Catalyst Housing

Catalyst Housing

Finance | Intranet build with EasyShare

Catalyst Housing is one of the leading housing associations in London, employing over 500 people and providing more than 21,000 homes in London and the South-East through a wide range of rental and homeownership opportunities. Previously made up of three separate housing associations, the group's structure was transformed into a single company, Catalyst Housing Limited, in October 2011.

The Challenge

Catalyst Housing's existing, externally hosted intranet was in urgent need of replacement. It had scored poorly in staff surveys for the previous two years and no longer served their employees.

Catalyst Housing had already selected and installed a clean SharePoint 2010 environment and they were keen to utilise it as an intranet platform. This new intranet needed to have a more dynamic and user-friendly interface and design, to better engage employees and encourage more use of the intranet as a communication and collaboration platform.

The options of recruiting a SharePoint developer or commissioning a bespoke solution provided by a third party were too costly and time-consuming. That is when Catalyst Housing chose ClerksWell to provide them with a fixed-price, instantly deliverable intranet solution.

The Approach

ClerksWell's rapid deployment of the new SharePoint-based, pre-built intranet provided a quick and intuitive platform that instantly united their workforce. Typical bespoke intranet implementations take between six and nine months to complete, but customisable templates enable much faster, more cost-effective projects. It was these deliverables that left Catalyst Housing both impressed and satisfied with the ClerksWell service.

The Impact

Catalyst Housing saw instant enthusiasm from their employees towards the new intranet. Their engagement rates increased dramatically, with constant rediscovery from their workforce leading to new intranet uses and tools. As their new intranet is easy to navigate, Catalyst Housing are able to make their own changes to the platform, and use SharePoint's functionality without the need for specialist in-house technical expertise. Catalyst Housing now has a user-friendly intranet that has facilitated improved communication and knowledge sharing. This bespoke SharePoint platform is now a key part of Catalyst Housing's IT strategy for the future. The change has been really striking and feedback from the users has been very positive. Catalyst Housing are now equipped with a future-proof intranet based on industry standard technology which is fully scalable, so it can grow with their business.

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Industry Perspective

“The implementation was very quick, especially for an IT project; any issues were resolved very quickly. As a mark of how smoothly the project went, we even purchased seven extra days of development time and we still have around half of those left for future work.”

Neil Mcmaster

Head of ICT Service Delivery, Catalyst Housing