining our recommendations, which included leveraging the expertise of a SharePoint specialist from RDA to help our client get started.
RDA also provided strategic consulting services to our client related to their initiative to migrate from the e-Room platform to SharePoint 2010. We worked with their teams to plan for a successful migration.
In addition, RDA provided strategic consulting to our client on SharePoint and FAST search, helping their teams understand how FAST compares to the search product they were currently using (Autonomy). We explained the various features and how best to leverage those technologies in connection with e-Room migration. RDA delivered a proof of concept which demonstrated the capabilities of FAST, as well as demonstrating auto-classification using a 3rd party tool that integrates with SharePoint.
Benefits
As a result of RDA’s guidance and planning assistance, our client is able to focus its SharePoint 2010 implementation efforts on the brands and units that will experience the maximum benefit without the need for custom development. This allows the organization to grow into its use of SharePoint 2010 and spread naturally, building on successful initiatives over time that demonstrate value and help drive adoption.
As anticipated, our client is benefiting from improved capabilities in collaboration, workflow and search for its teams as SharePoint 2010 is implemented across the enterprise. They have also engaged with RDA to provide ongoing implementation services for the ideas that came about during this engagement.
Technically Speaking
This project involves SharePoint 2010 as well as FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.
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