The British Council has cut duplication of effort across its 12 global regions, sped up data gathering, cut down on international travel costs and reduced its carbon footprint since adopting Microsoft collaborative technology.

The charitable organisation, established to build relationships between the UK and other countries, uses Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to hold virtual meeting spaces, so international staff can work together more effectively.

“There is a strong need for collaboration as the organisation is split across 110 countries and each of the 12 regions produces similar projects and products,” says Andrew Walker, collaboration consultant at the British Council.

Before implementing SharePoint Server, the council relied on email to collaborate.

“The drawback was there was no consolidated space to look at how a project was delivered,” says Walker. “There were storage problems and repetition of information, and it was difficult to see what was going on or to share ideas.”

Microsoft SharePoint was chosen because the organisation wanted a platform that could boast global support. Halfway through implementation, the project was stopped to swap version 2003 for 2007.

“User feedback on version 2003 showed it was not a polished product in terms of usability. Version 2007 fits well with our intranet and it is scalable with electronic records management features we can use in the future,” says Walker.

An iterative rollout allowed the organisation to learn from each region’s implementation.

“We learned lessons along the way which fed back into each successive rollout. Users are very happy as time and effort in completing projects has been reduced and travel cut through digital meetings,” says Walker.

Collaborative spaces for different projects can be set up autonomously, but if they are not used they are shut down.

“If a collaborative space is not being used effectively, it is closed to encourage good practice. A project manager can have a new space if they want one,” he says.

The next stage will look at migration of the corporate intranet to SharePoint Server. “Achieving a unified communications approach is a big driver, so there is one place to go to find out what colleagues are doing.

“We are also looking to open SharePoint Server for collaboration with our partners,” says Walker.

“The project cost £750,000 over two years, roughly split as £375,000 per year. Even in this early stage, we have started to see positive evidence on our return on investment, with reduced travel, quicker turnaround of information and better development of larger-scale projects.

“We will undertake a full evaluation at the end of this financial year and into the next, to ensure we maximise the benefits of our SharePoint rollout.”