Building CommunityClark Construction

An employee intranet that effectively marries the organization’s mission, employee culture, and established communication patterns via a single point of access to cross-organization data.

“Throughout the entire redesign process, NavigationArts maintained a keen focus on helping us meet our objectives for this project; we couldn't have asked for a better result."

Kimberly Wood, Director of Corporate Communications for Clark Construction Group

The Challenge

Clark Construction Group's intranet – ClarkNet – is Clark’s main way of communicating company initiatives to its 4,000 widely dispersed employees. The Human Resources Department utilizes ClarkNet to educate employees on their benefits, as well disseminate important documents. When Clark approached NavigationArts for an intranet redesign, they were dealing with the following issues:

• Over-burdened staff fielding a massive volume of calls and emails regarding personnel documentation that should have been easily available on the intranet
• No ability to find expertise within the company, whether in documentation or personnel
• Little insight into Clark culture or how to get involved in activities, particularly in volunteerism, one of the cornerstones of Clark Construction’s internal culture

The Solution

A successful intranet – one that achieves a critical mass of user adoption – effectively marries an organization’s mission, employee culture, and established communication patterns via a single point of access to cross-organization data. Through stakeholder interviews across Clark Construction’s departments, NavigationArts identified the pillars that would serve as the foundation for the new, employee-centric ClarkNet:

• A dynamic homepage that highlights Clark Construction’s initiatives, new projects, and employee spotlights
• Topic-based pages that quickly drive users to the information they’re searching for
• Cornerstone Newsletter prominently displayed, that serves as the cornerstone to promoting internal, community, and project news, along with corporate announcements
• Interactive Calendar that promotes launch dates, personal employee news, and the very important volunteer opportunities throughout the country
• Conversion of “Attached Docs” to web-based forms, identified and prioritized by NavigationArts and Clark Construction HR, to make for quick access, sharing, and submission
• Search feature, arguably the most critical element of any intranet, driven by controlled vocabulary and faceted filtering, powered by Google Mini
• Audience-specific views, ranging from department-specific discussion forums to advanced weather and mapping functions
• Flexible management and authoring environment that lets individual departments update items related to their endeavors
• Analytics reporting that allows Marketing and HR to know where traffic is coming from, what’s being viewed, and drives curated content based on those findings
• Mobile and tablet optimization for intranet use on the go - a game-changing element for Clark Construction employees

Armed with these ambitious goals, NavigationArts began to design and architect the new ClarkNet, delivering wireframes, design comps, and clickable prototypes throughout the iterative process. Additionally, NavigationArts conducted a CMS evaluation with Clark Construction to determine the platform best suited to support all company efforts as well as the tremendous increase in traffic that would be felt with the launch in the new intranet.

Together, NavigationArts and Clark Construction chose the Sitecore Content Management System (CMS), a best-of-breed CMS and integrated analytics suite that enables ClarkNet web authors to easily manage content for both web and mobile. Through the analytics suite, Clark Construction web editors and authors can establish tracking goals, implement multivariate testing, and access user-specific data, including IP location and session trails.

Project Results Included:

• Deployment of an employee-centric intranet to serve Clark’s 4,000+ staff across the U.S.
• Seamless content authoring environment across multiple channels through Sitecore CMS
• Permission-based discussion forums to foster social interaction among members and encourage company-wide community building
• Analytics tracking through Sitecore Online Marketing Suite
• Sophisticated integration with five existing ClarkNet Active Directory domains, including Single Sign On (SSO) using Sitecore’s Active Directory module
• Live Accuweather-based weather data for the entire United States, including hour-by-hour forecasts for areas with active Clark Construction projects
• Integration with Google Calendar
• Human Resource Department Employee Directory information

The Client

Clark Construction Group is one of the Nation’s largest and most respected general contractors. Nationals Park, FedEx Field, and the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center are just a sampling of the projects Clark has brought to life over the past century. With $4.5 billion dollars in annual revenue, 4,000 employees, a Corporate University, and offices all spanning across the Nation, the blue Clark Construction sign is an easily recognized element across our most popular cities.