CHALLENGE

The Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA), formerly the Washington Software Alliance (WSA), is the largest statewide association of technology companies and executives in the world. With more than 1,000 member companies, the WTIA is instrumental in setting industry direction, facilitating expertise sharing, and advancing the economic value and global impact of technology companies doing business in Washington.

The WTIA was using two separate file shares to store all documents and information for key business areas including memberships, events, marketing, and finance. The shares housed extensive content, but their deep file structures made it cumbersome for users to navigate and locate the information they needed. At best, users were lucky to “stumble” across relevant documents while searching through files. In an effort to improve information discovery and streamline operational efficiencies, the WTIA wanted to move from its existing document storage system to a more robust knowledge management platform that would make information more easily accessed, stored, indexed, and searched.

SOLUTION

The WTIA looked to Allyis for help in developing an employee portal and knowledge management system that would improve and encourage information sharing across their organization.

With an existing technology infrastructure that included Microsoft Windows, Exchange Server, SQL Server 2000 and Internet Information Services 5.0 / 6.0, the WTIA was perfectly poised to implement Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) as a solution to address their information and knowledge management concerns. Allyis worked closely with WTIA management and IT teams to define how the MOSS 2007 platform would serve their immediate business, infrastructure, and technology requirements, while also providing an extendable infrastructure for their longer-term goals of improving process efficiencies and organizational collaboration. Offering an integrated location for information access, valuable collaboration features, user-friendly content discovery tools like search and tagging, and robust document management capabilities including version control and management meta-data, MOSS 2007 was the perfect solution for all the WTIA’s needs.

Once development of the knowledge portal was completed, Allyis provided training to ensure all WTIA personnel had an understanding of how to use and operate within the new portal. Training included key stakeholders and server administrator functional overviews, as well as training content for the employee base at large.