Yarra Valley Water needed to provide a way for employees to access information centrally and quickly, as well as providing social networking opportunities. The organisation decided to create an intranet platform that would provide information on everything from company policies, news, events, operational information and applications.

1. Yarra Valley Water
VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA
WATER SERVICES
620 EMPLOYEES
“SharePoint took away the pain of
managing important policy and procedure
documents and greatly improved
governance around these documents.”
About Yarra Valley Water
islands of information weren’t searchable and therefore
Yarra Valley Water is the largest of Melbourne’s three
not useful. We needed to find a way to bring all of this
water corporations, employing 620 people and
information together and make it easy to use,
providing water supply and sewerage services to people
searchable and scalable.”
and businesses in the northern and eastern suburbs of
Melbourne.
Head and shoulders above the rest
Islands of information
Potential solutions already in the organisation were
Yarra Valley Water needed to provide a way for
employees to access information centrally and quickly,
carefully considered before the decision was made to
build the new intranet on SharePoint 2013.
as well as providing social networking opportunities.
Leigh said, “We already had many versions of
The organisation decided to create an intranet platform
SharePoint in place so we could see how we could
that would provide information on everything from
achieve our goals. SharePoint 2013 was head and
company policies, news, events, operational
shoulders above the rest.”
information and applications. It was envisioned that the
intranet could become a collaboration and social hub
that would enhance organisational knowledge.
Yarra Valley Water chose SharePoint 2013 because of its
flexible user interface, the integration of enterprise
social functionality, and the fact that it tied in well with
Leigh Berrell, CIO and GM of Business Technology
the organisation’s existing Microsoft Office
Services, Yarra Valley Water, said, “There were already
environment.
several unmanaged and unstructured information
environments in the organisation but the resulting

2. “OBS isn’t just a SharePoint code expert. They
could talk about how to run an internet
portal, best practices in facilitating searches
and organising information and providing
suggestions…”
Leigh Berrell | CIO and GM of Business Technology Services | Yarra Valley Water
A SharePoint expert
After deciding to proceed with SharePoint, Yarra Valley
It provides
Water identified a need to partner with a SharePoint
links so
expert to implement the new intranet platform. The
employees can
organisation chose OBS after completing a market scan
actually complete
and request for proposal to find the best SharePoint
tasks like expense
practitioner for its needs.
reports right from the
Leigh said, “OBS strongly demonstrated their experience
and have been SharePoint experts for a long time. They
intranet, making them much
more efficient.
had good reference sites and presented well. We
“There is also a community hub that brings like-minded
needed them to bring their previous experience to bear
workers together and lets them share knowledge with
for our project, to provide recommendations and help
each other on social and work-related topics.”
us understand what we wanted to do, rather than
simply executing what we asked for.
The organisation is moving a number of business
processes online using Nintex Workflow. This will
“OBS isn’t just a SharePoint code expert. They could talk
reduce manual processes and increase efficiencies. For
about how to run an internet portal, best practices in
example, incomplete forms will not be sent for
facilitating searches and organising information and
approvals until the original person completes them
providing suggestions about things we could do.”
correctly. Some parts of the process have also been
An excellent outcome
The project is still underway but the first phase is
complete, providing Yarra Valley Water with a new
corporate communications platform. The new intranet
offers corporate news, announcements, safety
eliminated altogether, freeing up employees to work on
other tasks.
Important documents are now more tightly-managed
using SharePoint, increasing the organisation’s
compliance and reducing workloads further.
information, events calendar and even the canteen
Leigh said, “SharePoint took away the pain of managing
menu, all of which is easily searchable and accessible.
important policy and procedure documents and greatly
Leigh said, “We have built an employee hub that
provides information for employees such as pay, annual
improved governance around these documents. “We’ve
saved many thousands of hours in labour each year.”
leave, conditions, benefits, employment lifecycle,
“We have an excellent outcome that works well, is
facilities and how to use them, learning and developing,
functional and will continue to serve us well into the
health and safety, expense reimbursements, and an
future.”
internal job board all in one place.