Case study: CentrePort

Challenge

Located in Wellington, CentrePort is New Zealand’s most strategically situated intermodal hub, linking road, rail, domestic and international shipping services. CentrePort’s central geographic location, natural sheltered deep-water harbour, and modern port facilities enable it to offer a broad range of cargo and logistics services.

CentrePort’s staffing model mainly consists of two key groups: ‘front-line’ staff who physically work on the Port, such as engineers and crane operators, and ‘back-line’ staff who work in roles such as executive management, communications, finance and logistics.

Over a period of time, this natural structure created some communications challenges and, coupled with some legacy systems, sometimes meant that not everyone had access to the same information and tools.

Understanding this was critical to the success of its employees, no matter which area of the business they worked in, CentrePort engaged PivotPoint to advise and assist them with creating an engaging internal communications platform.

What we did

PivotPoint devised and delivered a project plan which included the following key phases:

• Business requirements gathering
• Discovery: Identifying staff needs, attitudes and behaviours to the current intranet and their needs and aspirations for any new system
• Designing an intuitive information architecture across multiple business units
• A content and maintenance recommendation
• Advice on SharePoint Online theming
• Front-end development of a custom SharePoint Online web-part (custom component)
• The creation of an internal comms and post go-live awareness plan 

Working closely with their internal communications team, PivotPoint consolidated CentrePort’s business requirements, and then conducted quantitative and qualitative research activities, which included interviewing internal stakeholders and staff across the two key groups and multiple business units, running surveys, testing existing internal technology systems, and critical analysis. 

During the next phase, PivotPoint designed an information architecture, master template wireframes, and a content strategy that was based on the findings of the research. 

Next, PivotPoint worked closely with CentrePort’s communications team to refine and test this to ensure it catered to the multiple business units that would regularly be using the new platform. PivotPoint then supported CentrePort’s communications team to present project progress to the Executive Leadership Team to get further feedback and buy-in. 
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Once executive leadership had been consulted, PivotPoint then designed and facilitated commercial printing of a range of awareness collateral in the form of large-format printed posters, flyers and digital creative to communicate the new platform launch throughout the organisation. 
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After the launch of the platform, CentrePort engaged PivotPoint to develop a custom web component that helped communicate custom announcements throughout the organisation. This custom developed component was built using HTML, CSS, and Javascript/TypeScript, and integrated seamlessly with CentrePort’s chosen platform. This is a responsive UI that works across multiple screen sizes and devices and allows system administrators to customise announcement messages. 

Outcomes

Fast-forward to today, both front-line and back-line staff have access to a single information portal, which is structured in a way that makes sense to people operating across a range of business units, that is accessible on mobile, tablet and desktop, and has a defined roadmap that aims to unite and empower all employees of CentrePort. 

PivotPoint proudly continues to work with CentrePort supporting their communications function from a design and technology perspective.