Business Strategy

A corporate communications and collaboration strategy across the global network was needed to reinforce company culture, build a sense of belonging to the Lowe & Partners community and raise awareness of business activities. In the past, company information was sent out via newsletters and links to micro sites and was often overlooked. My most recent role at Lowe and Partners began 18 months ago, to implement the new digital business strategy. At the time, Microsoft Sharepoint was in the midst of being rolled-out quite extensively across the company to set up client extranets and business tools which I very quickly evaluated to be the wrong fit for Lowe.

I had to tell the Worldwide CIO and the brand Account Directors to revaluate the technology we were using and in its place I presented the VYRE solution as an option

Building Requirements

The idea was to create MyLowe as a portal  into our vast reserves of information and knowledge. The homepage would have a similar feel to I-Google, with the ability to integrate a personalised selection of widgets; social networking sites, business tools, news, weather etc. These would appear  as a series of feeds, alongside news items from around the Lowe network, enabling us to communicate agency news more effectively. Previously we'd relied on people clicking through to a site that might have little to do with their day-to-day activities. Integrating the information into a customised portal interface offered a greater chance of users reading news stories and accessing critical business tools and information to aid them in their daily work. 

"We looked at multiple vendors before choosing a software provider; to realise the vision we had mapped out would have required a number of plug-ins from third party vendors if we had gone down the Microsoft route. This was in contrast to VYRE, whose offering came with many of the solutions we specifically needed."

User Adoption

Since working with VYRE we have released MyLowe in May 2011. This incorporates a Digital Asset Management system, My Projects section; which removes the need for FTP servers or emailing large documents for file sharing and an Information section where case studies, pitch documents, strategic planning tools, trend reports and biographies from other agencies are stored. It was an instant success and rolled out globally to 4,500 users in 70 different offices using it without any technical hitches. We monitor usage and to date there has been no drop-off - this is extremely as encouraging user adoption is major part of the digital strategy. 

What advice would you give to a company embarking on a digital project such as this?

From the outset, I would advise researching the best-fit technology-wise for your business, which is paramount. We looked at multiple vendors before selecting VYRE. To achieve the full scope of the vision we had mapped out would have required a number of plug-ins from third party vendors, had we gone down the Microsoft route, in contrast to VYRE whose solutions came with many of the offerings we specifically needed.

Following this, the initial stages of the project are the most critical, in which the scope is mapped out; this requires total clarity as it is used as the foundation from which to build the system. This reinforces the theory to successful business transformation in having strong executive sponsorship of a clearly defined and agreed scope to effectively deliver the vision across the organisation. 

What did VYRE bring to the project?

One of the reasons why we decided to outsource the project was to work with a company who could offer their expertise and experience to turn this project around. What sets VYRE apart is having access to an extremely high level of technical expertise in many different areas. A couple of examples of this are the LDAP integration project and single sign-on where VYRE helped integrate other technologies seamlessly into our web development initiatives.

Cost based ROI's

Eighteen months ago our department was not structured or generating any revenue. We are at a stage now where we are consistently becoming more focused on embracing new technologies whilst maintaining a healthy profit. 

Education is the Key to Change Management

For users to successfully adopt the new systems and work processes, business change needs to carefully planned for all users, or you could run the risk of  them not adapting to the new technology.  Educating users shows them why you are investing in restructuring the business processes, and ensures they make effective use of the new system and all its features. . 

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