Profiled:

Endsleigh Insurance

14 November 2007

Endsleigh Insurance Services staff disliked using the search functionality on their intranet to find information because it delivered irrelevant results. In response, Endsleigh deployed Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 with Enterprise Search. Using Office SharePoint Server 2007, Endsleigh redesigned its intranet.

Based in Cheltenham, England, Endsleigh Insurance Services focuses on developing lifelong client relationships and offers products for everyone from students to retirees. Busy professionals require competent, speedy service, so Endsleigh empowers its highly trained employees to make decisions with a minimum of bureaucracy and oversight.

"A quick, relevant search solution is a critical tool," says Peter Leahy, head of IT at Endsleigh. "Our intranet has 20 top-level general corporate sites including human resources, finance, marketing, and corporate projects. It also houses content relating to industry matters like Financial Services Authority (FSA) regulations, and it has office-specific information on subjects like fire regulations and maintenance. Yet no one used the search tool to find any of this information because it delivered irrelevant results."

Poor access to information contributed to a general loss of productivity. People wasted time phoning perceived experts for answers, or browsing through the intranet's sub sites looking for data in a manual process that Leahy likens to using the dictionary: "Our intranet's structure helped you to get near the information but you still had to scan the documents looking for the one thing you wanted."

During budgeting, people scrambled to find the Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheets they needed among the thousands of spreadsheets stored on more than a dozen shared drives on the network.

"Inaccurate information wasted time and eroded our faith in the numbers," recalls Leahy. "Also, FSA requires that we review all client processes, work practices, and staffs' knowledge of legislation. Because no one used our search solution, it was difficult to document who was accessing what information to demonstrate our compliance to these rules." Eventually Endsleigh decided to migrate its intranet to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and deploy its Enterprise Search feature. Endsleigh expects to transform the way its employees find, use, and share information, not only at headquarters, but across all branch offices.

"We chose Office SharePoint Server 2007 because it includes not only Microsoft Enterprise Search, but other capabilities that employees can use to better manage and share content like corporate policies, training courses, budgets, and reference materials among branch offices," adds Leahy.

Endsleigh worked with technology partner Ciber, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, to migrate from Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and to configure and deploy Enterprise Search. "We have an established relationship with Ciber, and they continue to provide us with high caliber services and expertise that covers the full spectrum of Microsoft technologies," says Leahy.

Ciber consultants performed a database migration to move the intranet content to a new Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database server, as well as installing Office SharePoint Server 2007 on a new server. The team from Ciber worked with Endsleigh to redesign the intranet and then configured Enterprise Search to search and index all Office SharePoint Server 2007 content, including 400 My Sites. My Sites are dedicated customisable sites for individual employees.

Endsleigh will use the 2007 Microsoft Office release products to store output, for example Excel spreadsheets with searchable meta data, to Office SharePoint Server 2007, where it will be accessible in a central, searchable location. IT staff can use Office SharePoint Server 2007 to assign employee permissions to access different content, down to individual documents. Enterprise Search only delivers results that align with an employee's security permissions. To date, approximately 70 staff members at Endsleigh are using Enterprise Search on a daily basis. This will expand to all 1,000 staff by the end of the year.

When its Office SharePoint Server 2007–based intranet and Enterprise Search is deployed globally, Endsleigh will have a single source of corporate information and industry matters like FSA regulations that will be searchable by all employees.

"With a minimal learning curve, Enterprise Search adds up to more productive employees," says Leahy. "It saves time if you can use the same tool to find both the cover detail pertaining to uninsured loss recovery and a paternity leave form. We are looking forward to reducing intra-office phone calls, and to developing better audit trails."

Enterprise Search is already proving itself within the IT department. "Staff are reporting 100 per cent better relevance on results with just a simple text search," says Leahy. "With Enterprise Search, you no longer have to know where something is located in order to find it."

The deployment of Enterprise Search and Office SharePoint Server 2007 will initially affect workers at head office; however, it is the first step toward creating a more cohesive, efficient organisation including all branch offices. "Using Office SharePoint Server 2007 will help to ensure data is secure and access to documents is better controlled across the company," concludes Leahy.