ClearPeople builds four public-facing websites for Stena on SharePoint

ClearPeople, a leading SharePoint consultancy, has migrated the Web Content Management System (WCMS) of four of Stena’s public facing websites to SharePoint 2010. The move enables Stena’s marketing teams to update the websites directly and create a consistent and more engaging end-user experience without assistance from the IT department.

Stena manages many websites to serve its worldwide operations and the company needed a replacement for its ageing CMS platform.

“Our legacy platform was holding us back – with SharePoint 2010 we now have a flexible, user friendly solution that enables us to deploy new websites quickly," said Pär Persson, Business Technology Manager, Stena.

"By working with ClearPeople, Stena has been able to use SharePoint to become a more efficient and communicative organisation, our SharePoint-enabled websites help us to engage with customers through personalisation. A good example is our property business where we are developing a new, personalised experience for our 24,000+ tenants, to give them information that will be relevant to them and their relationship with Stena – a real win for us and our customers," continued Persson.

ClearPeople worked with Stena’s IT team to migrate the websites to SharePoint 2010, ensuring a seamless transition for web visitors and internal users while adding multilingual capabilities to the websites. ClearPeople developed custom features, provided project management and undertook a comprehensive on-site handover of customer code to Stena’s own developers.

Katya Linossi, Head of ClearPeople’s creative services division, Loud & Clear, commented on the Stena implementation: “SharePoint 2010 is the perfect platform for Stena, maximising their existing IT investment while providing a robust platform for its websites. With SharePoint 2010, we’ve been able to help Stena deliver great looking and robust websites combined with a user-friendly interface.”

SharePoint 2010 addresses one of Stena’s key pain points: enabling timely and efficient updates to websites by individual marketing departments without having to involve the IT department. With minimal training, each business unit can manage its own content, making the websites more relevant and useful for their respective audiences. The new SharePoint WCMS also provides the capability to add social media features – a key requirement for one of their new websites.

Stena already uses SharePoint for its intranet and selected SharePoint 2010 after a like-for-like comparison in which it came out as the best value for money over the competition. It fulfilled Stena’s budget requirements for the initial project, reduces the number of different platforms the IT team must support and provides a low-cost platform for the migration of additional websites in the future.

Persson is a strong advocate for involving end-users in the selection of a WCMS. “Involving the marketing teams and end-users across the company was an important part of the selection process. End-users like the familiar Microsoft Office-like interface – when we asked them which platforms they preferred, their choice was SharePoint.”

Following the successful migration of the first four websites Stena now plans to carry over other websites to the new platform in the coming year.