South Hampshire College Group (SHCG) is a new large college group in Hampshire, formed from the merger of Further Education (FE) colleges in Eastleigh, Fareham, and Southampton.
As a new organisation with a commitment to fostering excellence in education, SHCG faced the challenge of creating a single, unified staff intranet to share information, promote a common sense of identity, and improve communication across the group.
With disparate legacy intranet and IT systems, Chorus helped SHCG to deliver a modern intranet solution built on SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Viva, which enhanced their content management, communication and collaboration within a unified platform.
Director of Marketing, South Hampshire College GroupOur new staff intranet has transformed our cross-group communication and information-sharing, maximising the capabilities of SharePoint and Microsoft 365. The intranet represents our new brand exceptionally well and has helped bring our teams closer together. We enjoyed the collaborative rollout with Chorus
Before the merger into South Hampshire College Group, each of the colleges at Eastleigh, Fareham and Southampton had their own identities, IT infrastructures and staff intranets.
As the organisations joined together as one organisation, a vibrant new brand was created and a lot of work began to unify the colleges, including their people and technology.
A centralised staff intranet was identified as a key requirement to support this. As a forward-thinking organisation, South Hampshire College Group undertook a requirements gathering exercise and created an Intranet Steering Group before appointing Chorus to support the project.
“This was absolutely the right thing to do.” Said Jason Lee, Collaboration and Information Management Lead at Chorus.
Getting the right people in place—executive sponsors, a project manager, a steering group with representatives from key areas such as marketing, communications, IT, HR, the executive team—really makes the difference in ensuring a successful intranet project., Collaboration and Information Management Lead at Chorus
The project began with a discovery and design phase that included many online workshops with stakeholders from different teams, departments, and functions within South Hampshire College Group. This collaborative approach ensured that the diverse needs and expectations of the group were identified and addressed.
“Even with good requirements gathering, we always recommend going through a discovery and design phase,” said Jason.
“It enables us to present different approaches, with their advantages and drawbacks, and collectively figure out what’s going to work for the client. In this case, it gave South Hampshire College Group the agency to make decisions about the functionality they wanted with a view on making optimal use of their budget”.
In addition to a design document, a proof of concept (PoC) was then developed to build confidence and provide a tangible example of the proposed solution.
Including a PoC in this first phase helps build confidence in the approach and gives people something tangible to look at and try out. It really helps bring the project to life., Collaboration and Information Management Lead at Chorus
The implementation was carried out in a flexible and agile manner, with regular meetings and review sessions with the steering group.
The new intranet followed industry best practices for modern SharePoint solutions, including a flat site structure, hub sites, a home site, global navigation, and Viva Connections. It featured news aggregation, content submission forms, and a bespoke people search experience. The solution drew on Microsoft 365 tools such as Microsoft Lists forms and Microsoft Forms for data capture, Power Automate for process automation and approvals, PnP Search for bespoke search experiences, and Viva Connections for integration with Microsoft Teams.
In addition to development work, user education and knowledge transfer are critical to successful SharePoint intranet projects, so a two-tier training programme was developed to ensure that both content owners and super users were well-equipped to manage and share information.
The project followed a “soft launch” approach, going live with a minimum viable product (MVP) and progressively adding functionality. With staff busy with their day jobs, this approach enabled the project to flex around their availability, continuously improving the intranet over time.
The project delivered a unified communication platform for South Hampshire College Group, resulting in a vibrant and engaging staff intranet that reflects the group’s brand identity. The intranet has helped streamline communication across the group and provide staff with effective tools to promote news and events, and a centralised location to store key resources and information.
South Hampshire College Group is a great example of how an organisation can plan strategically and leverage modern SharePoint and Microsoft 365 technologies to overcome the common challenges many organisations face with multiple sites and siloed teams. Thanks to their proactive approach to stakeholder engagement and requirements gathering, they were able to achieve a vibrant unified communication platform, with Chorus supporting them every step of the way.
Director of Marketing, South Hampshire College GroupWe’re thrilled with the positive engagement from our teams regarding the new staff intranet. It’s enhanced our ability to communicate and collaborate, creating a more connected and productive work environment.