The Motor Insurer’s Bureau (MIB) was established in 1946 to compensate the victims of negligent, uninsured, and untraced motorists. Every company underwriting motor insurance in the UK is a member of MIB and contributes to its funding. Based in Milton Keynes, it has an annual budget in excess of £200 million, and over 350 members of staff.
Information within MIB was distributed by various means such as notice boards, paper forms, broadcast emails, shared network drives, and a poorly functioning static Intranet. Staff often spent considerable time searching for critical documents needed for their work. Although an Intranet existed, it was unattractive, unreliable, and contained dated material.
The Vision
Ashton West, chief executive of MIB, wanted a new company Intranet that would become the chief means of distributing documentation and other information within the company. The system had to be adaptable to the changing needs of the company, and be administered by authorised non-IT staff, freeing the IS department to focus on the delivery of applications and IT services. A successful Intranet would allow staff to become more productive, and provide an improved quality of service. In particular it needed to be reliable, attractive, and easy to use.
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Following consultation with key members of staff, an
Intranet server was constructed using Microsoft Windows Server
2003, and SQL Server 2000. On top of this the Intranet was
assembled using Microsoft SharePoint Services and various web
parts. Customised menus and SQL stored procedures provided
additional functionality where necessary. Facilities provided included searchable documentation libraries, staff and member lists, meeting room bookings, private team areas, discussion groups, and change management control. Administration staff were trained to create new documentation libraries, information lists, and web pages using the Intranet itself, or programs from the Microsoft Office suite. Most importantly authorisation and security mechanisms integrated with the underlying NT domain were introduced so that access, authoring, and approval rights could be strictly controlled. |
Trevor Harrison, Technical Manager and project sponsor at MIB said:
“Our staff have been pleasantly surprised on how easy the system is to use. The new Intranet has fulfilled our business requirements, and we are very impressed by the its configurability and features. We are very pleased: Anderson Software delivered exactly ‘what it said on the tin’.”
