CASE STUDY

The client

Thomson Reuters is the world’s leading provider of news and information-based tools to professionals. Their worldwide network of journalists and specialist editors keep customers up to speed on global developments, with a particular focus on legal, regulatory, and tax changes.

The challenge

Thomson Reuters wanted to transition to a more bespoke, customisable and flexible intranet platform within their business. Their existing Jive platform was well-established and the employees were comfortable with it, but there were certain limitations. For example, the search functionality was poor, making it difficult to search for documents and people and the social chat functionality was likewise not as central as they needed it to be. 

The client felt that with a more bespoke platform they would be able to improve their internal communications and create a more flexible and personalised user experience. 

They had decided to migrate the whole company to Sharepoint, using a Valo front-end to make it more user friendly and improve the employee experience. This would include using Yammer for chat, which has much more powerful and flexible community and chat features than Jive.

However, TR knew that choosing and implementing the new technology is the easy part. The hard part is successfully migrating your users to the new platform in such a way that they feel comfortable and happy, are familiar with all of the functionality, and can use the technology effectively to do their jobs well. 

To make their new technology migration a true success and minimise disruption to business, TR reached out to the Future Worx team to help them craft a plan to support their people in adopting the new platform.

The solution

In order to help them migrate successfully, Future Worx devised a solution consisting of three parts.

  • We gave two scheduled training sessions a day during the migration period to include different time zones worldwide.

    If a particular department or team wanted training on a specific feature or aspect of Sharepoint then we would quickly create and run a bespoke, on-demand training session for that particular team. All training sessions were recorded so that people could use them later.

    In total, we delivered 53 standard training sessions to nearly 500 employees and 17 bespoke, tailor-made sessions to 120 employees, including the leadership team, with the recorded sessions receiving thousands of views afterward.

  • The Genius Desk service is not your traditional tech support or help desk. It’s more like a bespoke coaching service to help people achieve a specific business goal with technology. For example, if you want to run a successful workshop and aren’t sure how, you might get in touch with Genius Desk to help them recommend collaboration features and accessibility options.

    Employees could send an email to or chat with our team on Microsoft Teams from 6am until 10pm (GMT) at night and receive personalised support on any and all issues to do with the new SharePoint platform.

    Our team doesn’t just send them a quick ‘how to’ on solving their technology problem. We jump on a call with them and show them how to get the outcome they are looking for, not just solve the immediate tech problem.

    We were able to help nearly 500 employees through the Genius Desk, helping people directly to do their jobs better with the new technology and reducing the client’s own tech support tickets by 89%.

  • We created a daily ‘Hot Topic’ based on all the questions we had been asked through our training sessions and Genius Desk contacts. Most of these were centered around SharePoint with others covering different aspects of the M365 suite, such as Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and accessibility issues.

    The ‘Hot Topic’ content included detailed user guides, written instructions, video tutorials, and even short GIFs, which were delivered through dedicated channels on Microsoft Teams and Yammer.

    This content supported a widespread campaign to raise awareness of the new platform, its most useful features and functionality and to anticipate common obstacles to adoption.

The business
outcome

The training sessions, Genius Desk coaching and user support content allowed Thomson Reuters to successfully move all of their users to Sharepoint. Their employees are comfortable working with the platform, know how to get the most out of it to do their jobs well and, if they are uncertain, they know where they can go to get the answers they need. Overall, we received incredibly positive feedback from the employees and key stakeholders on the effectiveness of the adoption and migration process. 

In the words of one employee, the training was “very practical and clear, the explanations straightforward and understandable. I was very impressed.”

Likewise, the Genius Desk support was really helpful for the employees managing the transition to new technologies. One person found that “getting to ask questions and hear from a live person quickly, without technical hassles or a stressful interaction, is delightful” and that they received a “very quick reply, an initial diagnosis, helpful information about next steps, and a response that responded to the content of my email (it's wasn't generic - the person had clearly read my email)”.

The client stated that they “honestly don't know how we would [have] manage[d] without our amazing Genius Desk partners”. They further stated that “[Future Worx’s] ability to flex to meet our needs to support our people in a professional yet friendly manner is a game-changer. The delivery of training per spec provided a matter of days ago is simply amazing. I would second the statement below and look forward to a longer partnership. I am expecting a massive ramp-up of volume in the coming weeks. This team will greatly influence our employee experience during this huge tool change. Thank you.”

The main stakeholder, Heather Force, Director of Employee Experience, commented that “Working with the Future Worx team was an absolute pleasure every step of the way. Team members as well as employees who sought help and/or participated in live training truly enjoyed the interactions and were overwhelmingly positive in their feedback. I look forward to the day our paths cross again.”