Anglian Water has started a phased roll-out of a SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Edition intranet portal to improve the flow of information around the business.
Implemented by Infosys, the portal, called Hawk, is integral to the strategic direction of the business, which involves driving better service to customers, becoming more efficient and simplifying information searches.
The intranet will also ensure staff have access to up-to-date information, remove duplication of materials and enable Anglian Water to make more reliable submissions to regulatory authorities. Once complete, it will manage data and documents for 4,500 people.
Richard Boucher, business change and strategy director at Anglian Water, said the portal provides a way for people to access information quicker.
As the system gets deployed throughout Anglian Water it will capture workflows and integrate processes. "People in the field can take photographs, which integrate with our workforce system," said Boucher.
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Rachel Butler, programme manager at Anglian Water, said it chose SharePoint because of its portal capability, collaboration features and social media support.
"SharePoint works with Open Text LiveLink 9.7.1 for document management, and integrates with the company's SAP system for operations," she said.
The Hawk project, which began in September 2011, is 30% complete. Migration is slow due to the need to run the company's legacy portal in parallel with the implementation of the SharePoint software.
"We're a 24x7 business, so we have a structured plan with a phased migration to keep the two intranets aligned," said Butler.
She said IT had to work closely with the business during the project. "We sat down with people to understand what information they used. Infosys listened to the users."
The platform runs on Windows Server 2008 R2 and is hosted on a combination of physical HP and VMware virtual servers. Anglian Water is using the AVA interface in LiveLink to enable documents to be published on the SharePoint portal.
