About Greenlight
Greenlight Digital is a multi-award-winning digital marketing agency. The firm, ranked number one in the UK, prides itself on its ability to 'innovate and stay ahead of the curve,' according to Matt Whiteway, Client Services Director.
Innovation Hackathon
In 2016, the company was inspired to hold a 'hackathon' to generate new ideas for the business. Nothing was off-limits. Apple Watches were offered as prizes. Pizza and sleeping bags were laid on, and over 36 hours, dozens of staff members brainstormed new ideas in teams.
The winning project was the beginnings of a company intranet designed to help share ideas, build teamwork and improve communication. In just 36 hours, the team built a prototype with SharePoint Online and named it 'Greenhouse'. They were building a cutting-edge intranet.
We committed to everyone who took part to develop the idea, so I started looking around for a partner that could deliver a fully-featured intranet.
Matt Whiteway, Client Services Director, Greenlight Digital
Since the company was already running Office 365, building the site in SharePoint Online – as the hackathon winners had done – it made perfect sense.
Corporate Project Solutions (CPS), a long-established Microsoft Cloud Productivity Partner, seemed like the perfect fit to develop it.
The partner choice was vital for us. We're very demanding; we know design, and we have SharePoint skills in-house. We needed a partner who could add significant value, who understood the platform, the user experience, and how we could assure adoption. They grasped our business and what we were looking for.
Matt Whiteway, Client Services Director, Greenlight Digital
Innovation Engine
Part of the attraction was the power of CPS' edison365 technology. It is built on top of SharePoint and gives companies a clever way of crowd-sourcing new ideas and harnessing staff's creativity to solve company problems.
It's like a 21st-century suggestion box, but with all the power of SharePoint and modern, social features like real-time chat and gamification.
Ivan Lloyd, CPS' CEO and Co-Founder
Managers can set challenges – like mini-hackathons – and people can contribute ideas, share feedback and vote on projects. Employees can also raise their ideas and challenges.
Change Management
It's one thing to build an intranet, but another thing to get people to use it. Developing the new Greenhouse intranet as a tool for positive, ongoing change was the top priority for CPS and Greenlight.
Using their change management methodology, CPS helped Greenlight drive user adoption. Of course, there was a launch party, but the firm sustains engagement with a user council to ensure that content stays fresh. Everybody knew that the new site had to look great and work smoothly, so CPS paid extra attention to design and user acceptance testing.
Business Benefits
- Achieved better internal visibility about what different people and different departments are doing
- Shared access to Greenlight best work to serve as inspiration and templates for future projects
- Made the company's policies, procedures, training and news searchable online with 'one version of the truth' instead of being buried in email trails and file shares.
- Launched a 'people and skills finder' linked to Active Directory, making it very easy to find expertise in the company. For example, someone who speaks a particular language or knows a given market sector.
The main benefit is that 'people feel more connected,' according to Matt.
Results
Connect with employees to engage, share information and ideas. All employees can crowdsource ideas every day of the week.
A word from the team...
We have a tool that lets us realise the ambition of that original hackathon in countless 'micro-hackathons' every day. People feel more vested in what we're trying to achieve as a business.
Matt Whiteway, Client Services Director, Greenlight Digital
Greenhouse is helping improve communication across the business, and the platform has gone from strength to strength.
Paul Byrne, Greenlight Digital
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