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The Company
Today, Northern Rock is a FTSE 30 company with a market capitalisation of over £3 billion, but the company’s history and its roots in Newcastle go back to the 1850s.
The name Northern Rock originates from 1965, a product of the merger between the Northern Counties and Rock Permanent building societies. Another merger in 1994, this time with the Sunderland - based North of England Building Society, meant that Northern Rock became the tenth largest building society in the whole of the UK.
By April 1997, Northern Rock had grown to become the UK’s fourth-largest building society, at which point Northern Rock Building Society members voted overwhelmingly to convert to a public limited company. The ordinary share capital of the company was admitted to the Official List of the London Stock Exchange on 1 October 1997, giving 885,764 qualifying recipients 500 free Ordinary Shares each in the new Northern Rock plc.
Northern Rock is currently the 9th largest UK quoted bank (by market capitalisation), the largest financial institution based in the North East of England and one of the most cost efficient UK mortgage lenders based on key performance ratios. It currently employs over 5000 people at its Newcastle head office, and is one of the most profitable banks in the UK.
The Problem
Although Northern Rock already employs over 5000 people at its Newcastle head office alone, they typically need to recruit a significant number of people each year just to keep pace with their potential for growth and expansion. To keep such a large workforce informed of the latest company news and developments is no mean feat, and Northern Rock decided that an Intranet would be the ideal solution to their information management problem.
Northern Rock chose to develop their own static intranet using their in-house development team. Initially, the project seemed to be a success, but after a short period of time they started to notice some of the typical problems that many static intranets encounter.
Static intranets typically suffer from the same common problems:
- Successful intranet use is generally limited to those who possess the necessary technical skills
- Those responsible for building and maintaining the intranet are saddled with unmanageable workloads, making the task of publishing documents difficult and time-consuming
- With large volumes of content being published at the same time, the system becomes unmanageable, unreliable and almost impossible to keep up-to-date.
- The unmanageable workloads of technical staff mean that content and information already on the intranet can easily become outdated and unreliable
- Information is often duplicated or missed out in the rush to get content on the intranet
- Finding information can be a difficult and frustrating experience for less technically skilled staff
- There is little or no logical structure applied to the intranet, and consistency becomes difficult to maintain, meaning that departments can differ in quality and in ease of navigation
The Proposal
Orchid Software was one of a number of companies invited to present an intranet-based solution to Northern Rock, competing against several larger consultancy companies as well as other intranet providers for the contract. Our proposal was based on the implementation of our Orchidnet suite of intranet applications – and our proposal was successful.
Northern Rock chose to use Orchid Software for the following reasons:
- We could offer them a solution that would immediately meet 90% of their initial Intranet requirements.
- We were able to implement Orchidnet using their existing IT infrastructure, including Novell, LDAP and Oracle
- We have a proven track record of delivering on budget and on time
- We could provide them with a simple to learn and easy to use intranet solution.
- We could give them an application that had provided a positive return on investment for every other company using Orchidnet.
- We could provide them with an adaptable, open-ended solution. Orchid Software actively encourages customers to build and add their own applications, providing limitless potential that would add value to their initial investment.
The Solution
In the summer of 2002, Orchid Software installed Orchidnet within Northern Rock’s IT infrastructure. Orchidnet is a flexible, powerful and easy to use intranet solution designed for the effective distribution of information across an organisation. It consists of a suite of 35 applications that enable employees, partners, and customers to capture, shape and share knowledge using nothing more than a Web browser.
The flexibility of our Orchidnet solution meant that we were able to tailor it to meet Northern Rock’s exact requirements, including:
- A fully customised user interface to fit their corporate image
- Integration with their Novell Directory Service authentication program, using LDAP synchronisation
- A user sign up wizard including Intranet, data protection, and security policies.
- Section and Team support, in addition to standard departmental support
- Compatibility with Oracle instead of Microsoft SQL Server
Northern Rock chose to begin with the standard suite of Orchidnet applications, enabling us to provide them with a fully functional intranet solution, potentially available for use by the entire organisation, in about an hour.
The Rollout
To familiarise themselves with the range of applications that Orchidnet provides, Northern Rock decided to limit the initial rollout of Orchidnet to the Personnel and Corporate Training department for testing. The department used Orchidnet to convert all of their static policies and procedures, making them available online through an intuitive menu system. Testing was an unqualified success, and as a result Northern Rock decided to begin rolling out Orchidnet available to the whole company.
Some of the standard Orchidnet applications that Northern Rock found to be immediately beneficial were:
- Form Manager – replacing paper documents with online forms
- PDF Converter – enabling the quick conversion of large files
- Organisational chart – providing a comprehensive overview of staff members
- Content and Menu manager - organise files and managing information
- Security – protecting valuable or confidential information
- Automated Newsletter - keeping staff up to date with recent developments
- Knowledge Management – building up a solid base of corporate information
As Orchidnet became more widely available throughout Northern Rock, people within the company began to realise that Orchidnet’s potential as a tool for business development was at least as powerful as its capacity to manage information. As a result, Orchid Software have spent the last two years developing the extra applications that have helped to expand Northern Rock’s intranet capability to unpredicted levels. |
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“Orchid Software have been easy to do business with. We are delighted with the relationship we have with them”
Graham Crosby, Assistant IT Director, Northern Rock plc |
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“Orchid Software have been easy to do business with.”
Graham Crosby, Assistant IT Director, Northern Rock plc |
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