100+
hours of development
time saved
35%
increase in daily users
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How a leading Television Network cut the cost of building a modern Intranet by 30%
ShortPoint has enabled us to create internal SharePoint sites that are user-friendly and attractive for our multi-generational group of Associates.
Emma
Head of Corporate Collaboration
content
customer
The client owns and operates premium US television networks, and runs on-demand services for each network.
Note: Our client has kindly allowed us to share their story on the condition of anonymity.
Challenges
Creating an intranet befitting of a modern brand, but set back by limited tools and budget
For almost a decade, our client’s Head of Corporate Collaboration, Emma had administered the intranet portal for the media giant. Originally built in SharePoint, the site was still doing a good job of connecting staff with work-related information.
However, it started to feel outdated and out of sync with their modern and iconic brand. Modernizing the portal meant modernizing their systems first, so the company migrated over to SharePoint Online.
Our key stakeholders also wanted the portal to act as a doorway into our wider digital workplace. So we had a lot of complex expectations to meet.
- Emma
Once that was complete, Emma was tasked with redesigning and relaunching the site. It was a huge project with huge expectations. Inside a year, she needed to overhaul every page and pixel—and relaunch an intranet fit for a 21st Century entertainment network.
“First of all, we carried out a user survey of the entire company to make sure we understood what people wanted from their intranet,” explains Emma. “And their feedback was consistent. They wanted an attractive site that was functional, less text heavy and met the high design standards they were used to seeing in the consumer world.
With so much work to do, and limited time to do it, Emma felt anxious. As she began working on the technical development of the website, those worries only deepened.
Emma was stuck. Expectations from her colleagues and leaders were incredibly high. But she didn’t have the tools or budget flexibility to create a portal that would blow them away.
Our leadership team gave me strict instructions to keep our costs as low as possible. So there was no budget for hiring developers who could produce code to deliver the high level of design we needed.
- Emma
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We knew straight off the bat that because we’re a premium media business, our content had to look really nice and branded. But what SharePoint was offering out of the box just wasn’t enough to achieve that.
Emma
Head of Corporate Collaboration
Solution
An easy-to-use, no-code platform that is backed up by personal and responsive customer support
With developer fees out of the question, Emma needed to find another way to get ahead. So she scoured the internet to search out a software solution that could help her build an on-brand intranet with great aesthetics quickly and affordably. That’s when she found ShortPoint.
It offered Emma a way to build a modern, on-brand site with no coding.
It was seriously cost-effective for the long list of tools and functions on offer.
It promised a personal level of customer support and hand-holding that was priceless to Emma as she headed towards her deadline.
“I wasn’t sure if they’d be able to help as I was building the site as a development tenant at that stage,” she says. “But they went out of their way to help, giving us trial licenses for both our development and production environments, so we could test it out on both of them.”
Emma quickly signed up for a full subscription and ShortPoint installed it at no extra cost over her SharePoint environment. The previous limitations and difficulties of using SharePoint were replaced with a user-friendly online environment. Suddenly, it was simple and fast to design and publish pages with no coding. With the software in place, Emma’s team used all of ShortPoint’s features to transform their previously uninspiring portal. “I wasn’t sure if they’d be able to help as I was building the site as a development tenant at that stage,” she says. “But they went out of their way to help, giving us trial licenses for both our development and production environments, so we could test it out on both of them.” Like any new software product, there was a small learning curve. But ShortPoint went above and beyond to make sure Emma and her team understood every tool and function.
Used Tools
ShortPoint has led to a more streamlined process, refined our workflow, and enabled us to bring more money in.
-Milton
ShortPoint’s Theme Builder allowed Emma to quickly incorporate the business’s corporate branding. It was easy to experiment with colours, fonts and layouts to create a tailored look and feel that perfectly reflected their culture and brand.
ShortPoint’s Copy and Paste feature enabled Emma to quickly build 50+ individual pages. Using ShortPoint’s extensive library of demos, she could copy over whole pages - or individual design elements she liked - and then customize them. With no coding or time-heavy customizations to do, she saved hours of development time on every page. In fact, she estimates 100+ hours were saved just on page builds.
For pages that required more complex builds - such as home and landing pages - Emma used ShortPoint’s Page Builder. It worked like magic, allowing her to add complex design elements, including lists, buttons and video feeds at the click of a button. No coding, no testing, just great looking pages.
On the weekend before launch, SharePoint wasn’t allowing us to authenticate with our credentials. But luckily, ShortPoint’s team stepped in to help us open up access, so we could meet our deadline and launch that Monday. It was a critical point where we had to go live and ShortPoint really saved the day.
- Emma
Any time Emma encountered a challenge during the development journey, ShortPoint jumped into action to help.
“On one occasion we were having some conflicts with the way a mega menu was displaying,” Emma says. “Even though the problem was with something we’d created with another add-in tool on SharePoint, the ShortPoint team fixed the issue. “They’re always willing to assist us in any way possible.
ShortPoint also leapt to the company’s rescue when they had an authentication problem that threatened their launch.
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ShortPoint took the time to understand our use case and what we were trying to do. It was clear they really cared about making us successful with our redesign and relaunch.
Emma
Head of Corporate Collaboration
Results
Beautifully modernized intranet and costs cut by 30%
Emma says that ShortPoint was a “lifesaver”. The tools and team helped her redesign and relaunch on time—and create a stunning on-brand intranet faster, cheaper, and with much less hassle, than she’d imagined.
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Thanks to ShortPoint, project costs came in 30% less than she’d budgeted. And that’s a huge deal, because she was already working under strict cost constraints.
“ShortPoint saved us a lot of money, for sure,” she says. “We didn’t have to use expensive developers to do coding or JavaScript, and our team could work much quicker because ShortPoint is so user-friendly.”
ShortPoint also came into its own when Emma had colleagues pulled from the team mid-project.
“During the project, we had certain resources fall off, so we were left shorthanded,” she says. “It was a lifesaver having ShortPoint, because we could design pages quickly and still hit our deadline with a reduced team.”
It’s a tool that can be used without being a developer, so literally anyone can design a great-looking site, while keeping their costs low.
Emma
Head of Corporate Collaboration
Another measure of success has been an impressive rise of 35% in user adoption. “ShortPoint enabled us to give folks everything they’d asked for,” she says. “The new site is comparable to anything our people see in the consumer world and is right on brand for a leading entertainment and media company. “Our people are using it for everything from getting information, news, calendars and signing up for events. It’s become a one-stop shop for them.”
In addition, the rebranded portal has received fantastic feedback from senior leaders, stakeholders and employees. And that’s great for Emma’s standing in the business—and her future career prospects. Emma values ShortPoint’s team just as much as their product. “What I love is that I can reach out to my sales rep at any time and they get back to me straight away,” she says.
She recommends ShortPoint without hesitation. “It’s a wonderful feeling to have fulfilled all the requirements for our new intranet and we couldn’t have done it without ShortPoint.”
I may not even know that ShortPoint can do certain things, but if I ask a question, they’ll enlighten me and tell me the product can do that or you can do this in an easier way.
- Emma
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