overview
Honda Racing F1 uses Intranet based on a Microsoft-powered solution to improve collaboration and speed up communications.
customer profile
Honda Racing F1 is a company, wholly owned by the Honda Group, that designs, manufactures and races Formula 1 racing cars. It is also responsible for the marketing, promotion and sponsorship activities of the Honda F1 brand. Headquartered near Silverstone in the UK, it has over 650 employees.
Business Situation
Employees at Honda Racing F1 need to collaborate and communicate on a large range of data and information sources in two broad operational areas:
- Factory operations - includes operations documents, SAP, databases for HR, car design and manufacturing, wind tunnel, R&D, and assets
- Trackside operations - includes car performance data.
To assist in achieving collaboration, Honda Racing F1 developed an intranet based on classic ASP technology. This had evolved over a number of years using different developers and had become unstable with frequent downtime. It was also difficult to administer and update content without a content management system. The overall result was steadily declining usage amongst employees.
solution
It was decided by Honda Racing F1, to review and evaluate current integrated solutions offering collaboration, document management, web content management and powerful search capabilities.
The company sought the help of Microsoft Gold Partner Pygmalion to demonstrate the features and functionality of (MOSS 2007) Microsoft Office Share Server 2007, and how it could meet their specific business needs, and to establish budget implementation costs.
After a successful evaluation, Honda Racing F1 decided to replace its aging intranet with a SharePoint based solution. As a first phase it was decided to implement a solution using Windows SharePoint Services as this did not require a licence change. WSS offered a significant amount of the functionality they required, and it also offered an easy upgrade path to SharePoint Server to avail of more powerful enterprise features at a later date. It was considered important to get an initial intranet up and running as soon as possible, getting users back and involved, without waiting for the normal budget approval timeframe.
Pygmalion, working in conjunction with an in-house technical team, completed the following key activities:
PLANNING & DESIGN
- Defined and documented the business requirements and further refined the key functionality and features required
- Developed a project plan
DEVELOP, DEPLOY & TEST STAGE
- Installation and configuration
- Developed the site structure and navigation
- Implemented Honda Racing F1 branding
- Migrated data from the existing intranet
- Provided skills transfer and on-site training
- Documented the solution
Benefits
- Low cost.
- Using Windows SharePoint Services, there is no licence fee (if Windows Server licences are already in place).
- Rapid deployment of an intranet.
- The intranet was configured and deployed without any need for software development.
- Ease of updating content.
- Using the built-in content management system, it is now easy for non-technical people to update content using familiar word processing type templates. Previously, technical personnel were required to update content.
- High availability and reliability.
- The solution was built using well tried and tested out-of-the-box components, without the need for custom software development.
- Easy to use and powerful administration.
- Familiar Windows interface.
- Powerful document management - the built-in document management functionality offers a range of powerful features such as auto-archiving and check-in/check-out.
- Granular security - the solution allows for security and access to be set for specific users on specific items of data/information.
- Provides a roadmap that permits ease of upgrade of features and capacity.
company name
Honda Racing F1
Industry
F1 Racing
Country
United Kingdom
website: