Access Health & Community

Access Health and Community (Access HC) is a not-for-profit health and community service. Access HC’s caring and qualified team extend their expertise across general health care, doctors, dentistry, allied health care, counselling, alcohol and drug support, child and family services and social support programs to offer you the best professional care and personalised support.

What solutions was Access Health using prior to engaging with FiveP?

Old SharePoint environment which was not well looked after, implemented almost five years ago. People were just using it as a shared drive to only upload information. The team had a poor understanding of SharePoint and didn’t understand that the platform should be a place of collaboration, not just a place where to store documents.

What challenges and objectives led Access HC to look for a new solution? How did these challenges manifest themselves into pain points?

Access HC was a recently merged organisation with two intranets running, both on Sharepoint, and two different versions of every kind of policy and procedure (OHS, HR, Finance, How-To guides, newsletters and other forms). Both platforms were out of date, no upgrades, no branding, no understanding of what a shared work space could look like, all meant staff were wasting time and energy finding and recreating material. I wanted that one stop shop for information (‘the single source of truth’) to be the intranet.

What was most important to you when evaluating your options?

In my past role, I went through all the different systems available for businesses, so I already knew that SharePoint was the perfect fit for Access HC’s needs.

What were the most challenging aspects of the project and how did FiveP help?

FiveP worked with Access HC to understand not just the technical but also the business environment. This lead to an assessment of the risks of not going ahead with the project which helped get the stakeholders on board.

My role here at Access HC involves me in creating a lot of content for our intranet, the new solution now is a usable source to go to. FiveP helped by providing a templated branded package which gave flexibility in terms of customising the different pages available. This allowed the brand to be communicated throughout the organisation.

A new user-friendly interface makes accessing and using the intranet faster.

What were your time frame expectations for this project and how did FiveP help meet them?

FiveP implemented the solution quicker than expected: the team built and launched the platform in just over a month. A quick implementation was exactly what Access HC needed.

How was the solution adopted by the different types of users?

Our team were invited to participate in up to five tailored training sessions. This made sure everyone was enthused and on board fast. Staff are excited to have easy access to all the corporate information in one place. Collaboration and productivity have improved as staff see the intranet as more than a storage space.

The training material was tailored to our needs and the intranet is very user-friendly. Access HC have now added SharePoint trainings as part of the on-boarding process for new employees.

What are the benefits that you are experiencing?

• The platform now belongs to the brand and there’s a great sense of who we are now
• Increased collaboration
• Increased productivity: in the past, Access HC employees were spending hours looking for the right policy, procedure or any other piece of information, now the process is much faster as we have everything in one single place.

“In the past, our team were spending hours looking for the right policy, procedure, or any other piece of information. Now the process is much faster as we have everything in one single place.”

Ruth Charters

Communications Manager – Access Health & Community