SharePoint ECM Implementation

Background
Part of a major international integrated energy company, our client has significant exploration and production interests in the North Sea, as well as being a UK gas supplier.

Anticipating rapid growth and increased business complexity, the company had previously asked Venture to review their information management environment and develop a roadmap to provide more systematic management of information.
Part of the resulting programme involved implementing SharePoint. Venture was asked to manage and advise on this programme through its first phases.

Our Approach
Our role encompassed advice on implementation and design of the SharePoint infrastructure and system, and migrating information from existing repositories into the new system. We also advised on the processes, roles and other governance elements required to ensure the system was sustainable in future.

Following detailed discussion with key stakeholders and the project governance group, a set of key principles was agreed to underpin the rollout of the system:

• Clearly defined ownership accountability
• Single instance storage with controlled duplication
• Structures to reflect ownership of the information and enhance the use of cross functional file sharing
• Shared information to be centrally stored and accessible regardless of personal location (Aberdeen or London) or temporary work-scope (i.e. a project, asset or well).

The client's existing document storage and sharing environment was complex and involved large numbers of files and folders in many different locations. Migration from this environment posed a number of challenges:

• Maintaining access to files at all times
• Generating meta data with the minimum of user overhead
• Ensuring consistent and common folder naming

To meet these we identified and established ownership for the organisation's key documents types. Owners then sat down with one another and agreed file moves so each owner had the files they agreed to own in the new structure. Files were then moved into a temporary holding area according to this agreement where meta data were applied and sorting, cleanup and de-duplication were performed. A classification of types was generated a unified structure named according to this was created and implemented in SharePoint and the cleaned files loaded.

During this process, Venture's own toolkit was used to scan and analyse existing file share areas and to track the movement of files. Users were given a web based tool to track files from original location to final destination. This enabled us to ensure all selected files had moved correctly and give users confidence they could always find their data at each stage in the process.

The Result
Several key business areas are now migrated into the new system and using it successfully. Implementation in other areas is underway. Areas using the system have already reported significantly improved access to important documentation, the ability to readily identify current and ‘best' documentation and higher confidence in the accuracy and currency of documentation in use.