“Our development operations comprise 15 departments and approximately 120 personnel,” says Maxine Given, Senior Director of Finance and Development Operations, The Fund for Johns Hopkins Medicine. “Until recently, we were all collocated, and staff benefited from the informal dialogue that naturally occurs among employees. When we decided to decentralize and move individual development offices closer to the clinics they serve, we wanted to use our existing SharePoint site as more than just a secure file repository. We wanted to make it a true communications vehicle for staff.”

“When I approached DocPoint Solutions with my redesign vision, the DocPoint staff encouraged me to take a step back from my conceptualization and actually speak to our users and non users. It was the best advice I’ve ever received. Our strategic analysis yielded a design that encourages use among staff, increasing site traffic and intra-staff dialogue. Innovations include providing a place to blog and another spot where staff can share thoughts in an informal way. Employees also can access the site and instantaneously see where we stand on our fundraising goals at any point in time as a whole, as an office or as an individual. It is a great motivation tool.”

“In fitting the technology to our specific needs, DocPoint helped us build a SharePoint solution that truly benefits communication and information sharing, the goals we set out to achieve. We may be physically dispersed, but SharePoint makes us feel like one cohesive unit again.”