ACCORD Corporation, a 160-employee non-profit human services agency serving Western New York, consisted of a highly dispersed and highly mobile workforce. Communication challenges stemming from such decentralization impacted ACCORD greatly in decreased productivity and inefficient processes. Cutting communication costs and boosting productivity was a key component in good stewardship, especially in an era of decreased state and federal funding. Lance Technologies delivered a web-based intranet system consolidating file-sharing, forms processing, employee contact information management, and centralized calendaring functions.

 

 

ACCORD Corporation needed to improve its communication infrastructure to interact with its highly mobile workforce of 160 employees that serviced the tri-county area constituting the Southern Tier of New York State. Currently, communication was primarily occurring via email that personnel could only check when they were at their office desk or via phone calls. Getting timely information out to staff was a major challenge. Employees also communicated important operational information via paper forms that would have to be hand-delivered to the corporate office location. This meant that the time between when an event occured and when the corporation received data for processing and analysis was very long, not to mention added transportation and handling costs. Finally, there was yet no technological infrastructure that allowed centralized services such as Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint Server to be deployed effectively.

 

 

Lance Technologies developed a web-based intranet to the exact specifications of ACCORD Corporation within 60 days. The intranet used encryption technologies to safe-guard the secure nature of its contents. The intranet could be administered completely by ACCORD’s IT staff, allowing them to manage user rights and privileges within the system. Individual employees could log into the system and gain access to documents that were appropriate for them to view. Users could also upload documents to share information within their department and cross-departmentally. An extensive forum was also set up to allow users to hold asynchronous dialog. The system was such a success that ACCORD Corporation worked with Lance Technologies to develop various electronic forms submission systems within the intranet such as e-timesheets and e-mileage reporting.