Rexam's centralised intranet nets annual savings of $2 million

Rexam is one of the world's top five consumer packaging groups and the world's leading beverage can maker. Its global operations focus on beverage packaging in metal, glass and plastic, as well as plastic packaging solutions for the beauty, pharmaceutical and food industries around the world.

As a leading FTSE 100 company, with an ongoing turnover of approximately £3.1 billion, Rexam knows the importance of internal communication, especially with 22,000 employees spread over 22 countries. A strategic decision was made to transform the global intranet from an expensive admin intensive and unreliable network into an easy-to-use, powerful internal communication tool.

The problem of multiple local intranets

Rexam had previously used the intranet to distribute information such as telephone directory details, HR resources and company news across its global network. This intranet was maintained by administrative assistants whose major function was to contribute and update content. The problem was that these content contributors had issues communicating with each other, as they were based across diverse locations, and had to replicate data over multiple local intranets.

As Rexam continued to grow as a business this situation was reaching breaking point as administration costs increased and the reliability of content reduced. This was because each content contributor was duplicating efforts as he or she uploaded similar information onto different local sites in an inconsistent manner. In addition not all content updates were made universally, leading to different intranets displaying conflicting information about the business.

It became clear that Rexam needed a corporate intranet that would work from a central content management repository. Detailed discussions with employees across the globe established the common priorities for this system. Search capabilities, direct control over content files and an easy web publishing process were all recognised as vital requirements. By Rexam taking the time to understand the needs of its user-base, it ensured that it achieved senior management buy-in and laid a strong foundation for helping this global IT initiative successfully achieve its goals.

A universal intranet solution

Rexam required a solution that could provide intranet content management that was affordable, easy-to-use and provided strong search functionality. Stellent was able to achieve Rexam's desire for a 'one company - one intranet' solution by installing a clustered content server environment for 5000 global intranet contributors. The entire project took only four months to complete, was easily integrated with Rexam's existing business procedures and remained within the financial guidelines imposed on the project.

To achieve these results Rexam chose a central content management system and then adapted it to suit their specific needs. There were three key areas in which Rexam required a bespoke intranet solution.

The local intranets mixed a range of styles and designs that conflicted with the company's branding. Rexam wanted to create a consistent look and feel for the intranet to reinforce the 'one company' initiative. The intranet solution that has been deployed allowed Rexam to define a set of standard templates for its intranet pages, allowing the contributors to concentrate their efforts on creating content.

Rexam's Group Marketing department also wanted to replace a legacy customer database with a more up-to-date solution. As part of the intranet launch, Rexam developed a new customer information application to make it easier for the business to provide world-class levels of service to its customers.

Finally, Rexam is implementing a global Active Directory structure for its entire employee base. To do this Rexam is taking advantage of Stellent's integration with Microsoft Active Directory. By integrating with this structure, Rexam can provide security and access control using existing user details. This avoids the considerable cost and resource overhead of managing and supporting a separate set of login details.

The benefits

By making the change from multiple local intranets to one single corporate intranet, Rexam has gained better control over the content it is uploading and reduced the administration required to keep the system updated.

Ease of use is a clear benefit of the new content management system. Previously the intranet relied upon dedicated contributors working in different locations to manually update and cross reference local intranets. The new template-based publishing process that has been implemented enables business units across the world to upload information without requiring web development skills, rapidly increasing the speed at which information can be made available. The system is based on set templates to ensure that the intranet retains a consistent design regardless of how many people contribute to it. Likewise the centralised management system ensures that site security and best practice can be controlled and promoted by the designated administrators at Rexam.

This centralised management system has also dramatically reduced costs. The single enterprise architecture of the intranet has reduced the cost of IT and maintenance support. In addition duplication of work has dramatically reduced, meaning that the volume of administrative work has dropped, and the cost of implementing this is lower. Finally, as the system is so easy to use, the need for training is kept at a minimum.

All in all Rexam has estimated that these productivity gains have achieved an annual cost saving of $2 million per year. By implementing one centralised content management system Rexam has achieved two key business aims. Firstly it has ensured that relevant and timely information is available to all employees by ensuring that content can be easily uploaded and located. Secondly, this has made the use of the intranet more widespread as well as broadening the content on the system. Rexam's vision of 'one company - one intranet' has also significantly reduced the administrative and IT burden which has ultimately resulted in the intranet content management system providing demonstrable ROI.

This successful implementation has been expanded in recent months as Rexam is looking to Stellent again to add further improvements to how content is managed on its intranet. Rexam is currently beta-testing Stellent's Site Studio 7.5. This will make it even easier for Rexam to create, manage and deploy multiple intranet pages by enabling users to work directly on the intranet sites when creating or amending content. In addition, it will allow for increased flexibility for content contributors without compromising the appearance of the site. For example content can be created on desktop applications such as Microsoft Word and then quickly converted and uploaded onto the intranet.

The key to Rexam's intranet success is that Stellent and Rexam have worked together to understand the real business requirements and benefits of a centralised intranet and then rapidly installed this solution. This implementation has led to significant cost and staff benefits that Rexam intends to build on as it continues to explore ways to further enhance its intranet in the future.

Electrocomponents achieves an Intranet Global Community  Electrocomponents - better know for its RS Components subsidiary - supplies a wide range of electronic components and devices to customers at short notice. Its success largely depends on sharing best management practices across the organisation.  To improve the sharing of information across the business it implemented a new intranet, designed by corporate communications specialist CDS and powered by RedDot Solutions' Content Management System. Just a few months after its launch, the new intranet is already gaining recognition, securing the Best Intranet Award, as well as winning the special Gold Award for Best Web Project at the Communicators in Business Awards . With over 6,000 employees serving 160 markets around the globe, Electrocomponents plc is a true multinational. Through its RS Components and Allied Electronics businesses, Electrocomponents distributes over 350,000 electronic, industrial and commercial supplies to more than 1,500,000 technical and industrial professionals throughout the world.   The challenge Electrocomponents' first Group intranet, launched in May 2002, used Microsoft FrontPage to create and publish new web pages across its business divisions - spanning areas such as sales, finance and legal.  By mid-2004, the intranet, which had grown to over 4,000 pages, was beginning to show its age.  In particular, it could not search for information across business divisions, so tracking down the right content could become a time-consuming undertaking. Stephen Musslewhite, Group Intranet Project Manager for Electrocomponents, explains: "Our original Intranet site grew very quickly, and the lack of a search engine meant content was becoming increasingly difficult for users to find. We didn't want to extend the Intranet any further without moving to a web based content management tool to allow the site to continue to grow in a controlled manner." The solution The migration of content from the old Electrocomponents Intranet to the new RedDot managed environment began in September 2004.  Hosted from Electrocomponents' offices in Corby, RedDot CMS is entirely browser-based, so it can be accessed from any desktop PC.  Its SmartEdit user interface can be mastered with minimal training, whilst ensuring that business processes governing approvals and publication are respected.  RedDot has also helped Electrocomponents ensure the right content is just a mouse click away.  A custom-built exposed metadata tool - developed by RedDot partner CDS - enables webmasters to set clearly visible keyword search terms for every new page.  This ensures that accurate metadata is set by webmasters and content with similar keywords - whichever business unit it belongs to - is given equal weighting in any search. Employees can now rapidly discover related content simply by clicking on the exposed metadata keywords. Electrocomponents trained a new team of 100 webmasters around the globe to take charge of the intranet's day-to-day management.  At the same time, CDS designed a new look and feel, customising RedDot to integrate with a new bespoke global contact management system. Just six months after the content review, the new Electrocomponents intranet, with over 4,000 pages, was launched. The results The new intranet has enjoyed immediate success, with almost two thirds of Electrocomponents' employees using the intranet on a daily basis. Shortly, after its relaunch, the Electrocomponents intranet also won two awards at the Communicators in Business Awards. With RedDot, Electrocomponents has been able to properly manage its content for the first time. Page templates detail the sponsor, webmaster and author, whose contact details can be called up at the click of a mouse, thanks to a simple integration with the contact management system.   With the creation, publication and update dates for each page also included, obsolete content can be identified and removed without delay, and inaccuracies quickly rectified. Most importantly, the intranet's consistent structure and exposed metadata have given employees from different divisions easy access to information held in other areas for the first time - breaking down organisational barriers across the business. Boasting content in six languages - and more in the pipeline - Electrocomponents' intranet has a truly international flavour.