As one of the largest accounting and management consulting firms in Canada, Grant Thornton competes in a knowledge-intensive industry. To ensure this knowledge is captured and accessible on demand, Grant Thornton implemented an extensive corporate portal to deliver content, documents and other decision support resources to its 1,400 employees nationwide.

Grant Thornton chose The Level Enterprise Web Content Management System as the basis for knowledge management throughout the firm.

About this implementation

Grant Thornton wanted a personalized dashboard for each staff member.
By dynamically delivering relevant information to the desktop of each staff member, the increase in productivity has been dramatic. The Level delivers extensive personalization based on a user's profile and permissions. Everyone in the organization receives company news for their region, position, and sector interests. They also see a list of their ongoing engagements, with links to all the details and documentation of each. Other information that is displayed alongside, is a list of their tasks and due dates, as well as important bulletins, or surveys they should participate in.

Grant Thornton wanted single sign-on for staff.
The Level integrates with Grant Thornton's internal security so whenever a staff member logs on to their computer, they are automatically logged in to their Intranet and see relevant, personalized information.

Grant Thornton wanted to reduce the amount of time people spent searching for information.
The Level intelligently presents information on every page based on automatic searches, and personalized display rules. For example, when viewing information about a service line, one also automatically sees people in the company who are specialized in the area, people in their office that are currently available to work on projects, news releases concerning the service, as well as appropriate marketing materials and templates found on the system. This anticipation of needs helps people find information quicker, and presents new resources they may not know about.

Grant Thornton wanted to improve search results and knowledge sharing.
Professional services staff typically spend 25% of their time searching for information - a huge cost to the organization. The Level provides highly efficient search functionality, aimed at finding keywords and other criteria, then taking it a step further. Search results are grouped by file type that match the search criteria, returning results including Templates, News Articles, Documents, People, and Methodologies. Criteria identify the results, and automatic grouping identifies the intent, so people can quickly find what they need.

The Level's powerful search results allow Grant Thornton to efficiently access information that was historically buried deep in the firm's extensive national database. Staff can apply sophisticated filters and efficiently search the full-text of content items, including PDF, Word, Excel, Powerpoint and other documents. Search results only display relevant information that the user has security permissions to view.

Grant Thornton wanted to integrate with other applications, and implement custom ones.
The Level is designed to integrate easily with other systems and custom modules can be added cost effectively. The Level delivers several exports to other databases in the company as well as exports to Excel for individual use. Custom features now include automatic creation of (editable) PDF resumes for all people in the company in the national format, and proposal helpers that create personalized letters and questionnaires from common updated content about Grant Thornton's services.

Grant Thornton needed to ensure the confidentiality of information.
Grant Thornton uses The Level's robust, itemized security to limit access to confidential information. Search results do not display content where there is no permission to view. While any person can access and edit the personal information within their employee profile, the Human Resources team is able to view and edit confidential information on each employee, including contact information and employee record. Itemized security enables everyone to use the same central store of information, while maintaining security for certain individuals where it is needed.

Grant Thornton needed to manage risk for this mission-critical system.
The Level delivers built-in Version Control for each content item, with one-click roll-back of content. In addition, an Activity Log records all usage of The Level and provides a complete annotated history of who changed what and when - a great compliance tool.

Grant Thornton is very pleased with the ROI so far with the Level, and is currently implementing even more enhancement features on their system.

 

A leading firm of chartered accountants and management consultants, Grant Thornton was recently rated by Financial Post 500 as among Canada's top five largest accounting firms.  The Canadian organization is a member of Grant Thornton International, which has over 600 offices worldwide and is represented in over 100 countries.

The Level is a proven provider of world class Enterprise Web Content Management software for medium to large enterprises. The Level Enterprise Web CMS helps companies dramatically reduce the time it takes to publish content across all their internal and external websites.  The Level also offers advanced personalization capabilities, relied on by some of the most prominent web properties in the world for tailoring content to local audiences on a global scale.