IT may not be accessible to the world, but our Spire Intranet is certainly attracting global interest, winning a Gold award in the 2020 Intranet and Digital Workplace Awards.
Based on SharePoint Online, Spire supports our education efforts and makes our employees, spread across 144 schools and multiple office locations, feel part of one organisation.
It was one of 13 Gold winners in the global awards presented each year by Step Two, who help organisations establish and sustain modern digital workplaces.
Now in their 14th year, the global awards recognise outstanding contributions to the fields of intranets, digital workplaces and digital employee experiences.
Spire was recognised as a feature-rich and innovative SharePoint Online intranet with multiple integrations including an HR dashboard, accompanied by effective efforts around content governance and author training.
The new intranet site features a broad set of capabilities, including granular personalisation, improved page templates, a task management system for schools, an integrated and improved search tool, a new information architecture, an integrated calendar and more.
Considerable effort went into establishing governance and working with publishers to rewrite content, so it was relevant, up-to-date and of high quality.
Judges said the sheer range of capabilities in the new intranet was impressive with an extensive range of functionality.
They said the joined-up approach to training content authors, developing helpful templates and providing content support was impressive.
“We like the alignment between the new intranet and BCE's wider strategic goals.
"The creation of a design system to reuse the designs for other BCE projects was an excellent approach," they said.
BCE's development team celebrate the successful launch of Spire
BCE's Intranet coordinator Scott McClement said building a new intranet was a long and complex project.
He said there were lots of debates and exploring different options but throughout, everything was designed with a focus on what would bring the biggest benefit to our users.
“Being recognised publicly through this award was a welcome shot in the arm for our whole team – from the developers and managers through to the content team," Scott said.
“It helped validate the direction we followed and the decisions we made and has boosted the credibility of the final product," he said.
Kerry Edwards-Williams, Manager Business Information Services thanked the BCE Leadership Team, especially project sponsor, Paul Thornton, BCE Head of School Progress and Performance, for their continued support during the project.
“To say I am proud of the team's achievements is an understatement.," she said.