Bryce Johnson of Navantis

The Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) is a not-for-profit organization representing Canada’s 200 Olympians as well as the countless Olympic hopefuls.  Communication, support, training opportunities and Olympic logistics are coordinated for hundreds of athletes and coaches across the nation. The goal of this project was to develop an avenue for athletes, coaches, sponsors, youth, media, and the public to share information including funding information, policy changes, and to track athlete accomplishments. Using Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) and Microsoft Content Management Server (CMS), Navantis created extranet capabilities for contact management and CRM to provide secure communications between athletes, coaches and COC board members. It also provides public information via a CMS-enabled web site. The site was built to handle tens of thousands of concurrent visitors and constant real-time updates during busy periods (i.e., the Olympics). The site reduces managing costs, provides self-service and timelier dissemination of information, and increases visibility, reach and service capability for COC to attract new sponsors. The return on investment for the COC is estimated to be 77%.

Microsoft Canada is the Canadian Microsoft subsidiary. It has offices from coast to coast and is headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario.

In order to effectively reach its approximately 700 employees, Microsoft Canada contracted Navantis to implement a comprehensive intranet solution based on the Microsoft Solution for Intranets (MSI) prescriptive architecture. The application was designed, architected, developed, tested and deployed within 12 weeks using Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2001 and a series of custom interface and functional extensions. The site is in daily use by all Microsoft Canada employees for document management, HR self-service and a variety of other activities.

The Client:
In 2001, the towns of Ancaster, Dundas and Flamborough, the Township of Glanbrook, and the cities of Hamilton and Stoney Creek, amalgamated to become the City of Greater Hamilton. The city now has over 500,000 residents, with nine per cent of the population concentrated in rural communities.

The Challenge:
While Hamilton has as a large downtown population, the amalgamation brought in many small farming communities, which were isolated from the city core. The city wanted to use its website to help bridge this disconnect.  The city of Greater Hamilton joined more than 16 community partners ranging from university representatives to local business owners, to steer the initiative. Their mission was to ensure the site adequately addressed the needs of all citizens through access to a one-stop online information and services resource.

The Solution:
Navantis implemented an interactive community web portal (www.myhamilton.ca) providing local residents, community groups and tourists with an innovative and convenient way to collaborate, share information and access resources. 
Based on Navantis’ Community Municipal Portal (CMP) technology, the site offers people a single, convenient entry-point for 24/7 access to Hamilton information and services. A powerful search engine brings together news, events and government resources – as well as access to the public library. Residents can turn to the portal to find out about the latest exhibit at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, review educational and recreational course offerings, or see what special events are taking place by searching the extensive community events calendar. 

The framework for the site is based on Microsoft technology, and provides innovative features while presenting the content in a simple, intuitive web format.  Designed to enable collaboration and information-sharing amongst communities, the Navantis CMP aims to help municipalities provide self-service to citizens and encourage investment in their cities.

The Benefits:
myhamilton.ca is a great example of how a large and wide-spread community was able to collectively work together to build an innovative solution to improve communication and services to citizens.  Through Navantis’ CMP solution, the City of Hamilton is now able to make the vision of connecting people and information a reality.

The site is the result of local representatives from the public, private and non-profit sectors collaborating to answer the needs of their community. The scope and breadth of the solution is a testament to the ability of many groups to work together to demonstrate how a large amalgamated city can come together through technology.  By working with Navantis, the city was able to develop a core technology infrastructure that can grow as the city continues to expand in the years to come.

Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) markets and sells atomic energy to governments and crown corporations worldwide. In an effort to streamline its 30 disparate locations, 4,000 employees and sales cycles averaging 10 years or more, AECL commissioned Navantis to construct an intranet-based CRM application enabling AECL to share customer information, documents and sales opportunities. The solution also comprises detailed information captured about key decision makers involved in AECL’s sales cycles. The solution was built in eight weeks using Microsoft VisualBasic.NET. It integrates with an existing Oracle 8i data structure as well as PeopleSoft, both of which previously existed in the customer environment. The solution implements industry-standard permission-based security using Microsoft Active Directory. It is in daily use today.

The Client:
The Niagara Health System (NHS) is Ontario's largest multi-site hospital amalgamation comprised of eight hospitals which accounts for 1000 beds and 4500 employees.

The Challenge:
Niagara Health installed MS Exchange, resulting in a dramatic increase in the use of email throughout the organization. Without a collaboration application framework in place employees were relying on email to
Collaborate, putting pressure on inbox storage limits. The client upgraded to Server 2003 which assisted in e-mail redundancy due to collaboration pointers, but the client needed a solution that facilitated collaboration between hospitals, partners and staff. The client’s existing Intranet was
nearing the end of its life and most users did not have login accounts and could not save files as a result.  Niagara Health wanted a collaboration tool with an easy to use interface and navigation that would be familiar to employees. The system also needed to allow external stakeholders, such as physicians, to collaborate securely:

• People wanted to publish their own material and collaborate with teams
• The NHS is very busy place with many projects and the system needed to be installed and adopted quickly
• Very high demand for collaboration due to CIO mandate
• High ‘grassroots’ demand to eliminate publication bottleneck

The Solution:
Navantis worked with the Niagara Health to implement SharePoint, SQL Server and ISA to ensure a fully functional collaboration portal was delivered in a 2 week time frame. Navantis developed the following
8-stage Quickstart methodology which was used to deploy the project:

1. Install SharePoint
2. Train administrators and conduct technical knowledge transfer
3. Create a skin for SharePoint
4. Conduct a vision workshop with senior managers
5. Conduct training sessions for end users
6. Set up the portal
7. Conduct department/team workshops & migrate content
8. Launch!

The Benefits:

• Immediate payoff with solutions meeting 90% clients needs out of the box
• Methodology met clients needs due to hands-on approach and workshops with teams and management
• Navantis helped departments capture their needs and vision, limiting the Internet Technology and Communication (ITC) Department's risk
• Huge help for ITC, who now have an electronic service manual in development
• Overall project had enormous visibility and success & has eliminated publication bottlenecks & increased workflow
• System was available for use immediately; while it was promoted to the community, it was not mandated – ROI was immediate with acceptance and adoption by key user communities gaining improved efficiency leading to grassroots growth
• System has been implemented on 3 servers with 6 processors, it is set-up to scale as volume increases so there is no impact to user community – volume is increasing daily with peak usage between 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. and no
• difference in performance

The Niagara Health SharePoint Portal Includes:

• Ad-hoc collaboration support with over 50 collaboration sites each with sub-sites and multiple users
• Customized web part for self-registration and individualized training paths allowing Niagara Health to see all training that goes on within the organization on a daily basis for a staff of 4500 people