Icebreaker New Zealand Ltd., which manufactures merino innerwear from wool sourced exclusively from New Zealand Merino sheep, will utilize cloud services offered by Microsoft Office 365 for its Intranet to support global expansion.
Icebreaker's merino innerwear is sold at over 3,000 stores across 43 countries. However, the company's internal systems have been unable to keep pace with its rapid international growth.
Icebreaker has eight offices in different countries which employ over 320 people, and the company wanted to develop a better platform than the existing email and Skype for managing communication between the Wellington Head Office, other branch offices and retail locations across the globe.
Ms. Brooke Riley, Intranet & Social Media Manager at Icebreaker, was instrumental in the company's decision to develop an Intranet in SharePoint 2010, which will integrate with existing Microsoft platforms, provide a single login and give flexible and scalable solution.
The company weighed the issue of deploying the Intranet in-house, but finally decided on deploying it in the cloud services offered by Microsoft Office 365.
Speaking to fibre2fashion, Ms. Riley, said, "At Icebreaker, a great deal of time is lost looking for the right information to do the job. Our culture is fragmented due to geography, with limited opportunities to share news and success, and we have the opportunity to resolve both problems through one tool – our Intranet."
"For the purpose, we have partnered with DNA and KnowledgeCue. These two agencies were chosen through a Request for Proposal (RFP) process. We felt strongly they would deliver a solution that worked specifically for our company and most importantly for our brand," she adds.
Briefing about the benefits that will accrue to Icebreaker due to the partnership, she says, "Our high performing team will have fast and easy access to relevant and up-to-date information, through a collaborative Intranet that reflects the authentic and inspirational Icebreaker culture."
Revealing the reason for choosing Microsoft Office 365 cloud services, she says, "We did not want to put in a lot of new infrastructure, as our premise was not right for it considering the cost and set up time involved. We opted for the limited functionality of the cloud version as having a smaller subset of features made the project manageable and easier to get moving."
"It took eight months of time to implement the project. During the period, many workshops were also carried out with key business owners to get the structure and content right. Design and development was carried out over the last 6 months by the DNA and KnowledgeCue teams, whilst the content was developed in-house. We believe this investment plus the cost of SharePoint licenses is a worthwhile spend to develop our team and the benefits will certainly outweigh the costs in the long run," she concludes.
