There’s an enormous difference between a good Intranet and a bad Intranet – trust us, we’ve seen a lot of both in our time. At the risk of stating the obvious, analysis from the Nielsen Norman Group, experts in UX design, confirms that a poorly designed Intranet results in your colleagues wasting huge amounts of time just trying to find their ‘stuff’. A confusing interface can also have a hugely detrimental effect on staff morale, and ultimately create frustration and resentment for end users.
At Content and Code, we’ve been designing, building and delivering Intranets based on Microsoft technology since 2001. In that time, we’ve seen the enormous expansion of Intranets in the modern workplace, and seen how much they’ve changed. From basic home pages showing the company lunch menu and pictures from the 1998 Christmas party, up to today’s interactive, collaborative, cloud-based digital workspaces, the pace of change has been blistering. And we’ve seen the impact that a bad Intranet can have too; so often we’ve redesigned or replaced systems that were simply failing employees and holding companies back.
So, when we designed Fresh, our Office 365-powered digital workspace, we had a very clear idea of what we did and didn’t want the tool to be like. Led and created by Chris O’Brien, our Microsoft Most Valued Professional and drawing on our close relationship with Microsoft themselves, we built a tool that we’re confident will give you all the best bits of an Intranet fast and at a great price. So, why do we think Fresh is so special?
We bring unprecedented expertise
When you invest in a Fresh digital workspace, you invest in much more than a simple Intranet. Besides a powerful, flexible and evergreen environment, you also access Content and Code’s combined knowledge and experience. We provide:
* Advanced insights
Insider knowledge on the Office 365 roadmap. While the roadmap is publicly available for anyone to find out what’s planned for the platform, we can provide you with expert advice on the most important new updates to Office 365 and tell you how this will impact on your Intranet in advance.
* Managed services
Our support services mean you can leave the stress of managing your environment in our hands and we can provide 24/7 support over the ‘phone or in person.
* Expert knowledge
We only hire experienced IT professionals, meaning all our consultants bring a wealth of knowledge to the product, making it lean, resilient and a joy to use.
* A close relationship with Microsoft
We have regularly been put forward for Microsoft’s UK and international partner awards and, as a partner, have one of the strongest relationships with the company in the UK and worldwide. This close relationship means we truly know the products inside out and can help align Microsoft’s products better with your business needs.
Thanks to our unique position, we think Fresh is much more than a simple pre-built Intranet. Rather, our specialist knowledge makes it a future proof proposition that will provide you with significant long-term ROI.
So what?
That’s all very well, but what does all this specialist knowledge mean for you? Well, quite a lot in fact.
What you see is what you get
With Fresh, you know there won’t be any nasty surprises around the corner. The platform has been designed by MVPs and subject matter experts who have centuries of combined experience building Intranets on SharePoint and Office 365. This means you can be absolutely confident that the tool will do ‘exactly what it says on the tin’.
A truly evergreen experience
With many pre-built Office 365 Intranets, you simply get a ‘template’ Intranet which doesn’t give you the full evergreen power of Office 365. All you get are the tools that the developers have chosen themselves. With Fresh, by contrast, we’ve stayed closer to Microsoft’s original plan for Office 365, meaning you still get Microsoft’s latest updates as soon as they arrive – just like any other Office 365 customer using a basic version of the stack.
Guaranteed impact, fast
While other pre-built Office 365 Intranets can actually require months of additional programming and development, Content and Code’s size and scale means we can build your iteration of Fresh fast. We typically deploy Fresh in under 50 days, meaning your organisation will soon be seeing the benefits.
An Intranet that grows, as you grow
Almost every Intranet has a product life cycle. From the initial deployment, you see growth and fanfare. After growth you see maturity, and over time you start to see the inevitable decline, often resulting in complete isolation. With Fresh that’s different. Because of its deep integration with Office 365, and its alignment with the future roadmap, you need only deploy Fresh once. Once deployed, Fresh can scale and grow as your company grows.
Future prepared
We really value our close relationship with Microsoft, and this relationship, in turn, feeds back into your experience of using Fresh. We’ll keep you up to date with all the latest news and product features coming down the line, and can help you prepare for change. It’s all part of our promise to help our clients transform their business.
Benefit from our expertise
Your company’s digital workspace is where colleagues should start and end their day, and also connect to via their mobile devices when they’re on the move. We created Fresh because we believe that with our expert subject knowledge we are uniquely placed to build a powerful platform that will change how your business works.
Tell me more? If Fresh sounds like the Intranet for you, talk to us today.