Orchard has completed the installation of a new intranet at Regenda, based on its new .NET-based Orchard Content Management product, urgently replacing Regenda’s previous intranet which had significant problems. The project began in December 2011 and was completed in February 2012.
Regenda now has a stable intranet that is used by all staff, with functionality including message boards, brand centre, blogs, news and team pages. The Vestri platform on which Orchard Content Management is based is now being extended to other areas including collaborative working.
Regenda’s internal projects begin with a team meeting to capture all of the key ideas and issues relating to the project, with the each team’s comments and suggestions captured on Post-It notes and flipcharts. This process itself has always worked well but the sheer number of Post-It notes and flipcharts has multiplied in recent years, making it harder and harder for Regenda to keep track of comments and suggestions.
Orchard Collaboration Management will enable Regenda to move its project management methodology online using electronic workspaces, document management, social networking and full Outlook integration. By photographing or scanning all of the outputs from project meetings and saving them to the Orchard Collaboration Management document store, the housing provider will have a digital record of everyone’s thoughts and comments, accessible via the intranet.
New resident involvement & campaign management tools from Orchard
Orchard has developed a new system to support housing providers’ resident involvement and campaign management activities. Based on Orchard’s existing housing management system and using its own workflow and database tools, the new system was developed as part of a six-month partnership with Aspire Housing, Coast and Country Housing and South Liverpool Homes.
Orchard’s new system covers activity tracking, event management, surveys, risk assessments, impact assessments, costing and budgets, all of which are integrated into the same system and with the housing management system, enabling users to record detailed information about activities, relate that information to the organisation as a whole, and to then report on the impact of resident involvement on corporate strategic aims.
Aidan Dunphy, product manager, Orchard, said, “Time and again, resident involvement staff have told us that using standalone systems makes it difficult for them to record information and produce reports, and that their information can’t be linked to corporate databases such as the housing management system. We have responded by building on the organisation’s existing information architecture and by using consumer-friendly IT such as SMS and web portals.”
