A people-centric hub, modernized for BI employees – by BI employees.
In an agile response to the COVID-19 pandemic’s forced exodus from the physical workplace, BI leadership published its 2020 intranet portal for employees as a quick fix solution to unite its disparate team members, and optimize operations to the benefit of all of our clients.
The scalable, front-end interface of the SharePoint infrastructure certainly set us up for success as we examined the platform 3 years later, and optimized it further. Now, thanks to user feedback from the team, we successfully shifted it into a modernized SharePoint hub where team members find all relevant corporate insider information easily.
Design thinking at work
Human-centered design isn’t just for our product development teams. Thoughtfulness and empathy in design benefits ALL users – and in this case, applying these principals increased the individual page views by 8,242%, and increased number of individual viewers by 5,050%!
Innovating to solve a problem
Our existing employee intranet portal was bursting with opportunity to connect all of our teams and create a shared, high-level language that unites us all around what work the entire company is doing – pulling us up and out of our micro-level views of our immediate tasks. At the time of our discovery kickoff, Virtucampus was a basic tool for ad-hoc access to some of the most common resources our team members request. HR resource like timecards and forms, and IT help desk links were the most used elements, and several pages of information were not relevant to our staff anymore.
We needed to transform this employee service platform into an even more user-friendly enabler for our various user groups. We would be scaling up its tools and capabilities and reordering the information hierarchy.
Innovation via empathy
To start, we made sure to go through the platform in its current state, to understand the ins and outs of it, and make note of questions, confusing or out of date elements, etc. We then interviewed the creator of the platform to make sure we understood the ‘why’ behind each decision. From there, we watched the analytics closely for a few weeks, and then interviewed program leads and colleagues and asked them to share screen to show us how (if) they used the platform.
‘Show me how you use it.’ (Show, don’t tell).
‘Do you use it? If so, for what? If not, why not?’ (5 Whys)
‘What information do you wish you could access easily without red tape?’ (Seeking understanding. Listening well.)
We learned from them all.
“Our existing employee intranet portal was bursting with opportunity to connect all of our teams and create a shared, high-level language that unites us all around what work the entire company is doing.”
– Bre Wheeler, Director, Communications & Brand
Ideation, for Human-Sake
In synthesizing the data collected, we identified these areas as key to improving the user experience and efficacy of our intranet portal.
- People want to connect and be known
- They want ways to spotlight their team members
- They want to understand what their colleagues are doing on their projects
- They want to know the broader company’s career opportunities
- They want clarity on which programs are active, archived, coming soon
- They need fewer logins, fewer platforms – a one-stop shop for internal information
- They REALLY don’t want that go-to timecard link to move anywhere 🙂
Prototype, Test, Launch & Repeat
With a very simple tweak to the site map, landing pages per program, product and corporate team were added, giving each group a ‘say’ into what information they share with all staff, and which is put behind permission access requirements. Relevant Twitter feeds are sprinkled where appropriate throughout, and internal news is shared via SharePoint’s news feature. All irrelevant or out-dated information has been archived, and our team members can even nominate team members to spotlight on the home page.
Virtucampus 2.0 went live in late February 2023, traffic analytics shot through the roof, and we’ve moved into the next cycle of continuous improvement for the sake of our most valued users – our team members.
Author
Breanna Wheeler
Director, Communications & Brand
Business Integra Recognized Among Inc. 2025 Best Workplaces
HOME | NEWS JULY 18, 2025 | PRESS RELEASEAs part of the 2025 Best Workplaces list, Business Integra stands alongside 514 organizations across the U.S. recognized for outstanding culture and employee-centric practices.Bethesda, MD – July 18, 2025 – Business Integra, a...
About the Author
Breanna Wheeler is a brand storyteller who advocates for users through design, writes to inspire, values people and community, and intentionally chooses to support teams in tech who are dedicated to improving lives. She finds deep satisfaction in bringing design to the strategy table, leading teams to think differently and fostering an environment of entrepreneurial exploration and innovation. She has joined the BI team in November 2022, to serve as the Director of Communications and Brand.
About BI
Business Integra is an award-winning, global provider of information technology, cybersecurity, aeronautic engineering, scientific and mission support services. We are committed to producing efficient and ethical results that cut costs, reduce risks, secure data, and advance human progress via cybersecurity, IT, engineering and mission support services.