APS Healthcare – APS Central Redesign
Overview
APS Healthcare recognized that they needed to redesign their corporate intranet in order to make it more accessible for their employees. Before the redesign, APS Healthcare was using Microsoft® SharePoint 2003 to manage their corporate intranet which had grown to include over 800 sites. Due to the lack of standards and processes on administering the corporate intranet, it had grown into a large library that contained multiple versions of documents. Employees did not know where to find information and there was no search functionality within the site.
Goal
APS Healthcare hired Cognitive Technologies to perform two tasks: to redesign its corporate intranet and to make the intranet a center for collaboration. As part of the project, Cognitive Technologies would need to assess the current APS Healthcare intranet IT infrastructure and upgrade the intranet to utilize Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007. The upgrade would involve moving and upgrading 800 SharePoint sites.
Solution
Cognitive Technologies created a solution that would not only be able to satisfy the needs of APS Healthcare, but also minimize the risks involved with upgrading to the newer SharePoint® platform. To understand the APS Healthcare’s needs, Cognitive Technologies reviewed site usage data and conducted requirements gathering sessions. These sessions allowed Cognitive Technologies to understand how individual employees interacted with the intranet on a daily basis. After analyzing this information, Cognitive Technologies was able to identify those issues that made the original intranet inaccessible to employees. Working to solve those issues and address identified requirements, Cognitive Technologies created mock-ups that reflected APS Healthcare’s corporate branding and introduced content management processes, custom web parts, and data reorganization strategies.
To minimize the risk associated with upgrading to Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007, Cognitive Technologies crafted unique processes to ensure that all of the more than 800 SharePoint® websites would be upgraded without experiencing issues.
The resulting intranet SharePoint® platform upgrade and site content redesign allowed APS Healthcare to:
-
Search for documents, people, and information
-
Improve business processes
-
Maintain site security more effectively
-
Utilize extensive versioning and check-in / check-out features
-
Leverage My Sites’ social networking capabilities, keeping employees connected
-
Employ web-based forms to manage portal site content
Cognitive Value Added
Cognitive Technologies provided a team of experienced project managers, business analysts, and SharePoint® specialists to:
-
Manage and monitor project status
-
Gather steering committee requirements as well as end user requirements to ensure that the redesigned portal would meet client’s needs
-
Recommend IT infrastructure that would support APS Healthcare’s needs
-
Suggest best practices for administering the client’s new SharePoint intranet portal