Catapult Systems
The Modern Intranet Solution Providers

Five years ago, many people still saw intranets as a mere digital echo of the break room bulletin: just as easy to ignore, and much more expensive. But Catapult thought differently. A top Microsoft partner with a knack for looking beyond the horizon, Catapult marries decades of cross-industry experience, expertise across the Microsoft technology stack, and a keen sense for “what’s next” to propel clients’ digital transformations. It’s no surprise that for many years, Catapult designed its intranet solution with an eye on the coming context: a cloud-centric, mobile-first business world. The result? Fuse, a portal as dynamic as its modern landscape, built in well-known Microsoft SharePoint, leveraging programs like Office 365, Skype for Business, and Yammer.

In light of Fuse’s success, Eric Russell, Director of Employee Engagement at Catapult shares how to drive results and overcome challenges, such as security and compliance, in the world of modern-day portals.

Trending: Anytime Access for Everyone

Today, organizations are embracing the idea that intranets can serve a greater purpose than simply displaying links to documents. They’re a space for employees to engage with each other, professionally and socially. From personalization to mobile apps, today’s major portal trends help to foster collaboration and support productivity by connecting people and information anywhere, at any time. Fuse’s mobile-responsive web experience meets this need, as does its mobile app for IOS and Android, extending the workplace from conference room to smartphone. In addition to anytime access, personalization drives portal engagement by ensuring employees only see content that’s most relevant to them – another favorite capability of Fuse.

Catapult designed Fuse with employee engagement as a central goal, and every solution enhancement – be it to the core platform or for a specific customer—points towards this same guiding initiative: to empower workers to connect in new and collaborative ways. Catapult sees community-centric connection as a key facet of employee engagement, so Fuse makes it easy for organizations to disseminate their missions and visions across the workforce. Fuse also gives clients a way to call out and recognize individual employees, be it their anniversaries, birthdays, promotions, as well as a channel for employees to connect socially.

For example, Fuse incorporates Microsoft Yammer, which customers often use to carry conversations around wellness initiatives and engagement contests, or for calling out team “wins” and more.

A Portal for People, Powered by People

Fuse is proven to drive four times the engagement of traditional intranets, a success which Catapult attributes to far more than Fuse’s technical foundation. Enter: ongoing service. A team of customer success managers looks for ways businesses can better engage their workforces, keeping a close pulse on each organization’s unique needs and using analytics to understand user behavior.

Eric Russell says, “The quality that really sets us apart is that we go the extra mile by delivering a service that drives employees to use the solution. Our service is designed specifically to engage employees and to facilitate organizational change.”

Stale content is the number-one reason why most intranets fail, so the Fuse CSM offers ongoing guidance to help customers determine which kinds of content to continue posting on their portals. In addition to content modulation, Catapult uses branding and promotion to help clients cultivate a portal that drives engagement.

“We want to provide a user experience that supports the company’s brand, applies to their style guidelines, and most importantly, reinforces the company’s culture. We begin marketing internally with posters, e-mails, and quickstart guides before we go live. This initiative builds awareness within the organization about the new intranet portal,” Russell explains.

As much as Catapult accredits Fuse for its service element, they don’t intend to downplay the importance of top-notch technology. It’s the service that allows clients to make the most of their digital investments and to benefit from Microsoft’s research and development investments. Fuse acts as the “front porch” to Office 365, so users can more easily access all of their workplace applications in one place.

Digital Growth and Global Expansion

Fuse is applicable to all industries since every sector is looking for ways to engage their employees to reduce employee turnover and improve performance. As Catapult goes international in 2018, they’ll expand the reach of Fuse to other countries as well.

According to Russell,”2018 will be an exciting year of expansion for Catapult. In addition to going multi-country and multi-language, we’re bringing The Modern Workplace Suite to market. This includes Fuse, as well as some of our other services that enable modern-day mobile, secure, and collaborative workplaces, like Spyglass, our IT Security and Compliance solution and our IT Lifecycle Management service, Launch.”