EPC Group - Intranet Magazine - Continental Airlines & EPC Group work togethor to develop an Industry Leading SharePoint Application

1. September/October 2010 Volume 13 Number 5
■ ■ In This Issue
■ 1 Standards for Access:
Intranets
Building the FASB Portal
E N T E R P R I S E S T R AT E G I E S A N D S O L U T I O N S
■ 1 Continental Airlines Turns
to SharePoint
■ 6 Appearance Matters
■ 7 The Intranet Budget
1 VITAL STATS 6 IN BRIEF
5 READ_ME_FILE 7 TOOLS
Standards for Access Continental
Building the FASB Portal SUE MARQUETTE POREMBA
Airlines
Turns to
T
he Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is responsible for publishing the “bible”
of the accounting world, the U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Over
the past 50 years, the GAAP has been embodied in a multitude of documents and
pronouncements promulgated by several standard-setters with multiple structures. Initially,
the GAAP was published as a series of volumes with update supplements—a format that was
SharePoint
huge and unwieldy. to Avoid Flight
The information that makes up the GAAP is essentially a public utility. The application of
GAAP to U.S. accounting is relied on by millions of investors who make decisions based on
Delay Fines ERRIN O’CONNOR
those reports; by company executives who sign off on financial statements; by creditors; by
academic researchers; and by others. In the past, when an accounting firm and auditors needed
I
n April 2010, the U.S. Department of
the answers for even routine questions, it meant searching through thousands of pages, which Transportation put new regulations into
was costly for businesses in terms of time, money, and responsiveness. In addition, the organi- effect regarding long tarmac delays. The
zation of the GAAP information increased the likelihood of noncompliance due to failure to Airline Passenger Bill of Rights says that
locate all relevant guidance. Moreover, GAAP is consumed by both people and electronic delays of any type that go on for more than
systems. Accounting professionals directly research and read GAAP information, and GAAP 3 hours can result in extensive fines per
information is electronically aggregated with other accounting information into accounting passenger. It lays out specific processes that
libraries and knowledge portals. Thus, it was clear that a better solution was needed. FASB must be handled at each hour of a long
wanted to provide an online, searchable, topic-based portal. delay, such as access to food and water or
even returning an aircraft to the gate and
THE PROJECT BEGINS allowing passengers to deplane.
Initial research and planning for restructuring the GAAP began in 2004, when the topic
Continental Airlines continued on page 2
structure was developed. The content lifecycle management system was bid, evaluated, and
selected during 2006.
The project attracted a lot of interested parties. “We had a very extensive RFP process,” says
Vital Stats
Ron Guerrette, vice president of the Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF), the independent, Which method are you most likely to
private organization responsible for the oversight and administration of FASB. “We had quite a few use when sharing a large file
vendors come in. However, once we made a connection with Ovitas, we found that they were facile with a customer
in putting together the appropriate demos and answering our questions.We were impressed with
vendor?
Email 58%
The FASB Accounting
Standards Codification
of U.S. GAAP is presented
on the FASB portal at
http://asc.fasb.org.
Researchers can easily
navigate the topic-based
codification as well as
view content, references, USB or other Other
removable 10%
and other information media 12% File share
while annotating for their transfer All of the
own use and providing service 8% above 12%
feedback to FASB.
Source: 2010 File Transfer Survey, Group Logic, June 2010
Standards continued on page 4

2. Intranets
2
Continental Airlines from page 1
populate and use the application. “Prior to
undertaking this project, we had been rolling
out SharePoint for our overall enterprise
content management efforts,” Wilson says.
“The senior director of the System Opera-
tions Coordination Center (SOCC) and
executives in Continental Technology immedi-
ately saw the potential for using this as part
of our flight delay response program, mostly
because it’s user-friendly and operations
directors wouldn’t need much training to
configure an internal site for their own needs.”
Wilson chose to work with EPC Group
to help Continental Airlines establish its
initial enterprise content management (ECM)
efforts, including building the platform and
laying out the governance regulations. By
creating a standardized and manageable site,
The homepage of the System Operations Coordination Center (SOCC) SharePoint site for Continental the operations team within Continental was
employees. It displays regular system operations reports, weather, and operations center able to then create the intranet sites they
announcements. needed in order to succeed.
For Continental Airlines, transforming this status of any plane at any moment anywhere PRE-DEPLOYMENT PROCESS
regulation into a workable reality means at 135 domestic airports. The overall goal for its flight-delay dash-
ensuring that dozens of internal departments Denise Wilson, senior manager of tech- board was to create an easy-to-use, flexible
and individuals can quickly and easily com- nology in Continental’s enterprise engineering system that would be used by the people
municate with any of a number of outside group in Houston, was tasked with building who needed it most.The dashboard itself is a
vendors at any given point. If a plane sits a single system that incorporated an intranet series of lists that provide useful, updated
for too long without getting the appropriate containing all the necessary documents and information, so the value lies in the informa-
food and beverage service, or if a delay information with a front-end dashboard to tion behind that which resides in the core
lasts too long and the crew have to offer an keep the operations center completely up data repository.
option to return a plane to the gate, opera- to date. “For example, the flight operations “Before we built the SharePoint applica-
tions personnel on the ground need to know department needed to know at which hour tion, EPC Group coached us on how to
who to call in catering or at the airport to of a delay to call the catering vendor at determine what would work best for our
make arrangements. the airport, or when and how to send out needs. They provided us with the most
Previously, such communications were a service crew. With so many different important questions to ask our would-be
handled by telephone and email. If a plane departments working together, we need to be users and worked with our business units to
were delayed in Boston, for example, an able to quickly find all information and also understand how we use our data,” says
operations agent at Logan International archive our response to the delay for legal Wilson. “We started with a full audit of the
Airport would call someone at Continental’s purposes,” says Wilson. In short, her depart- information within the Continental Airlines
operations center to relay information. The ment needed to organize an enormous group. That included documents in every
operations center in Houston would then amount of electronic clutter in a short department, from food services to corporate
create regular lists from this ad hoc informa- amount of time and on a budget. finance to HR to purchasing. In all, we
tion to keep the team updated. Meanwhile, if “Previously, all the information was in analyzed several terabytes of information in
the plane needed something, such as a shift emails or phone calls, so the operations millions of files.”
change or a return to the gate, it was up to people needed to sift through email to find
the people on the ground to figure out what the information and data they needed,” says GOVERNANCE
needed to be done and who to call, often Wilson. “We still use email for alerting, but It’s not enough to simply build a
using hard copy information stored in files instead of sending information there, we SharePoint application. In order to keep it
around the local offices. send a link back to the information, such as running smoothly and efficiently, governing
With the passage of the Airline Passenger weather, diversions, or aircraft substitutions.” rules must apply. The success of an imple-
Bill of Rights, Continental automated the Wilson chose to build the system on mentation such as this one depends on how
process so people on the ground could get SharePoint because, based on her experience, the users take to the technology and whether
the information they need, and the central she believed that once properly implemented, it actually makes their life easier or becomes
operations center remained updated on the anyone, technically savvy or not, could easily a nuisance.

3. Intranets
www.intranetstoday.com 3
Thus, EPC Group counseled Continental
to take a more user-centric approach to its
SharePoint implementation. While some
consider a SharePoint installation a technical
process that falls under the domain of the
IT department, the most successful deploy-
ments occur when all stakeholders and
users are considered in the process.
Continental’s governance process can be
broken into just a few key points:
• Encouraging usage at the corporate level
• Structuring the overall organizational
SharePoint growth
• Structuring search and navigation to
increase accessibility
• Encouraging user accountability and
upkeep
• Maintaining content and site standards
Putting the rules in place is one thing;
getting people to actually follow those rules
and use the tool is quite another. In all,
Continental had an initial goal of attracting
3,000 users to SharePoint. To achieve this, This displays details of a number of current weather characteristics from different locations around the
Continental focused on identifying 50 core globe in one consolidated view.
power-users who would be key to getting the
SharePoint implementation up and running. functionality across the organization to enter information into the system, and
These people were trained on how to use narrow searches and reduce the amount actions can happen in Houston and around
the software; they were also those who of time it takes to locate information. the country. This ensures that customers
would become internal evangelists to help With a few technical back-end solutions are taken care of no matter the flight
get others on board. combined with minimal user training, situation. While Continental can control its
Once the overall SharePoint implementa- employees can quickly narrow down searches planes, it can’t control the weather and can’t
tion was up and running, Continental was from thousands of responses to just a few. control what happens at the airport level.
able to use the platform to create a variety of Today, Continental relies on the native Fast access to information can make all of
portal types. In the case of the long tarmac SharePoint search, but also created a system customer service work better.
delay program, the process started with an in which people tag the appropriate data on As an additional benefit, people have
employee in the IT department creating a its way into the system. Some metadata is shaved several hours of work off of their day.
16-page Microsoft InfoPath form that was pre-populated automatically, such as the Where they previously sifted through email
then distributed to 135 airport general three-letter site code as well as the division to create lists of flight delays and informa-
managers within the Continental universe. and default retention policy. Each time a user tion, all that is now handled automatically,
The process from inception to distribution creates a new document, they’re asked to leaving them time to get into action plans
took about 2 weeks, a time that included select what type of document, such as rather than just becoming list makers. In
multiple iterations and a small group of beta contract or presentation, and that additional addition to helping the company avoid
testers. It took just another 3 days for the metadata gets added to the pre-populated costly fines, Wilson says, “We believe that
managers to fill the information and get it information. These few actions in the we’ve gained enough productivity from not
into the system. creation or revision of a document lets having to create reports manually that the
To meet its objectives of unifying employees know when a document can be system has already paid for itself.” I
access to a large amount of information, safely deleted—freeing up storage space and
Continental needed more than organized also keeping the legal department happy.
ERRIN O’CONNOR (sharepoint@epcgroup.net) is the
information storage. As Wilson notes, founder and CEO of EPC Group, an integrator of SharePoint
“Content management is extremely impor- THE REWARDS services, where he manages corporate strategy as well as
architects the proven methodologies around collaboration,
tant, especially in time-sensitive situations. The primary benefit of the system is enterprise content management, and custom application
However, it’s not enough to simply store regular access to real-time information. So development. O’Connor’s book, Microsoft SharePoint
Foundation 2010 Inside Out is due out later this year.
data, but it must be easily accessible.” To that while a plane is sitting on the ground in He previously authored Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
Inside Out.
end, Continental needed a structured search Boston, a person can look out the window,