We went undercover…

When we met Kiwibank in 2008, they were a young and innovative, market challenging company on a mission to create a better banking alternative for New Zealanders. They were undergoing rapid growth from 8 staff in 2002, to over 900 today, and had set up shop in 280 PostShops – more than any other NZ bank. Kiwibank had an intranet which helped people find information and tools, but it could be hard to find and out of date.

 

We got clever…

To challenge the established ‘big banks’, Kiwibank needed more than just easy access to information, they needed to promote their culture and new brand, foster team spirit, enable efficiency and customer service to staff located throughout the country.

KiwiBank had a team of smart people focused on knowledge management, but they wanted some expertise on deploying SharePoint. We helped them deploy SharePoint 2007, while supporting and developing their internal base.

 

We helped roll it out…

The result was ‘OurSpace’, an innovative and easy to use virtual community that enables open and dynamic, multi-way communication throughout the company, and an open source of accurate and up-to-date corporate information. Initially rolled out in March 2010, we continued to build on its success over the remaining year, releasing OurSpace Phase 2 in September 2010.

Intranet design consultancy, Step Two, using OurSpace as an example of attractive intranet design, noted that OurSpace “…finds a good balance between the company’s strong corporate branding and a clean, simple layout.”

 

We keep it spinning…

Since rolling our OurSpace, Spoke and Kiwibank had continued a strong working relationship. We help to empower the business by contributing expertise in solution architecture, platform requirements assessment and setup, technical design, development and testing and technical implementation.

We also assisted Kiwibank with projects, such as platform upgrades and migrations, when we providing the Information Architecture, Execution Planning and Server Installation, in support of Kiwibank’s rollout of a Project Office intranet.

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“Spoke’s professionalism, considerable expertise and extremely customer-focused orientation have been invaluable for Kiwibank and their significant contribution to the underlying SharePoint platform and development of the new tool has seen Kiwibank’s need for an intranet enabling improved communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing across the enterprise becomes a reality”

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- Kevin O’Donnell, Knowledge Manager, Kiwibank