Case Study Bandag, Inc Using Interactive Techonlogy to Power an Intranet Used Around the World

THE CHALLENGE

The Client is a global company, with 17 production facilities on 5 continents, producing retreading equipment, over 275 tread designs and sizesl, and providing services to trucking fleets worldwide. Their equipment, products, and services are distributed to and through a network of over 1200 franchised, independent tire dealers in 111 countries. Their company vision, "In a strategic alliance with our dealers around the world, to become the world's best provider of tire management systems," dictated the need for an Intranet. There were literally hundreds of ways the company could save money and build teamwork by sharing information in as timely a way as possible. They came to us with the request that we work with an internal committee to strategize, conceptualize, and then populate a private web site or Intranet.

Goals for the site were many: however, a big problem was disseminating information from Employee Services, one of the three divisions of their Human Resouces department. Beyond that, the Company was made up of teams, and a goal of the site was to provide a way for the teams in each far-flung location to work with each other. With such a scattered employee base, the variety of time zones and holidays involved, a variety of computer platforms, and other related concerns, including maintaining network provacy; the goal was to create a friendly site that employees would feel comfortable with and use. The ES office's services were designated the 'guinea pig department.' Once that information was up, we had 70 other departments to work with creating sections for them that complemented the original design, but were unique to each department.

OUR CREATIVE SOLUTIONS

Working with the Intranet Committee, and its co-chairs, AHA created a fun, easy to navigate site. We addressed a laundry list of objectives, chose a platform and developed a scope of work.

• The site was name "BOB," for Bandag's Online Buddy. The name was chosen through an employee contest. The reason: to encourage "ownership" of the site by the employees.
• We consulted with the IT staff to determine how network privacy could be maintained, while still making the site available to those employees who work outside of the network. As part of the security protocol, we agreed to roll out the site incrementally, rather than make it available to all plants simultaneously.
• We created a global "look and feel" that could be passed through individual department sites.
• We assisted the various departments in setting policy to determine how their material would best go online, helped them develop unique site plans, then implemented them.
• We introduced BOB to Headquarters staff via a series of staff luncheons, at which the committee co-chairs discussed the goals of the site, the site itself was demonstrated live, and there were a series of computers available for "hands-on" activity. We also developed a series of online games which employees were encouraged to play, in order to build use of, and acceptance for the tool.

RESULTS

We delevered each phase of time and within budget, despite many internal changes throughout the nine months this project was in development. At each introductory phase, the target audience embraced the site, and usage grew as hoped. In fact, plants that were not yet online clamored for connectivity, so that employees could use the team-building tools.