United Co-operatives intranet

United Co-operatives have come a long way in a century and a half. The member-owned retailer’s roots go back in an economic uprising among English textile workers who found themselves thrust into poverty during the Industrial Revolution of the mid-1800s. George Holyoake, one of the idealistic Pioneers, or founders, of the co-operative movement, described the 1844 opening of the Rochdale Society’s first store as a nearly embarrassing affair in “the dismal lower room of a warehouse, with a scanty arrangement of butter and oatmeal.”

Challenge

One of the largest retail co-operatives in Europe, United Co-operatives had a 2004 turnover in excess of £1.8 billion, with more than 15,500 staff employed in about 1000 stores.

When Ian Dyson, General Manager of Information Services, came to the realization that his home-grown intranet was creating bottlenecks, he knew he had to find a content management system that allowed a widespread team of editors to easily manage access and keep information current.

“Since we’re such a highly diversified business, with unique requirements for the various divisions, it was frankly a major headache to keep the intranet fresh and up to date,” Dyson says, adding that maintenance of the intranet fell by default to the technical staff that had built the system over a period of years. “The costs were coming out of the IT budget, and I felt like I was doing the editors’ job, which didn’t make me particularly happy,” he says. “I wanted a solution that could push the administration functions back to the editors.”

Solution

After evaluating several content management systems, Dyson and his team settled on EPiServer to bring order to United Co-ops’ crucial information systems. When he’s asked why, there’s no hesitation:“Ease of use,” is the immediate answer. “We wanted to make it as easy as possible for editors to learn the software, so they would actually undertake that administrative role. It had to be intuitively simple to use the system.”

Implementation of the EPiServer solution took about three months during the summer and autumn of 2005, and Dyson says most of the staff hours spent on the project were devoted to re-thinking the structure and content of the existing information. “We went out to all our editors and asked for a review of the current information, then queried them on what they wanted—or definitely didn’t want—if they had a blank sheet to work with.”

Benefits

The United Co-operatives intranet has to fill a wide range of roles. It’s the repository for all the practical information that goes with running retail stores, from opening hours, staff names and phone numbers, to facilities available, branch code numbers and supplier information. A portal from the EPiServer intranet leads to United’s extensive document management system. And in the group’s Food division, Dyson says, “we have a complete reporting and alerting system, controlled via the intranet, to tell our branches about things like product withdrawals and promotional activities.”

Just weeks after bringing EPiServer online, Dyson says he is receiving “superb” feedback on the new system from the people involved in day-to-day information management. “They love it,” he says. “It’s simple and flexible, and it does all the things they need, for instance dating articles and information. Not just that it’s possible, but that using the date conventions is so automatic. Now we’re creating structure and control at the same time we add content. It’s a big improvement over the free-for-all we had before, and it makes the intranet more meaningful as a communication tool because the information is complete and current.”

Partner

The consulting firm Ultimedia, the first EPiServer Solution Partner in the UK, created a collection of templates and helped Dyson’s IT staff with initial set-up. A series of training days were scheduled, but Ultimedia’s Glenn Stewart says the need for formal instruction was minimal. “We met with a small group from the United Co-operatives technical department, and the next thing we knew, people around the organization were inputting their own material with literally no training. We’ve held a few half-day sessions to answer questions about how to get the most out of specific features, but almost everyone has been able to sort out the basics on their own.”

Ian Dyson says the new system helps to uphold United Co-operatives commitment to economic democracy. “Any large commercial organization has to keep some things confidential, and of course we’re no exception,” he says. “EPiServer gives us pinpoint control over who has access to certain information. But it also allows us to effectively distribute non-sensitive material far and wide. No one should ever be excluded from participating in decisions simply because it’s too cumbersome to keep them informed.”