Customer
Pan Pac
Information Leadership
Information Leadership are New Zealand’s foremost information and knowledge management experts. As Microsoft Gold Partners, their specialty is enterprise grade designs that balance being easy and flexible to use, while providing confidence and control that information is secure, complete, and findable.
Learn moreSummary
Pan Pac is a fully integrated forestry/timber products company in New Zealand with logging, pulp, lumber operations, and a sawmill. It is the largest forest owner and log purchaser in Hawkes Bay, and employs 800+ people to work within the company’s operating areas.
Under new IT leadership, Pan Pac decided to move from existing on-premise SharePoint and other file shares to modern Office 365 solutions. The business case hinged on three key business improvements:
- Drawing the diverse organization together via an intranet
- Providing health and safety compliance processes and documentation to adhere to government regulations for ‘Major Hazard Facilities’
- Managing and publishing controlled documents across all business activities
Information Leadership delivered “pragmatic, practical and useable” SharePoint workspaces, using its methodology and Azure based Apps. With the resilient design base created, Pan Pac is now well placed to continue its further digital transformation with Office 365.
Challenge
Due to the complexity of Pan Pac’s operations, it has very strict document control requirements to maintain the integrity of content through revisions. Previously this required manual processes passing through many stages and people. At any point in time, staff would be uncertain of the location, status, and ownership of a document. This led to duplication of documents and a struggle to find the correct document or guidance.
The new ‘Major Hazard Facilities’ Regulations legislation required Pan Pac to create a central knowledge base for hazard identification, control, emergency procedures, and policy. This would require constant updates to monitor processes, hazardous substance use, and risk across the business.
Strategy
The Office 365 SharePoint platform replaced the various storage solutions previously used by Pan Pac. This included a SharePoint 2013 implementation and information held on file shares.
Bringing all information together within an Office 365 intranet would give all staff access to a single verified source of information and excellent search, refined by metadata. With a diverse range of information and activities, Information Leadership leveraged their background in information management to build a taxonomy. This included metadata to describe, file, and find content, as well as to implement business processes.
The designs also included use of Azure based iWorkplace Apps that allow metadata to be auto-classified. This innovation meant that in many instances staff did not need to enter metadata. Another iWorkplace App (Smart Case Files) simplifies content management and security for authoring, approval, publishing, and archiving of documentation.
What was truly invaluable was getting a solution that was pragmatic, practical and useable. There's nothing worse than coming up with something that just pays lip service - Information Leadership created a system that we could actually implement.
The feedback from users is overwhelmingly positive. What people are saying is, we know where documents are, we know who's looking at them, we know what their status is. This transparency is critical to our business.
Jason Simons (IT Manager, Pan Pac)
Results
Pan Pac has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from their staff. Solutions include a modern intranet, controlled documents workspaces, and publishing portal, as well as managing their ‘Major Hazard Facility’ regulatory needs.
Staff report that they are now able to file, find and use the documents they need. As well as a newfound transparency, there is reduced risk of technology and information accidents. Everyone can upload, share, find, and edit with confidence and control.
Pan Pac can now better identify and respond to inefficiencies. For instance, they found that key people in the organization are required to sign off on a large volume of documents. These bottlenecks can be addressed – and faster and better results delivered.
Pan Pac is now prepared to leverage the design base for further digital transformation with Office 365.
