SEARCH

McCann Worldgroup, one of the world’s largest marketing communications companies, spans 130 countries and represents the world’s leading global marketers. McCann needed an easier way to find people and expertise within its seven separate business units, and it wanted to search and share content across the many networks that it had built for clients, business units, and locations. Using the search, portal, and content management capabilities in Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007, McCann enhanced both its internal and client communications sites and implemented new search solutions across the enterprise. Now McCann Worldgroup is providing its various business groups, project teams, partners, and clients with solutions to collaborate more effectively, find and share content more easily, and manage workflows more productively.

TV Guide Online delivers video guide using Microsoft technologies

Search for “Lost,” or “the Office,” or “24” using any of the Internet’s most well-known search engines and you are likely to end up with millions of results—billions in the case of “24.” So how is a television aficionado—who instantly recognizes these as names of popular TV shows—to weed through this overwhelming response to find truly relevant, high-quality content about a favorite show? This challenge lay at the heart of the decision that TV Guide Online executives made in 2006 to develop a new Internet video guide that would focus exclusively on high-quality Internet content related to TV programming. TV Guide Online is a division of Gemstar-TV Guide, publisher of TV Guide Magazine, the TV Guide Web site, and interactive programming guides (IPGs) used by many subscription TV services. As a brand, TV Guide has a 53-year history of providing TV listings, information, and editorial guidance to TV users.

Its executives understand what TV viewers are looking for and saw that viewers’ needs were largely unmet by the existing technologies. In particular, TV Guide Online executives understood that TV viewers turning to the Internet to find information about their favorite shows and stars were not for the most part looking for spoofs on YouTube; fan sites; or brief, low-quality captures of old shows. These viewers want professional-quality programming—whether that be online versions of old episodes, previews of upcoming shows, or interviews with cast and crew members—and that content constitutes only a small fraction of the millions of hits that popular search engines routinely return.

“We realized that we could offer more than guidance on your set top box,” says Kirsten Rasanen, Director of Product Management for TV Guide Online. “After all, we have a fair amount of expertise in this area. We know TV. We know entertainment. We know movies. So, we decided to build an online video listings area—and deliver guidance to online video in much the same way we provide listings for TV and movies. It’s all designed for the TV viewer, and it helps them find videos on the Internet that really would be of interest to them.”

Tyson Foods Improves Collaboration and Business Insight, Creates Process Efficiencies

Every day, the 15,000 information workers at Tyson Foods share information with one another to develop and market hundreds of products. To speed employee connections, strengthen business insight, and improve efficiency, Tyson deployed Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 as its companywide collaboration platform. Using the software’s Enterprise Search capability, employees can find the people and data they need quickly, and employees have created more than 700 personal sites to share skills and experience. Users can access dashboards that expose SAP data through SharePoint sites to aid decision making, as well as business intelligence tools that integrate with Microsoft Office desktop programs for improved insights. In addition, the IT staff has been able to quickly create powerful, new Office Business Applications that are boosting productivity and savings across the company.

Real Estate Firm Saves $500,000, Improves Service Delivery with Collaboration Solution

Jones Lang LaSalle had grown rapidly—and outgrown its tools for collaboration and content management. At the same time, an economic slowdown and global competition increased the company’s challenges. To fuel continued growth, Jones Lang LaSalle adopted a consistent solution for its intranet, client extranet, and Internet sites. Based on the 2007 Microsoft® Office system, including Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, the solution replaces flurries of e-mail messages with collaboration team workspaces that business units create and control themselves. Centralized enterprise content management reduces version control problems, eliminates the need to support storage of multiple document copies, and saves the company U.S.$500,000 per year. The solution was adopted with little or no customization required, containing development costs and speeding time-to-benefit.

Skanska USA Building Enhances Project Management with Scalable Web Portals

Skanska, a Fortune Global 500 company, is one of the world’s leading construction companies. One of its United States business units, Skanska USA Building Inc., is the third largest builder in the U.S. To facilitate efficient collaboration, Skanska needed to give external and internal project teams access to timely, reliable information, while maintaining the scalability and flexibility to handle more than 1,500 active projects with budgets ranging from U.S.$15 million to $1 billion. In 2004, Skanska used Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 to develop internal and external collaboration portals. In 2007, the company deployed Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to scale its collaboration portals for larger, more complex projects, improve change management processes, save time, reduce costs, and improve coordination with clients, subcontractors, and other project partners.

Networking Provider Fosters Collaboration with Enterprise Search, Saving Up to $50,000

Enterasys did not have an efficient collaboration platform and search tool to help its global work force find data within the company’s diverse Web sites or to locate subject matter experts. To address the problem, Enterasys deployed Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 and its integrated Enterprise Search. Today, employees can search all Web content and find the experts that they need to boost productivity and customer service.

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