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Page Content Managed Services Case Study: Land Securities
Land Securities vision is to be recognised as the UK's leading property company. A FTSE 100 company who own and manage approximately 6 million m2 of commercial property and provide property services to more than 2,500 private and public sector clients.
With a £14.4 billion investment portfolio, substantial development program and 1,800 employees, they provide commercial accommodation and property services to a wide range of occupiers. For over 60 years they have been the leader in property investment, management and development activity. Markets of focus are retail, London offices and property outsourcing.
Challenge
As a leading property firm, Land Securities are required to have regular maintenance checks throughout their properties. These items are performed by specialist contractors who in turn provide a Compliance Certificate which details the various checks they have performed and the level of Compliance. Currently these Certificates are managed either by the contractors, or by a department within the company (in a stand alone database).
Business Agility were engaged with the task to analyse and design these requirements and generate an agreed bundle of deliverables. These would then provide the basis of the Business Case to be presented to the Steering Group who would then confirm the budget for the development to proceed. The deliverables bundle included; Functional Specification, Development Proposal and an Architecture Document.
Solution
The delivered Functional Specification comprehensively described the User Interface, Process Flows, Data mappings, Non-Functional Requirements and Assumptions.
The Development Proposal detailed the process of the development and all the major assumptions and risk. This document also included a work plan and estimations of effort required. The Architecture Document detailed how this solution would fit into the client's existing systems (SharePoint, and C#, SOA, Web Services) and what changes would be required to these systems to enable the Compliance Certificate System to work.
About Business Agility
Business Agility provides specialist software development and integration consultancy services to the World’s most successful organisations. Its highly skilled consultants have the knowledge, ability and vision to ensure any project is delivered on time and to budget, using traditional and agile methodologies.
Business Agility is a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner with a wide range of Microsoft based competencies including SharePoint 2010, .NET Custom Development and Business Intelligence and Reporting.
Business Agility also specialises in J2EE based CRM and Contact Centre implementations.
For further information as well as details on Business Agility’s full scope of competencies, please contact us - info@business-agility.com
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Latest NewsThursday, April 26, 2012 New Video in the Demo Room: PerformancePoint Services read full article... Thursday, April 26, 2012 New Video in the Demo Room: PerformancePoint Services We've added a new video to our Demo Room about SharePoint PerformancePoint.
It demonstrates the ease of building dashboards and KPIs allowing you to monitor and analyse all data and the performance of your organisation.
Watch the video to learn:
• Ways to create interactive real-time reports.
• How to explore and visualise complex data in a simple way.
• How to turn the info in those reports into management information.
Access the Demo Room here
Tuesday, April 03, 2012 New Webinar available: SharePoint Governance read full article... Tuesday, April 03, 2012 New Webinar available: SharePoint Governance Business Governance should to be an integral part of your strategy, both reflecting and complementing your business goals.
To achieve greater efficiencies, end-users are becoming less reliant on IT, gaining more control of the systems and processes they rely upon. This allows IT to spend less time on the 'plumbing' and more time supporting the organisation's strategy. The move to a more 'self-service' environment is logical and progressive, but still needs effective management and, crucially, your governance plans need to reflect this.
Our recent webinar demonstrates how your SharePoint governance plans and policies can adapt to these changes, yet still continue to be a robust set of rules.
Watch this webinar to learn:
• The effectiveness of your existing state of governance.
• How you can adapt, enforce and maintain control (demonstrated through SharePoint).
• How SharePoint governance can reflect the paradigm shift to greater end-user control.
Click here to view the webinar. Monday, March 05, 2012 Read the case study: The first Lloyd’s of London syndicate ClaimCenter implementation. read full article... Monday, March 05, 2012 Read the case study: The first Lloyd’s of London syndicate ClaimCenter implementation.  Beazley is a specialist Risk Insurance and Reinsurance organisation, operating through Lloyd’s syndicates. They are market leaders in many lines of insurance including Reinsurance, Life, Accident & Health and Property.
Like most insurers, over the years Beazley had invested considerably in various IT systems, which at the time were the right fit for its infrastructure. However, as new systems and processes were introduced, these legacy systems were in danger of compromising efficiency.
Beazley reviewed the current state of its claims infrastructure and concluded that replacing the existing in-house claims system would soon become necessary.
The solution identified was Guidewire’s ClaimCenter, and Business Agility as its implementation partners.
Thursday, February 23, 2012 New Addition to the Demo Room - Excel Servies read full article... Thursday, February 23, 2012 New Addition to the Demo Room - Excel Servies Our latest video on Excel Services demonstrates how easy it is to share, control and manage your data held in Excel workbooks in a consistent manner throughout your organisation.
The video illustrates:
• How to display various information from multiple Excel workbooks within a single location
• Using KPIs and highlighting key metrics
• The benefits of storing workbooks and reports within SharePoint (taxonomy, version-control and controlling access).
If you have an questions then please don't hesitate to contact us on info@business-agility.com
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 New webinar recording: Reducing the effort of your manual reporting read full article... Tuesday, January 31, 2012 New webinar recording: Reducing the effort of your manual reporting A new webinar recording is now available to view in our Demo Room.
The session looks at the common reporting scenarios, the pitfalls and challenges we face on a regular basis. Following this illustration of the 'reporting landscape', we give an overview of SharePoint 2010, the areas it can be applied to and its enhancements.
The final section of the session gives an interesting demonstration of how SharePoint 2010's automation, workflow and business intelligence capabilities can help to greatly reduce the amount of manual reporting needed in your organisation.
The recorded webinar is in our Demo Room which you can access here. Monday, January 09, 2012 A New Age of Digital Unity from the University of Surrey Students’ Union read full article... Monday, January 09, 2012 A New Age of Digital Unity from the University of Surrey Students’ Union 
The University of Surrey Students’ Union, with the help of Business Agility, has implemented and launched a brand new way for its Student body to interact with it. The web portal, built on SharePoint, brings together all student communities across all faculties, enabling a more accessible Union with better interaction, an improved community and superior information relation. This thought-leading digital innovation was brought about after much research from the USSU; recognising the days of the physical building, physical meeting places, and physical information points were becoming antiquated.
‘Wow’ factor functionality…
- Live streaming of events
- Personalised content and relevant display
- Facebook integration
- Seamless events integration
- Completely automated processes (Case management); e.g., extenuating circumstances form/process – seamlessly integrating with Dynamics
- Rich search experience – controlled by AD, Students have an ability to refine and extend searching (by course, by date, by name, by photo)
- Tagging content - The Students have the ability to tag pages they like in the site.
The results
“The solution is still in its early days as the nature of the vision and the ideas of how and where to apply it are immense. Therefore the results are still being realised for this far-reaching project.
That said the project is maturing fast with rapid response to user-feedback. The awareness campaign behind getting students online is huge, and the Portal is getting exceptionally good feedback – the design, look and feel of the site is enabling a high level of adoption (not just from students, but from internal staff too).
In fact, the biggest ‘wow-factor’ has come from staff, because they knew precisely how difficult things were before. The end result to the project will be the USSU having a powerful, community-driven social web portal that is self-evolving, and delivering all relevant information in a transparent way to the entire student population.”
Alan Roy, Director of Member Services, University of Surrey Students’ Union
Thursday, December 15, 2011 Business Agility Guest Speaker at Microsoft SharePoint event read full article... Thursday, December 15, 2011 Business Agility Guest Speaker at Microsoft SharePoint event Business Agility was proud to be asked by Microsoft to be a guest speaker at a recent SharePoint event (05 December 2011).
The event, aimed at Microsoft partners, was designed to illustrate the reasons for utilising SharePoint and how it can influence the types of engagements partners can be involved in.
Business Agility was specifically asked to deliver a presentation on how they have leveraged SharePoint and to talk about their specialism in Business Intelligence.
The presentation, delivered by Business Agility's Operations Director, Mark Crawford, touched on the early beginnings of the Consultancy, its reasons for adopting dot.NET technology, moving into the SharePoint space, their relationship with Microsoft and their current position of the UK's number one BI Systems Integrator.
"It's great to be asked to come and participate in a day like this - it really cements how we are perceived; as Business intelligence experts. The big benefit to us is to speak to so many other partners in the Microsoft universe. It's important to get different perspectives on things."
Mark Crawford, Operations Director, Business Agility. Tuesday, November 29, 2011 Leading-Edge Claims Technology for London Markets read full article... Tuesday, November 29, 2011 Leading-Edge Claims Technology for London Markets Global Platform Increases Processing Efficiency; Meets London Market Electronic Endorsement Standards
Torus, the global specialty insurer, has announced the implementation of its new, state-of-the art claims management system, Guidewire ClaimCenter®, delivered by the UK’s number one Guidewire system integrator, Business Agility.
To replace multiple, legacy platforms, Torus has implemented ClaimCenter as its one global claims management system to support its entire product suite, standardising claims handling processes to deliver enhanced claims efficiency and improved speed and accuracy of claims payments for Torus customers worldwide.
“Our aim is to be a world class claims team,” said Rob Powell, Chief Claims Officer. “This initiative evidences our progress and allows us to demonstrate our success. The investment clearly shows Torus’ commitment to embed claims into the Torus brand. It underlines our willingness to pay philosophy.”
Torus selected Guidewire largely on the strength of ClaimCenter’s flexibility to manage claims globally across a diverse product portfolio. Importantly, this has allowed the system to be adapted to work directly with London Market Messages. This is especially timely given the recent pressure from Lloyd’s on London’s insurer and brokers to engage more fully with the electronic endorsements process.
“Torus is meeting and exceeding industry demands with regards to ECF2,” said Mr Powell.
“Working closely with Business Agility Group Ltd, ClaimCenter has been fully implemented and integrated with all Torus’ technology platforms in under twelve months,” said Michael Kim, Chief Administrative Officer.
Torus chose Business Agility as the technical implementers of the platform due to their experience, resources and reputation. Roy Murphy, Managing Director of Business Agility said, “Unlike typical Systems Integrators, Business Agility is a niche consultancy with highly skilled and experienced Guidewire experts. Our focus is to make our clients successful and self-sufficient in as short a time as possible using optimum resources. We rely exclusively on the excellence of our services to fuel our future growth; this is reflected in our 100% track-record of successful engagements and our position as the number one Guidewire systems integrator in the UK.”
To find out more about how Business Agility can help you with your quote, purchase and claims settlement processes, contact info@business-agility.com Wednesday, November 09, 2011 "Exceptionally useful seminar" delivered by Business Agility read full article... Wednesday, November 09, 2011 "Exceptionally useful seminar" delivered by Business Agility Business Agility delivered their fifth event of 2011, entitled "Your one-way ticket out of Spreadsheet hell".
The event illustrated how to relieve the pain of multiple, manually compiled reports and how to produce a 'single version of the truth'.
The main point of interest was a 60 minute demonstration of SharePoint 2010 and its rich-rich capabilities when it comes to automating processes and enabling controls over your data. The demo and an overview of a recent case study sparked off a multitude of questions, which were ably handled by the Business Agility team.
The event was such a success that it will be run again as an online webinar - scheduled for 30 November 2011.
To find out more about SharePoint, contact us on info@business-agility.com
Wednesday, October 12, 2011 Frontline, the UK’s biggest magazine distributor revolutionises its reporting read full article... Wednesday, October 12, 2011 Frontline, the UK’s biggest magazine distributor revolutionises its reporting Frontline is the UK’s largest magazine sales, marketing and distribution company.
The organisation sells and distributes over 160 magazine titles, including 58 of the top 200 best-selling titles in the UK*. Their distribution model is focused on getting the right magazines, in the right numbers, into the right shops, at the right time.
With an enormous amount of data from many sources, including sales of titles, total sales of competitor titles and forecasting information, Frontline has to ensure they had a complete and consistent picture of performance at all times.
After a Business Performance Management project, Frontline began to work towards a vision where they drew together all the data describing performance and the market in which they operate into a single up to date, reliable, robust single version of the truth.
This Business Intelligence solution had to fulfil important criteria:
- Access via the browser
- No client-side software
- Not limited by different technologies
- Robust security
- Data governance
- Speed of Performance
- Ease of use
- Version control & auditing
With an existing investment in SharePoint and Office 2010, Frontline were able to maximise their use of this technology and evaluate the Microsoft BI stack to see if it met their selection criteria.
Following attendance at a Business Agility BI education seminar, Paul Smirk, Commercial Analyst Controller for Frontline, invited Business Agility to visit the Frontline Head office to explore their specific requirements in more detail.
Following a successful Proof of Concept which proved SharePoint was fit for purpose, Business Agility installed and configured Frontline’s production SharePoint 2010 environment.
The new solution removes manual intervention, eliminates the risk of human error and improves the timeliness and robustness of the reported data.
Frontline’s reports are no longer limited in terms of drill-through, and have the potential for processing millions of rows of data behind a familiar excel front-end; users are able to get a rapid response to their interrogations of the data.
Most reports are making use of the functionality in SharePoint 2010, such as slicers and Power Pivot. Future developments will look at developing reporting cubes, using Analysis Services and building interactive dashboards with performance point.
To find out more about how Business Agility can help you with your reporting, please contact us on info@business-agility.com
*(source: ABC)
Wednesday, October 12, 2011 Business Agility paddles for Cancer Research read full article... Wednesday, October 12, 2011 Business Agility paddles for Cancer Research Every year Business Agility tackles a new challenge and tries to raise some money for a good cause along the way. And this year was no different.
On October 1st, deep in the wilderness of Herefordshire, a team of 12 people from Business Agility took to two-man canadian kayak canoes and paddled 24 miles - all for Cancer Research.
It was a full day of (almost) non-stop paddling along the River Wye, and although it was a balmy 24 degrees and the scenery was beautiful the going was tough!
Even with a capsize, some running a-grounds and some water damaged iPhones, happily, at the end of 7 and half hours the entire team had crossed the finish line.
The total raised (and still rising) is £1,500.
Thanks to all that supported us! Friday, July 01, 2011 New partnership - Business Agility Consulting Ltd & Academy Software Products Ltd read full article... Friday, July 01, 2011 New partnership - Business Agility Consulting Ltd & Academy Software Products Ltd Business Agility embodies the concept of a ‘best of breed’ approach. The Systems Integrator is proud to announce its partnership with Academy Software Products.
This partnership facilitates the delivery of the entire Business Intelligence story – from the low cost, flexible data management (with effective design and building of your data warehouse) right through to the robust and real-time visualisation of that data.
Business Agility is expert in the presentation, publishing, collaboration, business process automation and self-service enablement of BI via SharePoint, Performance Point, PowerPivot, SSRS, SSAS etc. Academy Software is expert in providing tools and skills to more rapidly produce and maintain your SQL based Warehouse.
Contact us for more information.
Tuesday, June 07, 2011 Webinar - The 9 most important considerations when upgrading to SP 2010 read full article... Tuesday, June 07, 2011 Webinar - The 9 most important considerations when upgrading to SP 2010 On Friday 3rd June, Business Agility ran a webinar designed to illustrate the most important considerations an organisation should take into account when evaluating SharePoint 2010.
This free webinar is now available as a recorded session and can be accessed here:
http://newsite.business-agility.com/Downloads/DemoRoom/Pages/demoroom.aspx . Tuesday, April 19, 2011 Enhanced SharePoint Support as a stand alone service read full article... Tuesday, April 19, 2011 Enhanced SharePoint Support as a stand alone service SharePoint support and maintenance can now be utilised as a stand alone service from Business Agility.
Business Agility has been delivering end-to-end solutions since 1997. After the successful delivery of a project Business Agility usually remains in partnership with the client to provide continuing support.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011 Business Intelligence in the Cloud – EXCLUSIVE SEMINAR read full article... Tuesday, April 19, 2011 Business Intelligence in the Cloud – EXCLUSIVE SEMINAR As the premier provider of Business Intelligence solutions through the Microsoft BI technology stack, Business Agility is delighted to announce it is hosting a new seminar – “Business Intelligence in the Cloud: Hosted SharePoint 2010”.
The Seminar will actually take the format of 50% seminar and 50% workshop.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011 New from Business Agility - Trial SharePoint in the Cloud for 30 days read full article... Tuesday, April 19, 2011 New from Business Agility - Trial SharePoint in the Cloud for 30 days As a Microsoft Online Services Partner, Business Agility is pleased to offer your organisation the opportunity to trial Microsoft Online SharePoint for 30-days.
SharePoint Online brings together the familiar SharePoint collaboration platform delivered as an online service making the power of the cloud work for your business.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011 Business Agility delivers "exceptionally engaging" seminar on the Microsoft BI stack read full article... Tuesday, April 19, 2011 Business Agility delivers "exceptionally engaging" seminar on the Microsoft BI stack On 8th December, the Business Agility team gave an in-depth presentation on Microsoft’s BI stack and how it compares to other BI solutions.
Once again the event was oversubscribed and the room was filled to capacity with delegates and organisations from a wide spectrum of industries, such as retail, publics sector, pharmaceuticals, insurance and banking. It’s this mix of industries that illustrates the common ground most businesses find themselves on these days – namely to maximise the use of their existing business data.
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