SR1 Development have a long standing relationship with the North East LEP. 

Background 

The North East Local Enterprise Partnership work with partners to develop a more competitive economy for the North East, Helping to create more and better jobs for everyone. 

They approached SR1 Development in 2020 to assist with implementing a SharePoint Online intranet, and to start digitizing several paper based processes. 

The Approach 

SR1 Development and the NELEP have worked together closely over the past 4 year, building very strong working relationships to help develop a best in class intranet and collaboration platform. 

The Result 

Implementation of a strongly branded intranet, ensuring colleagues across the organisation have easy access to latest news, events, templates, policies and documents. 

Implementation of a suite of PowerApps to replace paper-based processes for: 

• Leave management 
• Flextime 
• Credit card request 
• Travel expenses 
• Gifts and hospitality record 
• Employee sickness 
• Purchase Order request 
• Delegated decisions 
• And many more… 

Feedback 

“We love working with SR1 Development! The service we receive from Steve and the team is exceptional. We have a fantastic working relationship which is built on trust and the knowledge we know Steve and the team will deliver an excellent product every time. Steve has a wealth of knowledge in SharePoint and Microsoft and is extremely adept at communicating it in a simple way to us ‘non-tech’ folks! He always reacts positively and with a great solution to any request we put his way. Steve and the team are always on hand to support with any query big or small and always replies promptly.  

The work SR1 have carried out for LEP has been transformational for our team. We now have online systems which work seamlessly compared to paper or Word and Excel based systems we used previously. The intranet has become a central information point for the team where they can easily access information they need. Almost every member of our organisation has expressed how much the intranet has improved their way of working, in particular our managers. Our new starters have also commented on how well it is designed and it’s functionality compared with other organisations they’d worked in. We are continuing to add new sections and build forms with SR1 guiding us on what is possible.” 

Rebecca Kinmond – Programme Manager 

Here at SR1 Development, we work to nurture and develop existing partnerships. We’ve had the pleasure of getting to work with Karbon Homes again, this time to migrate their existing EDMS management system from SharePoint 2019 to Sharepoint Online.

Background 

Karbon Homes covers the North East of England and Yorkshire, with around 32,000 homes across diverse communities, all facing different opportunities and challenges. 

They are focused on delivering three strategic aims – to provide as many good quality homes as they can, to deliver excellent service to customers, and to shape strong, sustainable places for their communities. 

The Approach 

Karbon homes had already implemented a robust internal EDMS system to integrate their Housing Management System with SharePoint on Premise.  

They approached SR1 Development to support with the rebuild and enhancement of this in Office 365 set up. 

The Result 

We implemented and launched several SharePoint Online sites, interconnected via a hub site, providing the information colleagues needed instant access to. Key elements included: 

• Custom webpart to allow users to easily upload and tag documents. 
• Azure integration to transform tagged documents to standard naming conventions. 
• Automatic application of labels based on document properties to meet retention requirements. 
• Central search for simple retrieval of documents. 
• Integration with Housing Management system to upload and retrieve documents. 
• Automatic creation of new document repositories. 

Feedback 

“We have a great relationship with SR1 from previous developments and we knew we could rely on them to deliver a quality and professional service to help us reach our desired outcome.  

Their expertise enabled us to reach our goal in migrating our existing housing EDMS management system to SharePoint Online, seamlessly. They were so accommodating throughout and very meticulous with our requirements. We look forward to working with SR1 again in the future”. 

Adam Day – Systems Engineer 

We have recently worked in partnership with Dimensions UK to implement a new intranet, document management system, and digitise internal processes.

Background 

Dimensions Group works not only in Newcastle Upon Tyne but across the whole of England and Wales with around 7000 staff supporting over 4000 people with learning disabilities and/or autism and their families.

They are a not-for-profit organisation (and Dimensions (UK) Limited is a Registered Provider of Social Housing), providing a range of care, support and accommodation.  

The objective of the project was to create efficiency in how Business Support services are consumed by all colleagues, by exploiting existing or dormant functionality and adding additional solutions as necessary, delivering an intuitive and easily navigable solution to colleagues which would: 

• Reduce current pressures on managers who act as the conduit on queries from support staff to Business Support – helping to create capacity in those roles.  
• Create capacity in Business Support functions by automating responses to transactional and high-volume queries.  
• Provide a better ‘employee experience’ for support staff – who can access a 24/7 service 
• Deliver consistency in practice by providing access to consistent information and a central resource for policies and procedures, delivering one single destination of accuracy in colleague related information. 

The Approach 

SR1 Development worked closely with internal stakeholders to fully understand the challenges with the previous intranet and design a best in practice solution that met the requirements of colleagues across the organisation. 

By working closely through a series of workshops we were able to understand the current challenges and show the art of the possible through prototypes. 

Throughout the project there was a real alignment between SR1, and internal Dimensions colleagues, which resulted in a really strong partnership. 

The Result 

We implemented and launched a rich SharePoint intranet, joining a multitude of interconnected hub sites, providing the information colleagues needed instant access to. Key elements included: 

• Visually engaging and consistent sites 
• Clear structured navigation 
• Custom Search and document tags at the forefront 
• Document review processes. 
• Content approval processes. 
• Integrated chatbot to answer questions, and help colleagues easily find the information required 
• Implementation of a series of online forms using PowerApps and PowerAutomate, to simplify internal processes. 

The Feedback 

“We specifically selected a small agency who were able to work closely with our teams and we received a high-level of bespoke service because of this. 

We were delighted with the expertise, professionalism and focus of SR1. They led us through a complex project, keeping things simple for us at all times. They were accommodating of our changing needs. And feedback from their interactions with 20+ Dimensions content managers was uniformly excellent. I would absolutely work with them again, and unhesitatingly recommend to others.” 

Duncan Bell – Head of Marketing & External Communications 

The Challenge

PNE Group, an organisation who are passionate about pioneering positive social and economic change through enterprise related projects, were using Office 365 for Exchange and Lync.

They were hoping to utilise SharePoint to create an easy-to-use intranet, migrate file share documents and set up some standard workflows for leave requests, IT incidents and various other common requirements.

Solution

Utilising SharePoint Hub Sites and modern team sites, we created a simple navigation structure allowing users to find content of interest with ease and speed. The communication teams were able to use simple yet rich editors to easily publish news out to the wider business.Additionally, we also worked with PNE to automate several request systems, from logging IT incidents to requesting leave, as well as developing a custom file migration tool to allow smooth and effortless movement of file share documents, whilst maintaining key metadata.

Result

PNE have come to embrace their SharePoint software and feedback from their team is brilliant.
We continue to work closely with them to help them maximise the benefits of the new technology,
whilst also ensuring seamless knowledge transfer to internal IT staff.

Summary

Our team here at SR1 Development are well-versed in optimising technologies and software to allow for an organisations best practice and development. The work we carried out at PNE Group was no exception, and our bespoke, carefully considered solutions have greatly enriched their organisation.

The Challenge

Northumbria University had a SharePoint On Premise 2013 intranet solution which was heavily customised with technologies, rendering maintenance tricky and time consuming.

Their aim was to move their intranet to Office 365. This required full redevelopment, using cloud compatible client-side technologies, whilst maintaining and enhancing the rich UI functionality. They also had processes in place involving multiple form completion and email trails that they were hoping to automate for user ease.

Solution

We implemented a rich intranet solution and crafted a fully customised and branded intranet that could be used both on-premise and within Office 365. The solution was created using JavaScript and CSS, ensuring it was easy for internal resources to maintain in the future.
Additionally, we worked with several departments within the university to automate time consuming
processes through the use of electronic forms and workflows.

Result

User feedback on the new intranet solution is excellent, citing it as a clean and simple solution to the issues previously faced. The communications department feel that they have been provided with a high quality, easy-to-use platform which best enables them to get key messages out to users. On top of this, feedback from various key stakeholders indicates that the new automated processes we introduced have really streamlined people’s day-to-day jobs, making it a lot easier to track the status and history of various requests.

Summary

Through careful consideration of Northumbria Universities needs, we were able to craft a solution that improved workflow and communications for a great number of individuals. We certainly aren’t work-shy, and were delighted to be presented with the mammoth challenge of overhauling and optimising the organisations entire intranet solution.

CheaperWaste are the UK’s fastest-growing waste management service provider.

The Challenge

They had rolled out Office 365 and were looking at continuing the journey of cloud migration in the most secure way possible.

A key requirement of this was the implementation of a modern SharePoint Online site, tightly controlled security groups, and migration of documents from their file server. They also had several batch jobs running on local servers that needed to be migrated to MS Azure.

This was due to be rolled out throughout April, however as COVID-19 begun to take impact the need increased greatly, so this all needed to be delivered ASAPSolution.

Solution

We worked closely with the IT team to implement a modern branded SharePoint hub site, containing multiple site collections. Each one was configured securely to ensure only users of particular teams could access the required documents.We then implemented a document migration strategy to ensure all documents were migrated straight over, and existing file servers locked down.Finally, an MS Azure VM was created to host batch jobs, with outputs going to SharePoint rather than local file servers, and automatic notifications set up to relevant users.

Result

CheaperWaste have a very dynamic young workforce who have really adapted to these new solutions with very few issues. The internal IT team are very pro-active and forward thinking, therefore making the implementation very easy, despite the very tight timeframes.All of this meant that operations were able to continue seamlessly regardless of staff members being on-site or working from home.