SharePoint 2013 Intranet Implementation for Middleburg Bank

Mars, Inc. (Mars) is one of the biggest makers of candy and confectionery, pet food, and other food products with US$33 billion in annual sales (2012) and more than 80,000 employees.

Client Background 

Middleburg Bank (est. 1924) is a full-service commercial bank in Virginia. Over the past ten years, Middleburg has grown to include thirteen financial service centers, an operations center, and over $1.2 billion in assets. Middleburg Bank has differentiated itself from other banks by providing superior customer service and a more personalized banking experience.

With the company’s recent expansion, it became evident that their existing information system was not adequately supporting their growth strategy. It was inevitable that senior management finally made the decision to incur the expense and implement a new enterprise intranet. As the bank’s Senior V.P. of Process Improvement, put it, “Our biggest problem was using information and communicating about ideas with each other…It’s as if a car manufacturing company needed to go on a scavenger hunt to find nuts and bolts every time they put a fender on”.

Middleburg Bank selected Prescient-SBI (Social Business Interactive, Prescient's sister company) to plan, develop, and implement a new information system. Prescient-SBI would be responsible for building the new Intranet (see the SharePoint 2013 Intranet Case Study at www.SocialBiz.ca) as well as managing the transition from the existing system. Among the challenges of the transition process was Content Migration, transferring the existing content on their shared drives to the new Intranet.

Challenges faced by Middleburg Bank 

• 650,000 files and 550 GB of storage needed to be transferred from shared drives
• Middleburg Bank’s IT team did not have the capacity to carry out the content migration on SharePoint
• Employees’ daily activities revolved around accessing files, so any down time would impair business
• Ensuring the proper permissions were in place, so that authorized employees would be able to access files
• Coordinating the timing of the content migration with the launch of the new Intranet 

Prescient-SBI’s Content Migration Process

In choosing Prescient-SBI, Middleburg Bank did not have to resort to hiring expensive migration vendors. SBI’s SharePoint implementation already included Content Migration services. SBI used consulting work to develop a deep understanding of the company’s technology and information architecture, and a comprehensive knowledge of the nature of the content being transferred. This integrated end-to-end approach was invaluable to a successful Content Migration process. 

Assessment: Understanding Existing Content & Goals 

Middleburg Bank’s content was stored on shared drives that would have to be e-mailed, printed, or handed out if anyone else around the company wanted to access the information. “It was almost like working from a filing cabinet… this represented bad content management and workflow governance.”

Audit: Data Classification & Migration Decisions

Across the company, Middleburg Banks began working in teams to better manage their content. The company explained that their information was out of control, and therefore asked their employees to take inventory of the files they needed and didn’t need. “We have almost 700,000 documents. We actively decided that anything that had not been touched for 6 months would be put away in the archives.”

With the guidance of Prescient-SBI, Middleburg Bank systematically went through all of the company files to determine the nature of the data and metadata, and applied classifications (i.e. the owners, security levels, sub-classes, locations, lines of business) to this data. They went through their shared drives and analyzed the nature of the content (i.e. types of files and data) to be transferred.

Mapping: Determining Where Content Resides within the Information Architecture 

Middleburg Bank used Prescient-SBI's mapping tools to document their existing files and decide on the proper destinations within the new structure.

They asked:

• What is the file?
• Where should it be stored?
• Who should have access to it?

Middleburg decided to migrate all of their data to destinations based on the same permissions that existed in their old system. For example, “We migrated everything from the retail bank to the retail bank site… Probably not the best long-term solution, but this got us over the bridge for now. This approach allowed changes to come incrementally so that it would be easier for employees. That was a big compromise getting us to the next step.”

Governance: Determining Ownership, Permissions & Change Management

“Governance was a new concept for our company,” and SBI helped us understand how it fit into our new information system. The ownership of information and permissions, the idea that some people are in control of information and information flow, needed to be openly communicated and appreciated by all employees. 

When migrating data it is absolutely essential that only the right employees have access to authorized data. For example, tellers should not be able to see information reserved for the HR department. “Moving forward, we now have a site administrator who is responsible for the day-to-day administration of the site. We have also established a governance teams with champions and owners. They will have regular meetings with measurable results.” 

Content Preparation: Review, Re-write & Re-format Data

Social Business Interactive put new processes and procedures in place to rewrite and reform certain types of content, making certain that the files being transferred were compatible with the new system. The Credit Administration Department’s access database had some content that need to be changed in order for it to work properly within the new environment. SBI linked the access databases and the access files. Middleburg implemented these changes and carried out these procedures based on SBI’s recommendations.  

Process & Execution: How to Execute Migration & Augmentation Tools / Techniques

Three-Part Migration Execution: 

1. The Dry Run - Estimate the time, based on number of files and size
2. Run the Migration (on the staging environment) - Ensure the migration strategy is successful
3. Run the Content Migration (on the production environment)

Even though Middleburg bank had over 700,000 files, they did not have to resort to costly commercial Migration software licensing and additional customization. SBI used native SharePoint scripts and tools to safely migrate the files from the old system to the new. 

Validation: Verifying Data / Metadata Integrity to Ensure Success 

SBI made sure all of the files from the shared drives were properly migrated over to the assigned locations within the site and sub-sites. For example, Middleburg Bank’s shared drive ‘projects folder’ was successfully migrated to the Project site. At the same time, every employee and department systematically reviewed its files.

Adoption: Ensuring Users Can Find & Use Content

Employees began using the new Intranet and became acclimated to the new environment. On September 16th, 2013, the Intranet launch date, “We were able to function without having to go backwards.” It’s a learning curve, but it will get easier tomorrow and even easier the day after that.” At this point, Middleburg’s mapping issues that had simply transferred over from the old system could be smoothed out. For instance, when an employee couldn’t find a form that she frequently used to help calculate the rate for a home equity line of credit, the document was located, and posted under forms where it could be easily accessed by everybody. As the adoption phase progressed, Middleburg was able to decommission the shared drives and replace them with SharePoint. 

Outcome

By utilizing the results of SBI’s preliminary consultation, which assessed different migration possibilities and helped determine the solution that would work best for Middleburg Bank, SBI helped to safely and securely transition the bank to a superior information platform to support their expanding business. With SBI’s comprehensive Intranet strategy, Middleburg Bank did not have to turn to expensive data migration tools. SBI provided an end-to-end solution that kept Middleburg Bank secure and operational throughout the entire process. This was achieved by combining expert knowledge of the technology required and a strategic, thorough approach where time and energy were dedicated understanding Middleburg Bank’s Information Architecture and their goals. 

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