TUESDAY 7
FEBRUARY
2012
Intranet case study: how Post got
saucy
Jacqui Martin
Senior Internal Communications Advisor
New Zealand Post Group
New Zealand Post Group: New Zealand Post Limited.
What is New Zealand Post?
Been around over 170 years
─ Became an SOE in 1987
Over 10,000 employees across New Zealand
─ Estimate half of those are ‘wired’
Not just about letter and parcels
─ Data management, electoral enrolment, a bank
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Intranet case study: how Post got saucy
The Post Intranet
Intranet redesigned in 2007
─ CMS upgraded and further
functionality added in 2009
Owned by Group Communications
─ IT were owners of the system
─ Content managed by subject matter
experts in the business
─ Reality was that Internal
Communications became responsible
for everything
Content management system =
Sitefinity
─ Basic but lacked flexibility
─ Several versions behind latest release
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Intranet case study: how Post got saucy
The catalyst for change
Post was changing and the intranet needed to reflect this
Moving from federated business model to one group
─ There wasn’t one intranet
─ Six different sites on three different technologies
New strategy and vision for the Group
─ Our Plan on a Page
New internal brand
─ No longer had different business units with own brands
New Internal Communications team!
─ Proper Group function
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Intranet case study: how Post got saucy
The sequence of events
December 2010: vague mutterings about “a new intranet”
January 2011: first thoughts around what the issues were and Exec
paper drafted
End of March 2011: Exec agreed proposal to create one Group intranet
Delivery date 1 July!
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Intranet case study: how Post got saucy
What was feasible …
The original proposal was to create a single intranet that
covered all of Group, with improved functionality, a new
governance structure and new technology.
In the real world we decided to:
Stick with Sitefinity but upgrade to the latest version
New look and feel (brand and homepage)
New functionality
New governance structure
Strategy and long-term plan
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Intranet case study: how Post got saucy
How it happened
Chose Scrum as the project methodology
─ Two-week sprints
─ Daily stand-ups and co-location
─ Sprint 0 planning through April, first sprint began 2 May
Core team working solidly on it
─ Internal Communications as Owner and final decision maker
─ Scrum Master
─ Two Business Analysts
─ One Enterprise Architect
─ One Tester
─ Three Developers
─ Online agency (DNA)
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Intranet case study: how Post got saucy
What went wrong …
New internal brand didn’t turn up on time
─ Design company wasn’t briefed in until the week before it was due!
The migration of the existing content to the new system
─ No migration tool available at the time so had to build our own
 All ECL content ‘broke’ during migration
 Other business units affected by links disappearing
Some parts of the Group decided not to migrate
─ No longer ‘one Group intranet’
Too much content!
─ migrated over 1,900 pages and more than 9,000 documents and images
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Intranet case study: how Post got saucy
… and what went right
It went live on time
It has commitment from GLT downwards
─ Supported by the business
─ Creating a community of content owners
It has a vision and a strategy
─ ‘The intranet is the one place where all New Zealand Post Group employees
come together to both create and share information and knowledge. It will
be accessible by everyone, easy to use, contain quality information and be a
vital tool for the success of New Zealand Post.’
─ Drives process of continuous improvement
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Intranet case study: how Post got saucy
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Intranet case study: how Post got saucy
What our readers think
Plenty of feedback when it went live
─ People loved the new look, felt it was very clean
─ 50:50 split on the name, with the detractors thinking it was cheesy
 At least we got people talking – silence was not an option
Receive feedback on changes as they happen
─ Directly through feedback option, via email or through Yammer
─ Often includes suggestions for further improvements
Google Analytics show increased stickiness of site
─ Down: visits, bounce rate
─ Up: unique visitors, pageviews, pages/visit, average time on site, %age new
visits
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Intranet case study: how Post got saucy
What the team thinks
Sponsors are happy
─ Think it went well
─ Like the ability to get new ideas through to reality
Intranet owners are happy
─ Can see backlog decreasing dramatically
─ Starting to make progress on the shiny new things
─ Governance model means decisions can be debated and consensus
reached
 All three parties have a stake in the success
Can take pride in what we achieved and the improvements
we’ve made
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Intranet case study: how Post got saucy
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Intranet case study: how Post got saucy
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Intranet case study: how Post got saucy
If I learnt anything from this …
Never do it again!
Tried to change too much in too little time
─ Needed more time in initial Sprint 0 planning to work through all potential
issues
─ Resource mix needs to be thought through carefully
Get content owners organised sooner
─ Owners v content – not an even match
Have a vision and use it to drive the project on
─ Make it simple but make it aspirational
─ Share the dream with everyone you can – the more people signed up to it,
the likelier it is to happen
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Intranet case study: how Post got saucy
Where to now
Constant refinement, continuous improvement
New projects spinning off
─ Enterprise Search
 Intranet search on steroids
─ Authentication across the Group
 Customisation of homepage
Easy tasks done, bigger decisions to be made
─ Start thinking about site architecture
─ Technology decision – where to with Sitefinity
Resourcing
─ Changes in the Innovation and Tech team mean need a new focus and
business owner
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Intranet case study: how Post got saucy