Learning Portal

Overview

Founded in 1927, this company is now the leading industrial distributor of products to keep facilities and equipment running with a selection of over 500,000 supplies and 2.5 million repair parts. It prides itself on customer service and providing the right product at the right time with the right information. The internal training department, GLC, recently became centralized in the organization.

Business Challenge

GLC wanted an intranet site that would effectively communicate its capabilities to the rest of the company. It also wanted to use the site for internal departmental processes, procedures, and communication. GLC partnered with Design Access to create an organized and informative intranet site.

GLC had web developers on staff, but wanted a fresh approach. They wanted an objective outsider to do the research and analysis, and build a professional site that would answer the needs of their customers. One of their major goals was to build a site in such a way that they could maintain it themselves, with ongoing technical support provided on an as-needed basis.

Solution

Design Access interviewed and surveyed GLC staff members and internal customers to determine what content should be included in the site and how it should be organized to meet all of the site’s current and future visitors’ needs. We designed a scalable site to accommodate GLC’s internal needs as well as those of its customers. The site has proven to be very usable and informative for the company’s diverse population. The site includes coursework links, feedback mechanisms, and background information about the GLC department. A separate password-protected site meets all of the GLC staff’s communication and procedural needs.

Results

This intranet site is consistently one of the top visited sites each month. It set a new standard for the rest of The Company’s intranet sites in terms of design, functionality, usability, and content. It is a welcoming, professional, and organized site where employees can manage their own personal training programs, and their managers can monitor and supervise.

Design Access continues to work with The company on improving the site and updating it with new content and functionality. Due to its scalable design, all updates are seamless. GLC’s new intranet site has saved employees valuable time searching for information on the company’s training offerings and the GLC department. GLC’s customers like the site, and GLC is delighted with the results.

A Solid Foundation of Research

A web site can look beautiful, but not have the appropriate and necessary content. A site can have all of the necessary content, but not be organized and designed appropriately for its audiences. The key factor in designing an extremely usable, useful, and flexible web site is to spend time up-front conducting some research.

In working with GLC, we interviewed all of the key stakeholders in the project. Our key questions revolved around the goals, content, and functionality of the site, both in the short term and the long term. We spoke with members of the department as well as their customers within the company. We also developed a site survey before the site was redesigned, asking the same types of questions. This allowed us to reach a much broader audience. Through all of this research we determined all of the possible uses of the site.

In the long term, the initial research has paid off greatly. The resulting web site was designed appropriately for the company’s two main audiences: the GLC staff and its internal customers who utilize GLC’s services.

Conclusion

The Learning Center has partnered with us for many projects since we developed the original design for their site, and the Director of GLC has recommended us for other projects within the company. We host some sites for them, and have developed other communications and e-learning projects as well.

Was your site designed with up-front research? If not, think of all of the needs that may be going unmet, and the time that is being wasted. Well-designed intranet and Internet sites can support your organization’s goals and fulfill your mission, saving you money in the long run.

Our Secret Weapon

Yes, we base our designs on a solid foundation of research. Yes, we are a creative, experienced company who builds award-winning projects that are well-designed on many levels. But we have to admit, we have a secret weapon. That weapon is distance. The fact that we are not subject matter experts and not employees of your company makes us objective, focused, and accountable. We might go so far as to say that, compared with your internal resources, we have super powers.

Like Superman in Metropolis, we are visitors in another world. We arrive with no preconceptions, as a child in your world. We have a well-developed ability to listen, clarify, and organize information that comes from surviving (and thriving) as a creative services company. Distance gives us immunity from the “paralysis of analysis” which tends to weaken our counterparts inside a given organization. (Superman cannot fly on his home planet of Krypton.) We also benefit from the broad range of experience we have gained from the wide variety of industries we serve.

Design Access creates custom solutions that teach, inform, and inspire. We combine business expertise, design creativity, and technical mastery to develop innovative solutions to our customers’ business problems. We have partnered with over 60 Fortune 500 companies to help them achieve their communication goals. Let us put our experience, talent, and energy to work for you. Give us a call.