Writeimage CEP ING DIRECT Canada Taps Into Power of Web 2.0 and Sharepoint Server 2007

Situation

ING DIRECT Canada opened for business in 1997, providing consumers with direct self-service banking products and allowing them to benefit from low fees and attractive interest rates. The appeal of direct banking has grown steadily, and today the company has over 1.6 million clients, employs over 900 people and owns over $29 billion in assets.

Customer satisfaction is critical in the world of direct banking. Employees, and especially ING DIRECT Canada’s 450 call centre representatives, must be able to respond quickly to customer requests and ensure the information they provide is accurate and up to date. For years staff relied on a custom-developed intranet and enterprise content management system to help them store and manage data. Built in 1997 in HTML in and migrated to Lotus Domino in 2000, the intranet was intended to act as an employee hub. The solution, however, lacked the scalability and flexibility ING DIRECT needed to maintain its track record of growth.

Use adoption lagged as staff found the decade-old user interface too difficult to navigate. The intranet also lacked the appeal of the company’s public-facing site and was designed in such a way that many changes had to be completed in a separate administration screen or with the help of the IT department. Most pressing, however, was the site’s static nature. ING DIRECT sought to build a truly collaborative culture by tapping into Web 2.0 technologies, including streaming video, links to Twitter feeds and personal pages. “We grew from a 300-person company in 1997 to a much larger organization, and we have to engage and communicate with greater numbers of people. It was no longer enough to provide people with static information in a way that wasn’t appealing to use,” says Vinay Venugopal, Senior Manager, IT Development Department, ING DIRECT Canada.

To achieve these goals, the intranet had to be made as efficient and simple to use as possible. All forms of content had to be easy to access, manage and repurpose. Staff also needed a far more intuitive user experience when it came to finding information – one that closely mirrored popular social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter - that employees are accustomed to using at home.

“We needed to truly engage with our employees, and help them engage with one another, in order to benefit from their insights while helping ING DIRECT build an even stronger culture” says Venugopal. “The organization's primary objective is to deliver stronger and true employee engagement that would foster collaboration and innovation.”

Solution

ING DIRECT decided to migrate its IT infrastructure to Microsoft®-based technology and phase out applications based on Lotus Notes and Domino, replacing them with Office SharePoint® Server 2007. Working with Microsoft Gold Certified partner Team TI, ING DIRECT started with a proof of concept and completed the implementation in eight weeks.

“It was an overnight success. We were able to take advantage of SharePoint out-of-the-box and, as a result, we went from projects being managed on people's local machines to having centralized information. After the change, employees actually wanted to share information,” says Venugopal.

The gains experienced in the first three months provided ING DIRECT with the confidence to transition the entire intranet, which it re-branded as the Orange Grove, to the platform based on SharePoint Server 2007. The company also launched the Orange Spark innovation centre, an application residing on the intranet designed as an online marketplace where employees can share and develop ideas. The flexibility of Office SharePoint Server 2007 and deep integration with the 2007 Office system allowed ING DIRECT to give the portal a similar look and feel to Office client desktop applications, e-mail, and Web browsers and provide a consistent user experience – helping to simplify how staff interact with content, processes, and business data.

“For end-users, there was zero training required. The transition was easy. The only thing they did was set-up an FAQ section, basically telling employees that if they were looking for the expense report form here, you'll now find it under here,” says Craig Nathan, Manager, Consulting Services, Team TI.

Internal information sources are now more integrated, helping to improve data consistency. ING DIRECT also uses SharePoint Server 2007 to improve its corporate compliance requirements and the ability to store, retrieve and retain information.

“We liked the fact that the product could be customized for our business needs. Having a ‘single version of the truth’ was one of the most valuable advantages that SharePoint offers. Using version control and audit trail capabilities, SharePoint helps our staff quickly locate and contribute information,” says Venugopal.

Benefits

With SharePoint Server 2007 in place, ING DIRECT is building a new corporate culture, one based on the real-time sharing of information and integration with social networking tools, leading to faster decision-making.

Enhanced Communication, Interoperability

Office SharePoint Server 2007 is built on an open, scalable architecture, and Orange Grove integrates with Twitter and other social media tools to foster real-time collaboration. The new CEO portal, for example, has not only reduced the number of mass emails to the organization, it has also opened a new channel for encouraging new ideas. The CEO’s insights on Twitter are shared on his site in real-time, and employees can ask the CEO questions online and get answers almost immediately. ING DIRECT has also started producing a series of “Straight Up” streaming videos that feature talks from the CEO that are posted to the site for employees, who are encouraged to provide feedback.

“From an ROI standpoint, I don't think more than three emails in the past six months have gone out to all staff, something that used to be almost a weekly or daily occurrence. Now everybody goes on the Orange Grove to access the latest information and see up-to-date online communication,” says Venugopal.

With a consistent, enterprise-wide hierarchy for intranet content in place, staff also have a more intuitive way to browse the site. Information is always current and users can easily find the information they need. ING DIRECT is also using SharePoint Server 2007 to connect to multiple diverse back end repositories ranging from banking systems to Human Resources.

Stronger Employee Engagement

The Orange Spark online innovation centre has helped transform the intranet site into a truly collaborative environment. It takes advantage of networking and communication tools in SharePoint Server 2007, including discussion forums, blogs and My Sites, that foster personal, real-time one-to-one or one-to many conversations. Employees can even rank ideas submitted to Orange Spark based on their potential to transform the organization.

“When we launched Orange Spark we envisioned 50 conversations as a success metric. Within four weeks we had generated well in excess of 200 conversations. Orange Spark has been a total success. Not only is the site generating some great ideas, it’s generating ideas our senior executives can review and put into practice,” says Venugopal.

The new intranet also allows employees to take advantage of My Sites, a personalized page that gives workers a central location to manage and store documents, content, links, and contacts. “My Sites makes finding people and information so much easier. You simply type in their first name, look at their My Site picture and know right away if it’s the right person, what he or she does and which department they work for. Sixty per cent of our staff actively use it,” says Venugopal.

This ability has even allowed staff to launch their own communities of interest, focused on making ING DIRECT a green place to work or starting a book club, for example.

Increased IT Agility, Reduced Support Cost

Previously, every time staff wanted to change any structural component of their intranet, they had to go through a change management process that involved the IT department. Today, employees can make changes directly in SharePoint Server 2007, and IT support costs have been significantly reduced.

“The IT team has been empowered to make things happen really quickly. Someone can now say to them ‘We need to have this thing up by Friday’, give them the information and it's done. There's no more waiting, no more code changes or hours of manual work involved,” says Nathan.

Superior Customer Service

ING DIRECT is using SharePoint Server 2007 to help build a more productive work environment. Enterprise Search in Office SharePoint Server 2007, for example, incorporates business, financial and customer data to produce comprehensive, relevant results. Additional features such as duplicate collapsing, spelling correction, and alerts improve the relevance of searches, allowing ING DIRECT employees to more easily find information.

“Every morning, staff can go right to the Orange Grove home page and they're able to see all the information that they need to know in order to do their job well. The company is no longer spending a lot of time and resources locating files and updating information,” says Nathan.

“For ING DIRECT, technology innovation is core to business success and developing a great corporate culture. The Orange Grove is our main source for all ING DIRECT news, announcements, product info, business results and announcements,” says Venugopal. “Improving staff access to information with SharePoint also helps to improve customer service. With more relevant, correct and valuable information at the fingertips of ING DIRECT staff, we can become faster at retrieving a wealth of information and ultimately help serve our clients better.”

Microsoft Office System

The Microsoft Office system is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.

For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to: