Company intranet case study, document management solution

Founded in 1856 as the nation’s first mail-order retailer, Orvis today is one of the world’s most trusted brands for outdoor sports equipment and apparel. With many of its leaders and employees traveling for business or working remotely, Orvis needed new, easier ways for its people to communicate and collaborate from anywhere, with improved exposure to internal culture and events.

The Challenge

Orvis had outgrown its intranet, but didn’t want to over-invest in new software and employee training. Their team had been using an on-premise SharePoint server that acted as both an intranet and a file storage location. Content had become stale, the user experience was clunky, and users often didn’t know where to go to find the documents and information they needed. In addition, many users had become disenchanted with the older version of SharePoint that the server was using, in part because the technical and communications teams hadn’t been able to keep up with the governance and planning that the system required.

To clarify its communication priorities, Orvis outlined that the new platform should:

Allow the communications team to easily share news, press coverage, and social media content internally with the whole workforce
Provide a hub of corporate activity that engaged employees and fostered participation
Ensure accessibility to all employees, regardless of location, device, or technical skills

The solution

Orvis_intranet_home Aerie helped identify how to prioritize Orvis content that employees were searching for, and then provided an intranet design that reflected the organization’s priorities. As a result of planning how to structure content, Office 365 native Intranet features were leveraged to improve employees' experience navigating and interacting with the site.

Transitioning the intranet from an on-premise environment to cloud-based Office 365 meant the intranet was now available on mobile devices and from any location. The communications team had an instant path to share broad or targeted messages among employees, using Office 365 and SharePoint Online. The refreshed home page reflected a much stronger design aesthetic, and enabled the communications team to cultivate and deliver news, events, and strategic messaging without having to call on the technical skills of the IT team.

Sharing news and social media content among the whole Orvis workforce built a new degree of togetherness across the departments and work units. Employees had quick, easy access to information that helped them feel connected to others in the organization, and leadership could be confident they were sharing the same messaging across the whole company.