GSM Association (GSMA) InfoCentre2 – Best SharePoint Intranet Solution

Outstanding SharePoint 2010 Extranet Solution – supporting over 20,000 users across the mobile

communication industry

THE CHALLENGE

The GSM Association (GSMA) is a membership organisation that represents the interests of mobile operators

worldwide. Spanning more than 220 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world's mobile operators, as well

as more than 200 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers and software companies. The

mission of the GSMA is to guide the industry in the development of standards, to facilitate knowledge management

and drive innovation.

A core part of GSMA's proposition to its members is its extranet platform, called InfoCentre - a portal where over

20,000 users from around the world network with their peers and collaborate on industry wide initiatives and projects.

These activities directly enable hundreds of millions of people to use their mobile devices in countries all over the

globe. For example, InfoCentre is the platform where mobile operators set roaming standards and where roaming

partnerships are established between operators in different countries.

The original InfoCentre system was built 15 years ago in Oracle and Perl and was in need of a major overhaul. The

system was seen as cumbersome, inefficient and didn't provide any of the rich collaboration tools, document

management workflows or social features that enhance interaction.

The task of upgrading InfoCentre was immense. Over 400 requirements were documented in order to establish a

scalable, well-structured repository of information that would empower the membership community to own, manage,

and develop shared resources. Challenges included:

● Provide an engaging user experience:

o Improve the integration and navigational flow between elements of InfoCentre so users can make

better use of the system and manage better their own time

o Introduce a common and deep search facility so documents, people and information can be found

quickly and accurately

o Improve document management so users can be confident of finding the latest versions

● Improve communication facilities so users can network and share information about themselves and their

organisations as well as access the latest mobile industry knowledge

● Incorporate functionality to ensure users and working groups utilise the system as their core tool:

o Global voting – Set up and manage key association global votes

o Operator Compliance – Operators able to self-assess and rate partners

o Document approval process – Enable a document creation and approval workflow to support

project collaboration

● Integrate with multiple internal and external systems

● Migrate over 100,000 documents that capture the working practices of the mobile industry

● Establish a robust security model that restricts access to sensitive information between member organisations

● Manage a global roll out and change programme to a large user base spread over 1,000 organisations.

EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THE SOLUTION

Delivering the new InfoCentre system (called InfoCentre²) involved a substantial amount of effort. The system went

live in October 2012 with the project team having spent 30,000 hours in developing the solution over a 15month

period

1. Innovative application of SharePoint

InfoCentre² is built on SharePoint 2010 and is hosted in a private cloud. The solution activates a number of

SharePoint workloads including Business Intelligence, Communities/Social, ECM and Search. As well as using the

latest out-of-the-box features in the areas indicated, InfoCentre² includes cutting-edge customisation to meet specific

requirements in the following areas:

● Document management:

o Enhanced document set home page showing document history, workflow status and related

documents

o Search customisations to support users finding relevant documents, organisations and individuals

with shared interests

o SharePoint workflow solutions to support the creation, approval and publication of documents and

voting around implementing new official standards within the mobile industry

● User management:

o Sites for each organisation showing information such as contact details for all organisation

employees drawn from the user profile service

o Activity feed enhancements to support document and meeting updates from sites the user is

subscribed to

o Custom ASP.NET membership and claims provider to support the complex security model based on

combinations of organisation membership types and group roles

● Knowledge management:

o Knowledge base sites that include a dynamic view of content from across the extranet that is tagged

with related managed metadata terms. Users can also submit content directly to each knowledge

base site which is reviewed by subject matter experts using a custom approval workflow

2. Beyond SharePoint

InfoCentre² employs C#.NET custom controls and a bespoke SQL Server database to manage relational data aspects

of the overall solution. SQL Server Reporting Services is also used to generate custom reports and deliver these

through SharePoint document libraries.

With a new user dashboard, the GMSA can analyse trends and generate reports and insights to see how the solution is

being used by the members, ranging from the number of visits by country and monthly visitor statistics to measuring

the number of documents uploaded and downloaded.

Infocentre² also has a rich set of Application Programming Interfaces that are used by a variety of internal (e.g.

SalesForce.com) and external (e.g. Mobile World Live¹) systems to consume mobile related information. The solution

also provides Single sign-on to several websites.

3. Successful launch

From the outset of the project, a core focus has been on user adoption. This entailed involving end-users from the

membership organisations as well as stakeholders from the GSMA throughout the design, development and testing

phases. A business change and communication plan was executed based around a number of principles – including:

‘Engage throughout’; ‘What's in it for me’; and ‘Pragmatic tailored approach’

The project team provided training and demonstrations on Infocentre² to several thousand members by leveraging

conferences and events across the world. These face-to-face activities were supplemented by holding training

webinars as well as the distribution of on-line user guides and training videos³.

The success of the roll out and launch of InfoCentre² is reflected in the uptake amongst users - in the first week of

going live over 8ooo unique users had registered -, as well as the positive feedback4 received from members on how

the solution is bringing immediate and daily benefit to the way they work.

LIST OF ATTACHED PICS & GRAPHICS

Additional Information

¹ GSM Roaming and Coverage Maps: http://maps.mobileworldlive.com select a

country and network/operator

³ InfoCentre² training video: http://vimeo.com/38721264

4 Member users and senior stakeholders comments:

“The new InfoCentre2 allows me to identify important events, actions and

documents efficiently, furthermore it encourages collaboration with peers around

the world.”

– Reinhard Kreft, Global Head of Standards, Industry Alliances, IPR &

Academia Vodafone Group Services

“InfoCentre2 is intuitive, provides relevant and up-to-date information and

delivers significantly improved search capabilities for the global GSMA member

base”

– Cara Murphy, Head of Roaming & Carrier Relations, Jersey Telecom Global

“Additional Information”

InfoCentre² Statistics

● 400 Requirements ● +20,000 Users ● 220 Countries ● 800 Mobile operators ● 1,160 registered organisations ● 24/7 365 operation ● Over 100,000 documents ● 1.5m page hits per month ● +250,000 document transactions per month

InfoCentre² homepage

InfoCentre² groups & projects page

InfoCentre² document set homepage

InfoCentre² organisation page

InfoCentre² search results

InfoCentre² User Profile