Canada Post – harmon.ie boosts SharePoint adoption
Industry
Government
Location
Canada
Company Size
The Challenge
- Canada Post invested in SharePoint 2013 and wanted to make a success of user adoption.
- For an organization of Canada Post’s size, with 64,000 staff working from 6,200 post offices across the country, deploying new technology is always a challenge.
- Because SharePoint requires users to perform additional steps to correctly store content, Canada Post needed a way to make SharePoint easier to use.
The Solution
- Canada Post embraced a proactive approach to change management that initially involved a gradual roll out of the technology.
- The organization also employed a team of internal consultants, called 'Information Management Champions’, who were skilled at training users in new technology.
- The third and final ingredient was to deploy harmon.ie, which made using SharePoint much easier for Canada Post’s staff.
Why harmon.ie?
- Canada Post’s employees spend most of their time working in Outlook. harmon.ie brings the functionality of SharePoint into a user's Outlook inbox.
- harmon.ie’s simple drag and drop functionality lets users move content from Outlook and Windows Explorer to SharePoint in a few clicks.
- harmon.ie makes it easy for employees to store emails and attachments in SharePoint with automated metadata practices.
Combining technology and strategy for change management
As a large organization, Canada Post is keenly aware of the challenges of deploying new technology. They take a proactive approach to change management, and employ a team of internal consultants who are skilled at training user groups in new technology. Four years ago, Canada Post began deploying SharePoint 2013 in order to replace an existing estate of file shares, a dated SAP system and some shadow IT cloud platforms like Dropbox. SharePoint was chosen because the organization was already using other Microsoft tools like Outlook and Office. The change management team knew that SharePoint would only be a success if it was integrated into employees’ day-to-day activities. Simply making SharePoint available would not result in mass user adoption.
An ambitious organization with modern records management challenges
Canada Post is one of the largest employers in Canada, with 64,000 staff working from 6,200 post offices across the country. Delivering letters and parcels in bustling cities and remote rural locations, Canada Post delivers packages over a larger geographic area than any other nation. The explosion in internet shopping has created a major new opportunity for a business that delivers an ever-increasing number of parcels to customers across Canada. Innovative web apps like their online parcel tracker receive millions of hits daily, making CanadaPost.ca one of the most visited websites in the country. The organization most recently migrated their IT estate from a selection of disparate systems to the 2013 on-premises editions of Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange and Office.
Why harmon.ie became an essential tool for Canada Post employees
- Bulk upload of emails stored in external file shares and folders into SharePoint
- Rapid search of SharePoint content when employees want to attach files or links to an email
- A marked reduction of occasions where organizational knowledge is lost when employees leave • Mobile integration with Outlook and SharePoint which allows salespeople to work on the go
Results
Since harmon.ie was first deployed at Canada Post, the organization has seen a huge growth in SharePoint user adoption. Employees now store far more content in a centralized platform, meaning that the organization complies with its records management obligations. Ultimately, this success is thanks to a combination of Canada Post’s own sensible approach to change management, combined with the ease of use that harmon.ie introduces to the user experience of uploading content.
- Canada Post’s employees find it much easier to use SharePoint, and harmon.ie ensures best practice does not slip when it comes to information management.
- Rather than being forced to constantly switch contexts, open different windows, and upload content to SharePoint manually, Canada Post’s staff can now focus on the tasks at hand.
- Most importantly, Canada Post’s employees now follow records management policy without even thinking about it.
About Canada Post
Canada Post is one of the largest employers in Canada, with 64,000 staff working from 6,200 post offices across the country. Delivering letters and parcels in bustling cities and remote rural locations, Canada Post delivers packages over a larger geographic area than any other nation.
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