In 2012 the Nous Group began an IT transformation to make all of our platforms and infrastructure more sustainable and scalable for the future, especially as we continued to grow. As a subset of that, we decided that the intranet platform should be upgraded to build on its usefulness and enable even better collaboration and communication throughout the organisation.” In 2012 Nous upgraded to SharePoint 2010 to deliver the collaborative functionality it required.

1. SharePoint Intranet
Nous Group
MELBOURNE
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
150+ EMPLOYEES
“The entire business can see that this new
platform helps us to deliver strong results
for clients, and that’s what they care
about.”
About Nous Group
Nous Group (Nous) is Australia’s leading values-based
management consulting and leadership development
firm. With offices and experienced consultants
throughout the country, Nous provides advice on
business strategy, public policy, organisational capability,
executive and talent development and capability and
digital futures.
An IT transformation and a necessary upgrade
Nous has a strong culture of collaboration created by its
intelligent and deeply-engaged people. This had
traditionally been facilitated by the firm’s intranet, which
enabled staff to share across the business without using
emails.
Stefanie Kechayas, Nous’ Information Manager, said,
“Our intranet platform was based on Microsoft
SharePoint, which we installed in 2005. Since that time,
the intranet had always been very well-used and wellregarded by staff.
In 2012 we began an IT transformation to make all of our
platforms and infrastructure more sustainable and scalable
for the future, especially as we continued to grow. As a
subset of that, we decided that the intranet platform should
be upgraded to build on its usefulness and enable even
better collaboration and communication throughout the
organisation.”
In 2012 Nous upgraded to SharePoint 2010 to deliver the
collaborative functionality it required.
Document co-authoring and workflows
Stefanie said, “One of the biggest benefits from the
implementation of SharePoint 2010 has been the ability for
consultants to co-author documents without the added
burden of managing version control. Because documents can
be linked to the platform using the
SharePoint document management system, multiple people
could work on a single document at the same time. In the
past, one project manager would have to manage multiple
versions and keep everything centralised.
OBS CUSTOMER CASE STUDY | PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

2. “We chose OBS because of their unique
understanding and focus on business
strategy rather than taking a purely
technology-centric approach. “
Stefanie Kechayas | Information Manager | Nous Group
That extra work has been eliminated. This was important
because our consultants work together to write numerous
reports, pitches and presentations, often under significant
time pressure.”
“Being able to co-author these documents seamlessly was
an important step in our move away from shared drives.
By leveraging SharePoint document management and a
central storage portal on the intranet platform we have
been able to undertake entire projects without once using
a shared drive.”
Nous also used Nintex Workflow to increase efficiencies in
data entry, which resulted in a system that takes master
records from the financial system, pushes them to the
firm’s CRM system and automatically creates a project site
in an extranet environment. This further reduces the
administration involved in creating a new project for
consultants, freeing up their time to concentrate on
solving issues for clients.
“We forged
a strong
relationship
that included OBS
providing strategic
advice about how to
achieve the project’s
business objectives.
As a consequence, we were able to initiate a number of
pilot programs to test functionality within the business
and experiment to see what kinds of configurations
would provide the best value to consultants.
“The experience of working with OBS has been
outstanding. The level of communication from the OBS
team has been extremely helpful as I’ve relied on them
to provide advice and training on SharePoint and on the
project implementation as a whole.”
Future plans
Overwhelming support
Stefanie said, “There has been overwhelming support
from the business for the new platform. It has provided
consultants with a fantastic way to work together across
offices and often on a tight time frame.
“The entire business can see that this new platform helps
us to deliver strong results for clients, and that’s what
they care about.”
Partnering with OBS
Stefanie said, “We chose OBS because of their unique
understanding and focus on business strategy rather than
taking a purely technology-centric approach.
In 2013 Nous decided to expand on the successful
implementation of SharePoint 2010, engaging with OBS
again to migrate to SharePoint 2013. Moving beyond the
publishing portal and internal collaboration with Nous
staff, the next goal is to allow the firm to offer an
extranet environment enabling consultants to
collaborate more easily with clients.