Bon Secours

SUMMARY

Bon Secours is a large syndicate of hospitals throughout the east coast of the United States. Working with in Bon Secours, we provided services to upgrade their intranet “IRIS” from version 6.1 Oracle Web Center Interaction to the 10gR3 version of Oracle WCI along with the inclusion of additional functionality including Universal Content Management (UCM), and an upgrade to the branding.

CHALLENGE

Bon Secours Health Systems (BSHSI) had created a corporate oriented intranet system branded as “IRIS”. The IRIS portal had a small user base when compared to the total number of employees in BSHSI. As BSHSI had grown, in part by acquisitions, Individual regions and hospitals created intranet systems of their own with a wide range of function and content. These disparate intranets were on varying platforms and administrated by individuals at each location. IRIS (based on a platform acquired by Oracle) had grown organically which led to a information explosion without formal governance nor an information architecture that would lend to effective site navigation. Research conducted on the use and needs of the intranet was completed April 2, 2008. The high level findings were:

  • Navigation is difficult
  • Search engine returned too many search results and without regard to relevance
  • Content outdated / stale
  • Poor design / appearance

Those findings provided the facts as to why the intranet had minimal adoption as a daily business tool and therefore prompted the leadership to embark on a redesign of IRIS with the eventual consolidation of the multiple intranets into IRIS.

SOLUTION

BSHSI engaged Idhasoft initially to perform a strategic analysis on the appropriate platform to utilize and what set of tools to which to move forward. Primary considerations included: Existing investment in the Oracle product line, migration of existing content and functionality, achieving the improvements required as outlined in the Assessment report, address the current needs as defined by the current user base, and build a foundation for future intranet growth. Based on those criteria, Oracle’s Web Center Suite was chosen.
Bon Secours then engaged Idhasoft into the design and implementation phase of the IRIS Redesign project. The Idhasoft team worked jointly with Bon Secours newly formed IRIS team to create a visual design and information architecture that met the business functional needs and timeline. The Idhasoft team utilized their experience in creating a robust content management system via Oracle’s Universal Content Management (UCM) and joining that to the Web Center Interaction (WCI). This allowed Bon Secours to reuse all the content and custom development work they had from prior years and gracefully transition into an enterprise class content management system. Bon Secours also decided to purchase customized portlets from Idhasoft’s library of WCI / UCM enabled portlets.

RESULTS

Through a very close partnership between Bon Secours and Idhasoft, the redesigned Iris intranet was launched September 1, 2010. Below are email excerpts from executives immediately after the launch:

“Congratulations on bringing the new IRIS live. It is exciting to see the needs that were voiced several years ago come to fruition. I recognize this is only the first step for the redesigned portal, it is a World Class one! I want to thank all of you for the great teamwork in getting Iris relaunched, I know you all are proud of your accomplishment. Super job!”

“I echo Jeff’s comments… Congratulations to all of you for bringing this vision to reality. The site looks great and is a major step forward in our efforts to have a World Class BSHSI intranet portal. Thanks for making it happen!”

Jeff Burke – Vice President Regional Chief Information Officer

Visual appeal, intuitive navigation, refined search results, and more functionality all contributed to a highly praised roll-out. Bon Secours initial implementation success precedes the next major effort of rolling the local systems varied intranets on to this new enterprise class framework. After the completion of that work effort, systems administrative overhead will massively be reduced and portal governance will be achievable.

Tim Davis – Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer

MY PART

  • Art Direction
  • Information Architecture
  • Project Management
  • Visual Design
  • Wireframing