The Customer is one of the largest conglomerates in the United Arab Emirates with its influence spreading into other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries through its trading activities. Its main areas of activity are in automobiles, heavy vehicles, spare parts and services, travel related products, foreign exchange, real estate, land development, building industry related products, infrastructure development, electronic communications, and general trading. Due to growing organizational needs, the Customer required larger collaborative environments, improved communication media, knowledge management, intelligent management reporting, and information security.

AgreeYa was engaged by the Customer to develop and implement an employee intranet and internet portal for the entire group comprised of 13 companies. The key challenges were:

• Provide a dynamic portal which is scalable to meet the requirements of providing updated content to employees
• Short development timeframe for customization due to immediate business requirements of the system
• Adhere to the quality standards specific to various functional departments.

Based on the Customer’s requirement and our experience, AgreeYa recommended Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 to address the need for greater collaboration, improved communication, and robust security. The scope of the project included:

• Installation and configuration of MOSS 2007
• Customization of MOSS 2007 to implement required features (forms, reports, workflows)
• Maintenance and support

The project is to be completed in two phases. Phase 1 includes development of the Customer’s internet portal site; Phase 2 includes development of intranet sites, automation of processes, publication of E-business services, and integration with SAP. AgreeYa’s experience in working on similar, previous engagements made it possible to quickly understand the Customer’s needs, assist them in prioritizing the requirements, and deliver the project on time, to achieve expected business benefits. The key benefits realized from this project include:

• Enhanced employee productivity by simplifying everyday business activities
• Effective management and re-focus of content to gain increased business value
• Shared best practices of delivering global projects driven by CMMI Level 5 processes
• Reduced costs by reducing voice calls and eliminating paper-based work order processing
• Enhanced end user experience from the application which provided a better connection between people, processes, and information
• Accelerated delivery cycle through AgreeYa’s iLab Solution Delivery Accelerators

The application was developed using MOSS 2007 to provide a robust and a secure solution. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 was used as the database.