Static intranet web pages and an outdated system at Prazska plynarenska a.s., a large gas distributor in the Czech Republic, were resulting in rising end-user dissatisfaction and technical difficulties. Livelink ECM WCM Server, an ECM solution form Open Text™, proved not only to solve these problems, but also to enable the realization of the company goals in information sphere. Publishing of intranet content is now a simple exercise, and any content changes are reflected in real time.

Organisation

Prazska plynarenska a.s. is the fourth largest gas distribution company in the CzechRepublic and biggest energy supplier in the capital city of Prague. It supplies natural gas more than 437 000 off take points with more than 4 000 km of pipeline. Prazska plynarenska a.s. as well as another Czech gas distribution companies was established to December 31, 1993 as the continuator of almost 150 years tradition of Czech gas. Prazska plynarenska a.s. had realized a profit of 9 097 thousand EUR in 2004.

A sister company to Prazska plynarenska, Informacni sluzby –  energetika, a.s. is a dynamic company focused on the provision of information system services and IT infrastructure including telecommunications. The main objective of ISE is to provide the highest quality of service to its customers.

Situation

The existing intranet at Prazska plynarenska a.s. was made up of static HTML pages that required plenty of effort to create and update. The complex processes necessitated the webmaster’s expertise for all content changes and the resultant publishing bottleneck led to intranet content often being outdated.

End-users became dissatisfied with the legacy system — workflow technology and the ability to personalize content were general request. In addition, by upgrading an operating system to Microsoft Windows XP, it had encountered technical difficulties of Intranet caused by the outdated technology.

Solution

Prazska plynarenska a.s., defined clear strategic and functional goals that would drive the search and deployment of a new system. Livelink ECM Web Content Management (WCM) Server from Open Text was chosen because of its object-oriented structure and the technology’s openness and scalability.

Prazska plynarenska a.s. choose trough its daughter company Informacni sluzby –  energetika, a.s. for this solution as supplier IXTENT s.r.o., a partner of the solutions’ vendor with broad experience in implementing ECM technology while maximizing operational efficiency, consolidating IT systems and reducing risk.

Project involved increasing and active encouraging employee interest in Intranet and enhancing corporate culture. The solution specifications were drawn up by employing key user based on questioning and end-user research, which were carried out across the organization. The results had indicated that most users would be interested in web-based access to an organizational chart followed by department-specific information and phone lists. 

Once the final solution specifications were defined, system installation and implementation followed and a pilot project was deployed a little over a month later. The actual system finalization and optimization took place less than a month after the pilot. Overall the deployment of Livelink ECM WCM Server at Prazska plynarenska a.s. was completed within 29 working days.

During the solution deployment, Web structures, rules and templates were customized where necessary and 90 percent of data was migrated from the legacy system. Outdated content, such as older news items, was automatically moved to a content archive. This archive contains a calendar, subfolders for departments, and personalized navigation functionalities based on user groups. Functional goals were realized through a website re-design, implementation of intranet mapping and optimization of resources.

Benefits

Prazska plynarenska solution consists of a single system instance that includes a database, a staging server and a live server. As soon as content is updated, the changes are reflected on the staging server. The replication of the staging content to the live server occurs every ten minutes at Prazska plynarenska a.s.. The development and implementation of specific, tailored functionalities were completed using the Livelink scripting language, which is based on JavaScript.

The solution features a single user sign-on to an active directory of all content publishing functionalities. The implementation team had personalized access for intranet pages of specific business areas. The solution also enables the inclusion of news channels and everyday press monitoring on the Prazska plynarenska a.s. intranet.

The object-oriented architecture of Livelink ECM WCM Server enables complete separation of content creation and site administration, rendering content publishing a simple exercise. This functionality was fundamental in meeting the organization’s goals that aimed at redefining user roles such as author and user and authorization concepts such as access rights and publication rules. Using the simple system interface that does not require any technical expertise, including HTML knowledge, any end-user can now also be the content author. Workflow technology streamlines the process and content can be published in real time.

The implementation of Livelink ECM WCM Server was the first of its kind in the CzechRepublic. As a result, system end-users required an initial learning curve to try out and learn the newly offered functionalities, the graphical user interface and navigation methods. The organization performed additional user research to determine new ways of encouraging system use and improving user satisfaction.

In the year of 2007, the web site of the company Prazska plynarenska took the 15th place in the whole WebTop100 prestigious chart and the 2nd place in the branch Energy chart.