nrs – digital transformation with unily – digital transformation with unily 4 the roadblocks to...

NRS – DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WITH UNILY

www.unily.com

DISCOVER MORE AT WWW.UNILY.COM


2

INTRODUCTIONNational Retail Systems is a US based leading provider of dedicated fleet services, consolidation, drayage, and distribution, working with North America’s largest retailers and manufacturers to meet their logistical needs. NRS has been providing nationwide truckload and store delivery for over 60 years and continues to set the standards for excellence in the retail logistics industry.

3

INTRODUCTION


With 5000 dedicated employees operating from various locations including warehouses, offices and behind the wheel, NRS aims to deliver excellence at every stage of the logistics journey. Frequently cited as an industry leading retail logistics company, NRS has received several notable awards over the years including being named in the list of Top 100 truckers and Top 100 3PL awards.

NRS’ organizational goal is to ‘work with best retail brands to ensure co-ordinated logistics that are highly secure and timely while minimising carbon footprint.’

NRS’ commitment to excellence definitely extends into their digital business solutions, and NRS have set themselves as digital leaders in modern logistics with their new client facing supply chain management tool called i-Track. Available on all major devices and supporting end to end delivery tracking and project engagement, i-Track keeps clients connected with their stock in transit. With amazing external digital portals like i-Track facilitating customer engagement and improving client experience, NRS recognized the need to turn their focus on digital excellence internally, in order to ensure the same high quality experience their clients enjoy was replicated for their staff.

Available on all major devices and supporting end to end delivery tracking and project engagement, i-Track keeps clients connected with their stock in transit.


4

THE ROADBLOCKS TO SUCCESSWith the ambitious goal of being the leading provider of logistics services across the US retail industry, NRS faces many challenges. The core challenges they faced were:

Lack of employee engagement

Lack of corporate news

Improving project mapping and tracking

Providing a unified digital location for employee resources and tools


LACK OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

The primary challenge that NRS needed to overcome to achieve their goals was the disconnected nature of their workforce. This challenge stems from the fact that NRS is a country-wide organization, with offices and warehouses spread across a number of geographical locations. There are always staff disconnected from the organization’s core, and in fact many staff were struggling to know their colleagues operating from different locations. This disconnect was limiting the effectiveness of organizational

collaboration in coordinating business processes. This doesn’t take into account the valuable, yet rarely connected, truck drivers that operate NRS’ fleet of over 1000 trucks. NRS’ drivers are constantly on the move and making the deliveries and journeys that make NRS so successful. They face rigorous training and interview and selection processes, but then have very little time to connect with the organization, their colleagues, or engage with the culture of the business.

LACK OF CORPORATE NEWS

The challenge of NRS’ disconnected workforce was compounded by the fact that NRS had no form of centralized corporate news with which to share important information with employees. With new awards, clients and success stories transpiring daily, staff needed a place to find this information and share in the success of the organization. NRS’ senior management recognized that a digital location for important business messaging and celebrating team or company success would help staff to

share in wins, and positively motivate them to continue to achieve. Employee engagement is especially important to NRS as they operate within an industry where specialists with training and licenses are required for operating certain machinery and driving trucks, and the industry suffers from a relatively high employee turnover rate, making this an important challenge.

THE ROADBLOCKS TO SUCCESS

5DISCOVER MORE AT WWW.UNILY.COM

DISCOVER MORE AT WWW.UNILY.COM6

PROVIDING A UNIFIED DIGITAL LOCATION FOR EMPLOYEE RESOURCES AND TOOLS

Connected to the organizational challenges of managing time critical enterprise services was the need for NRS to begin systematizing a certain number of employee focused workflows. NRS senior management recognized a potential boost in productivity and time saved if they could make it easy enough for staff to complete some processes digitally. As NRS continues to grow so does their number of staff and

number of operational locations, and this means the need for more small but important staff activities to be completed to remain effective. Not chasing or enforcing these processes, but instead making them easy to complete, would improve the efficiency of the entire organization, while allowing management to apply their efforts in other areas of the business.

IMPROVING PROJECT MAPPING AND TRACKING

Another core challenges to NRS’ operational success is the time sensitive nature of their work. Clients need their work completed to tight deadlines whether that is the deconsolidation of stock, or nationwide deliveries from ports. NRS’ success is built upon effective and efficient

management of every job, allocating resources appropriately to ensure that jobs are always finished on time. NRS must manage a 24 hour operation, managing shifts and rotas for its 5000 employees, all with different responsibilities in delivering success for NRS’ clients.



NRS Clients’ need their work completed to tight deadlines whether that is the deconsolidation of stock, or nationwide deliveries from ports.

THE ROADBLOCKS TO SUCCESS

8

UNILY; THE CLOUD INTRANET DELIVERING SUCCESS FOR NRS NRS wanted their new Intranet solution to unify their business and overcome their challenges resulting in increased collaboration and productivity across the business, and they decided to adopt a Unily cloud Intranet as a Service to achieve this. Unily is an ‘out of the box’ cloud Intranet as a service that offers complete mobile accessibility and customer support as a part of the package.



The fact that Unily Intranets are delivered as Software as a Service meant that NRS were able to mitigate any large infrastructure overheads or large initial layouts. Instead, delivered across Microsoft’s cloud, NRS has a monthly subscription to an extensible Intranet, with expansive ‘out of the box’ functionality, drawing on the full capabilities of SharePoint Online and Microsoft Office 365.

NRS’ Unily Intranet was deployed in the space of just four weeks reducing what is usually a much longer lead time for SharePoint solutions, and this meant that they could witness the benefits of their new Intranet immediately. Their Unily Intranet was deployed with

exceptional on point branding that reinforces their corporate identity and delivers a unique experience that is tailored to their business. With the dedicated Unily support team there was no need for NRS to invest in any in-house IT assets further reducing the cost of adopting a world-class Intranet Solution, and with Unily’s strong focus on user experience, it has quickly become an Intranet that their users love. With complete confidence in the notion of a ‘subscription to success’, and supported by Unily every step of the way, NRS were able to realise all the benefits of adopting a Unily Intranet as a Service.

9

UNILY; THE CLOUD INTRANET DELIVERING SUCCESS FOR NRS

NRS’ Unily Intranet was deployed in the space of just four weeks reducing what is usually a much longer lead time for SharePoint solutions, and this meant that they could witness the benefits of their new Intranet immediately.


DISCOVER MORE AT WWW.UNILY.COM10

A DISPERSED AND MOBILE WORKFORCE THAT REMAINS CONNECTED

By adopting a Unily Intranet solution NRS’ challenge of dispersed staff spread across the country and often in transit with no access to company resources was instantaneously solved. The host of native apps for Windows Phone, Android and iOS means that staff now have access to their Intranet anywhere, anytime. Staff are

able to consume the important information they need to remain involved in the business, and NRS’ drivers that are always on the go now enjoy being connected to the business, and can turn up to site locations more in the loop and organised than ever before.

CORPORATE WINS AND CORPORATE NEWS

The company news feed on the home page of NRS’ Unily cloud Intranet is something that NRS have put to great use in overcoming the challenge of engaging their employees with the business. Through the news feed staff now have a one stop location for immersing themselves in corporate wins from all over the country, making those performing teams feel both recognized and valued. In addition NRS are also using their news feed to alert staff to industry changes and company information, such as articles on changing trucking licenses

and new reports on the best logistics companies in the US. Staff have a location to stay engaged with the company and the wider industry, keeping them connected to the information they need to be as productive as possible.


BLOGGING FOR SHARED THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

NRS blogging portal has become a location for internal thought leadership and has drawn interest from various areas of the business, all wanting to contribute to NRS’ growing internal knowledge pool. With intuitive content creation, content owners can quickly and easily post blogs on behalf of staff from across the business. These have ranged from best practice for warehouse management, to discussions around changing security methods and technologies

affecting the logistics industry. NRS’ blogging portal has further supported employee engagement as it has given staff a chance to actively contribute and get noticed by management for their insightful ideas. The inclusion of rich media such as images and videos in both blogs and news articles has made for a strong impact on engagement with these articles, drawing employee attention to important information.

PERSONAL INTRANET EXPERIENCES

The challenge of supporting greater staff collaboration was effectively overcome through Unily’s profile system that provided every NRS employee with their own personal profile. Profile pages feature pictures and job titles so that staff can easily identify their colleagues, their job role and their core responsibilities. Staff profile pages also enable staff to share their relevant experience, skills and expertise with their colleagues, for quick and easy reference when locating the right

person for information or a task. In addition profile pages also list relevant contact details, which can be accessed with a single click for instant communication options, making collaboration quicker and easier. These profile pages are allowing staff to bring a little bit of themselves into the organization, defining their impact, and supporting more productive connections and communication across the business.



12

TRACKING PROJECTS WITH DIGITAL WORKSPACES

The workspaces utility provided by SharePoint Online’s ‘Sites’ functionality was key in helping NRS to streamline their management of resources across tasks and projects for more efficient work. Using a host of unique Site categories including department sites, project sites and team sites, staff and teams can now be even more organized and can collaborate more effectively, to ensure the smooth completion of all their time sensitive projects. This has given management a central location to gauge

resource application and improve team cohesion for all jobs, big and small. NRS’ staff now know who they are collaborating with for each job and can see any relevant documentation or important information relating to the job in one convenient location.



UNIFYING EXTERNAL TOOLS

The unification of external digital solutions was another great aspects of NRS’ new Unily Intranet, as it allowed management to move access to their time sheets and holiday booking systems (amongst other things) into a single digital location. These links were created as app tiles on the Intranet home page so that these frequently used tools were always available and easily accessible for staff.

This directly fed into the senior management’s efforts to automate some of the business processes, by encouraging staff to proactively complete certain tasks through the Intranet. By simplifying the process of accessing these online tools through the Intranet, NRS’ business processes are able to run more efficiently than ever.

A SINGLE VERSION OF TRUTH THROUGH EFFECTIVE DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

NRS’ move to their brand new Unily Intranet proved a perfect opportunity for them to assess and clean their document library, only migrating current information that remained relevant or useful into their new document management solution. The migrated content was tagged appropriately using a unified taxonomy, making information more searchable and findable within the new Intranet. Everything

from client agreements and security arrangement documentation, through to employee declarations, training manuals and handbooks can now all be accessed digitally. This has both provided NRS with a single version of the truth and unified client experience across the business, meaning NRS can now guarantee the quality of engagement any client experiences and the process that they complete.

13



14

GIVING EMPLOYEES A VOICE THROUGH ENTERPRISE SOCIAL

Another major benefit that NRS are realizing across the organization is the inclusion of enterprise social functionality in the form of complete Yammer integration. Intranets at their heart are collaborative and social and through Yammer accounts connected to their Unily profile, each member of staff can now engage in productive real time conversations with anyone from across the business. This has empowered staff to make more meaningful connections with people they might rarely see,

but often work with. It has also empowered staff to share best practice across the organization and this is a big win for NRS. ‘We hadn’t realized just how much expert knowledge was being siloed across the business in terms of best practices. Within just a couple of weeks this information was being effectively distributed across disparate teams for immediate application to business processes. It actually formed a new organically developed aspect of staff on boarding, which is brilliant

because our new staff are able to learn from the best, no matter where they are!’ – Chris Saville. These Yammer social features are allowing staff to comment on blogs and news articles and like different content, in a further effort to engage staff by giving them a voice with which to both contribute and voice their opinions.



DRIVING TOWARD A MORE DIGITAL FUTURE

NRS’ Unily Intranet solution helped them overcome the business challenges they were facing in engaging staff and improving productivity, and it doesn’t stop there. Post deployment support is keeping NRS focused on the road ahead by remaining on hand to help out as and when needed. The Unily Intranet platform features a customer led roadmap, which means that as customers like NRS provide feedback about their solution through their inclusive consultancy sessions, the Unily platform can continue to expand and improve. The

Unily platform will continue to stay on the cutting edge of Intranet solutions, growing with organizations to ensure it continues to meet their needs, and built on Office 365 and hosted in the Cloud, Unily will continue to deploy the latest and greatest features sets released by Microsoft. ‘The fact that our solution isn’t static but will actually continue to add to its capabilities over time means that NRS just has plenty more great features to look forward to.’ – Chris Saville.

15


The fact that our solution isn’t static but will actually continue to add to its capabilities over time means that NRS just has plenty more great features to look forward to.’

Chris Saville.


Unily is an out-of-the box Intranet based on Microsoft cloud technology, that enables you to take advantage of new collaboration, file sharing and corporate social networking technologies, without investing heavily upfront. Unily is owned and operated by BrightStarr, an award-winning technology consultancy and Microsoft Gold Partner.

www.unily.com

United KingdomThe Mill, Abbey Mill Business Park,Eashing, Guildford, Surrey, GU7 2QJPhone: +44 (0)1483 239 240Email: [email protected]

New York349 5th Avenue,New York, NY 10016Phone: +1 888 777-6850Email: [email protected]

Seattle2018 156th Avenue NE, Suite 4,Bellevue, Washington, 98007Phone: +1 888 777-6850Email: [email protected]

nrs – digital transformation with unily – digital transformation with unily 4 the roadblocks to...

Documents