Seattle-based WaMu’s overhaul of its intranet has increased efficiency by allowing users to post and manage content more easily. The new system has also cut costs, as the more efficient overhauled intranet has consolidated many mini-intranets that users had created to circumvent the inefficiencies of the old system.
    
The overhaul began when the banking firm realized that its previous intranet system, designed to help employees, contractors and outsourced providers share information more easily, was too difficult and complex for most users. New content posts and changes required the involvement of IT, burdening the IT department with too many low level requests and impeding the speed with which content could be added, shared and updated. Furthermore, mini-intranets that some teams had created to circumvent this cumbersome process were eliminating the benefits of having a single place to share information.  
    
The firm embarked on a rebuild of the intranet with usability as a prime goal. “We had to make the experience nearly transparent to our users – a natural extension of their existing work environment,” says Christian Ramos, manager of WaMu’s intranet platform team.

The firm initially chose Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 because its easy integration capabilities aligned with the bank’s plans for transparency, Ramos says. SharePoint was used for the presentation layer, collaboration tools, and application development and integration, while Microsoft Content Manager 2002 was used for the authoring environment. To make the use of the intranet transparent from the work users were doing in other programs, the WaMu team integrated Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office 2003, Windows Messenger, and the Active Directory service. The firm is now in the process of updating to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

As a result of the overhaul WaMu.net now enables employees to quickly and easily create, post, and change content themselves, build their own Web sites, communicate, collaborate, share documents, and find the information they need faster – without any IT involvement.

“WaMu.net has become a critical tool for my department that we depend on every day,” says Tom McDermott, senior vice president of retail bank distribution for WaMu. “It has empowered us to do things in hours and days that previously took weeks or months of custom IT development, while still maintaining the structure, security, and rigor required in today’s financial services industry.”