Business Situation
The technology management of Poste Italiane’s Business Divisions is controlled by 10 regional technology centres. A National Technology Centre (NTC) coordinates the issuing of products/services across a network infrastructure consisting of a Wide Area Network of 15,000 computers and an enterprise server farm of around 200 systems. NTC provides a HelpDesk for the divisions and software distribution for 14,000 branch offices and 140 subsidiaries. NTC needed to speedily synthesise information sharing between the central divisions and the regional centres. Horizontal and vertical integration would be critical in allowing optimal information exchange.
Solution
Poste Italiane decided to foster information/knowledge sharing via an integrated document management system which was implemented by the Technology and Processes Division of Poste Italiane in collaboration with Avanade. The solution used the Avanade Corporate Portal Solution Offering, which is based on Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server 2001 and operates on the existing control infrastructure, based on Microsoft Windows NT 4.0. Accessible via browser to the entire organisation the system guarantees seamless integration with the existing Microsoft Office platform. Users of the portal can manage the publication cycle; maintain archives; and easily search for documents. The system also enables users to be kept informed of updates to documents of particular interest. Security and access control are based on SharePoint functions (Coordinator, Author, Reader) and are integrated with the user rights of Microsoft Windows NT 4.0.
Results