www.thalesgroup.com/uk
Thales is a major industrial force in the UK. Part of the Thales Group, a €10.3 billion multinational organisation, Thales UK provides systems at the heart of the UK's military capability, as well as delivering solutions from flight simulation and secure transactions to integrated communications. The company plays a key role in the UK Government’s extended investment in new technologies and developments, including the £6 million Watchkeeper Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) programme.
Committed to presenting a substantial UK presence as part of its global strategy, Thales drew up plans towards the end of 2003 for a major expansion of its UK corporate web site www.thalesgroup.com/uk. Thales UK wanted a compelling and consistent online communications vehicle for the company, its divisions (Aerospace, Air Systems, Land & Joint Systems, Naval, Security and Services), its products, the defence programmes it is involved with, latest news, and so on.
Thales is a large, multi-national organisation that has evolved through consolidation and acquisition. The company realised it had to invest in its online presence, so when planning a major overhaul of its existing Web site in line with the development of the Thales Group, it had to ensure flexibility was built-in so that changes could be made easily and rapidly.
ECM solution
Thales worked with Monochrome, a full-service media agency that not only provided creative design and in-depth development services to make the new site presence a reality, but also helped the company select an enterprise content management (ECM) software solution to enable staff to manage and update site content easily. The chosen solution also needed to be fast to implement and easy to use.
Armed with very specific requirements for the ECM system, Thales reviewed many solutions before finally selecting Shado from Straker Interactive. Shado is an out-of-the-box content management solution that is the hub of a comprehensive, feature-rich suite of Web-based applications that enables the creation and management of Internet sites, intranets, extranets and portals.
“We looked at how other organisations were managing their Web sites using Shado,” explained Jon Lunn, Corporate Communications Manager, Thales UK. “I’m not a ‘techy’, so when I saw how easy Shado is to use I immediately said ‘yes, that will work’.”
Easy to use
Lunn is part of an Internet strategy team that decides on the role and future of Thales’ Web presence. That team sets the policy, then the UK has to fit in with that policy. There have been some recent changes away from Thales UK’s business group structure to a divisional structure with more emphasis on activities in the various countries in which Thales operates. The company has a dotcom corporate site and country portals for North America, Germany, Holland, France, Australia, and the UK, as well as portals for the different divisions.
“We had to ensure that it was straightforward to represent on the UK Web site each of the divisions,” Lunn explained. “With Shado it’s easy to create pages and off we go. It’s simple to effectively manage the Web content, and we don’t need a huge amount of manpower. Shado is very easy to use, and we were up and running with it after half a day.”
Ease of use was demonstrated at last year’s Farnborough Airshow, where the company exhibited. As new deals were being signed at the show, Thales was able to make announcements ‘in real time’ on its Web site, using Shado, creating immediate press and industry awareness.
“It’s all about flexibility really,” added Lunn. “What I like about Shado is we can manage not just the content, but the page templates as well – so if we rebranded the company tomorrow, it would only take us a couple of days to create a rebranded Web site, rather than several weeks. Also, Shado is remarkably scaleable – our site isn’t huge, but it’s growing, and we need a solution that can grow with us.”
Further development
Development of Thales’ Internet, and indeed intranet, capabilities is ongoing, with Monochrome harnessing the power and scalability of Shado to help add new features and capabilities. On the Internet side, Monochrome is developing an ‘interactive map’ that enables users to zoom in on particular Thales UK locations and obtain full address details and products and services at each location, all through a fast-moving, highly visual Flash-based application underpinned by Shado.
On the intranet side, Lunn is responsible for managing a huge amount of marketing material, including corporate brochures, press material and thousands of images. He asked Monochrome to build an online Asset Library that would be in effect a central repository for storing all of Thales’ marketing material. It will be possible for staff to access marketing material easily and quickly through an intranet log in. Development of the library, again using Shado, is in the final stages.
Thales’ use of Shado is also moving beyond the company’s corporate communications team. The company’s Research & Technology people had previously gone their own way and selected their own content management solution, but it didn’t work. “I showed them how their area of the site could be managed using Shado - they now use it and are very happy,” said Lunn. “We’ll be meeting with the global IT division shortly to discuss how Shado may be adopted across the whole group.”
He concluded: “We’ve had excellent support from Monochrome and Straker throughout, and they have provided exactly the solution we need.”
About Thales UK
Thales UK's defence activities encompass land, sea and air systems. The company is the UK's second largest defence systems contractor and has been a supplier to the UK MoD since the First World War. Thales employs 10,000 staff in the UK and 61,500 people in 50 countries. In 2003, Thales UK’s revenues were £1.2bn.
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Shado.
A powerful enterprise content management (ECM) solution that is tried and trusted in multiple implementations.
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