Homeless charity Llamau move their intranet to the Cloud with Navos

Llamau are a Wales-wide homelessness charity based in Cardiff. Their mission is to eradicate homelessness for young people, women, and children in Wales. To date they have supported over 100,000 people experiencing homelessness, an incredible achievement.

To do this they have 600 staff dedicated to supporting those that find themselves homeless to move on positively with their lives, whether this be out on the road or from their many office sites across Wales. They need the right technology to enable staff to work efficiently and effectively anywhere within Wales in their fight against homelessness.

The need for modernisation

As part of a larger project to move their IT services to Azure, Llamau realised that their existing staff intranet could not be moved to the cloud. It was also soon coming to the end of its contract and so either needed to be renewed again or replaced.

CEO Sam Austin was aware that staff were not engaged with the current system, and that it wasn’t being used or updated regularly. “The intranet we had was really old, outdated and clunky, people weren’t really using it,” explains Austin. “With lots of smaller offices and 24 hour supported accommodation projects across Wales where our staff are working, we really needed to upgrade our intranet so our whole organisation felt part of something.”

It needed to be a system that could be easily accessed by staff wherever they were in Wales via smartphone. They decided that they should invest in a new, more engaging platform that was cloud based.

They set about trying to find an alternative solution that could be implemented quickly before the existing intranet contract ended in six weeks’ time.

Finding the right solution

Having looked at a few intranet options, they decided that SharePoint would be the right fit as it had a lot of flexibility, as well as being part of the Microsoft stack that they were moving the rest of their IT infrastructure to. They started looking into different technology companies that could build them a SharePoint site quickly as they didn’t have this expertise in-house. As part of this research, they were introduced to Navos by their current IT provider.

Navos showed them examples of SharePoint sites they had created before and Llamau were impressed with the work, as well as the quote for the build and the fact that Navos were more local to them than some of the other companies were. “We were blown away with Navos from the first meeting,” says Austin.

Llamau listed out all of their requirements for the site such as a social feed for internal messages, different sections for each department and an exciting, vibrant look to encourage staff to use it. “Nothing was too difficult, Navos came back to us really quickly. Their CTO Duncan ter Veen-Hockney was really supportive," explains Austin.

Llamau wanted to divide the project into two phases. The first phase would get the new intranet site built in time for the current one to be switched off, with essential items added. The second phase would then build further on the intranet with nice to have features. Navos held a mapping session with key stakeholders from each team to ensure all requirements were met in the new system.

They then got to work building the new SharePoint intranet site with the framework to allow content to be added. This was done by creating a section for each department, securing permissions, and making sure the site had the right look and feel.

Before going live, Navos gave selected Llamau staff full training on SharePoint so that they could add further documents and sections in the future. “All the admins enjoyed the training sessions, they found them really productive,” says Executive Assistant Ellen Wheable who oversaw the project from Llamau’s side.

Enhancing staff efficiency with technology

Within just 5 weeks Navos had the new Llamau internal SharePoint site up and running and ready for their staff to use. The Llamau team helped by uploading the departmental documents and policies that they needed, and the project was actually delivered a week earlier than planned. Navos even managed to deliver some of the phase two items in phase one, meaning that Llamau got even more functionality than expected for their internal launch. “Not only did they meet the deadline, they beat the deadline!” exclaims Austin.

Overall Llamau are extremely pleased with how the whole project has been managed, the intranet solution that has been custom-built for them, as well as being impressed by the Navos team who conducted the work.

Their team are now regularly using the intranet to manage and view documents wherever they are working, as well as communicate. It has made a huge impact on Llamau in terms of efficiency and staff engagement.

“Now we have a system where people can access it on their phones, which we couldn’t do on the old intranet. It’s great, and we’ve had some really nice feedback. People are really pleased with it,” says Austin. “It’s been a joy to work with Navos. The quality of the work that Navos provided and the speed, and the way they really listened to us was just fantastic, blew us away really. I would recommend Navos to anybody.”

Wheable also reflects on the project, “It was a breeze. We thought it would be stressful with the short time frame, but Navos made it simple. It was lovely to work with them, an enjoyable experience. We’ve got everything we asked for.”

If you would like support to build your own bespoke technology solution, then contact us today>> navos.co.uk