The rapid development of the Korian group, which operates in more than 160 facilities, employing approximately 10 000 people in France, led to a need for an intranet site. The initial concept included a requirement for internal and interactive communication with user friendly update and maintenance tools. The objectives included:

-  strengthening the identity of the group in which associates come from varied backgrounds (medico-social, health, psychiatry),

-  facilitating exchange of information and collaboration between dynamic entities scattered over many locations: diverse head offices, units, professions...,

-  increasing visibility of the number of employees for each occupation and the strategy of a group undergoing profound change,

-  implementing and facilitating electronic communication within a company unfamiliar with web practices.

Korian management chose the interactive communication branch of Ligaris group, Ligaris e-comm, to design a user friendly intranet site. This tool, which is dedicated for driving change, stores and classifies information specific to different operational and functional directions.

Ligaris worked with the e-Business division of Business & Decision to develop the technical design of the Intranet portal. To meet the requirements of information sharing and collaborative working between Korian institutions, Business & Decision has included Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, a dynamic and easy to use platform designed for information exchange. With this technology, users benefit from access to information and documentary references from accross the group.

Patrick Bensabat, chief executive officer of Business & Decision, comments: "The global approach developed by our e-Business division allows us to offer our customers advanced technical expertise as well as the ability to interface with Interactive communication agencies".

According to Francis Weill, Communication manager of Korian, the partnership between Business & Decision and Ligaris e-comm has been excellent: "Our sophisticated and content rich intranet site is an outstanding success from a people and technical standpoint. Indeed, the project was carried out over a 5 month period, with a large number of internal and external contributors,  without problems or notable incident."

ENDS